The Whale

 

Brendan Fraser in “The Whale.” A24 photo via IMDB

Superheroes, fantasy warriors and cocky jet pilots still rule the box office, but at this time of year guys like Charlie show up on movie screens.

Played almost unrecognizably by one-time action hero Brendan Fraser, Charlie is a 600-pound online English teacher who keeps his camera turned off when he teaches his zoom classes. When we first meet him he's in the throes of a near heart attack masturbating to gay porn. His preferred method of suicide is eating himself to death in his squalid apartment in rural Idaho.

After the last blog about “The Menu,” “The Whale” carries on a recurring theme this movie awards season: unappetizing movies about food. 

But before crossing “The Whale” off your to-do list, you might want to Google the six-minute standing ovation Fraser received when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. That reception brought him to tears, followed by awards and recognition culminating with a recent Golden Globe nomination. Oscar oddsmakers are putting him at the top of the best-actor race. 

(The Golden Globe nomination is ironic vindication for the comic action star best known for “The Mummy” and “George of the Jungle” franchises whose career was almost ended by an incident at a Golden Globe function in 2003.)

Flawed men, not to mention self-destructive ones, are always popular with Oscar voters. Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” comes to mind. While Charlie acknowledges that he was never the handsomest guy in the room, his obesity didn't start getting morbid until the death of his lover. 

The film's title alludes both to the literary classic “Moby Dick,” a huge metaphor in Samuel D. Hunter's script, and to Charlie himself. He seems intent on transforming himself into a repulsive mound of blubber who can barely navigate the path from his armchair to his fridge without maximum grunts and groans.

Charlie is suffering from congestive heart failure, his friend Liz (Hong Chau) tells him. Actually she's his only friend, and also happens to be a nurse. Charlie refuses her entreaties to go to the hospital. He doesn't have medical insurance, he points out, and the bills will be as catastrophic as he is. 

Liz is one of a string of characters knocking on his door to enter his sad domain. The first is Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a door-to-door missionary convinced he was sent by God to save Charlie's soul. The next is Ellie (Sadie Sink), the daughter he abandoned eight years earlier after he reaches out to her in an email.

Although she's a hellion on the brink of flunking out of high school and set on her own self-destruction, Charlie is intent on renewing their relationship in what everyone knows are his last days. The daughter hates Charlie as much as he hates himself for abandoning her. But despite her mother Mary (Samantha Morton's) claim that the girl is pure evil, Charlie insists that she is something else. Very smart, intuitive and wise. And, although she would never admit it, deeply caring.

Writer Hunter adapted the script from his stage play. With its simple set and single door where the other characters enter and leave, it never fully evolves from play to movie. Director Darren Aronofsky keeps things close and claustrophobic with minimal lighting and lots of shadows. Apart from Charlie's labored and often revolting physical movement, including the way he stuffs his face when he eats, the cinematography mostly depends on close-ups to create whatever “action” is in the drama.

Fraser takes on the physical requirements of the role – the weight gain, the prosthetics, the fat suit – with grace and courage. It is a unique performance, and despite the obvious geek show repulsion/fascination, it winds up being incredibly touching.

Of course in these times of heightened sensitivities, it is also controversial. “The Whale” has been attacked for not casting an actually obese actor in the role, and for perpetrating something called “fatphobia.” At the other end of the culture wars spectrum, Charlie embodies everything the *ucker Carlson brigades despise about left-coast filmmaking. Charlie may despise himself as much as they do, but a film celebrating his underlying kindness and goodness is a direct affront to the brittle, sanctimonious hypocrisy they so desperately cling to. Their zeal to protect their children from such people is incapable of seeing that Charlie may be be the best teacher his students ever had.

Hunter's script is too talky at times, but keeps revealing new dimensions of its characters that continually change their relationships to one another. It ultimately fulfills Charlie's belief that people are incapable of not caring, as the story becomes an emotional and transcendent parable of everybody saving everybody else.

Fraser has correctly described this as the most heroic role he has ever played. And, ultimately, the best dad.