Courtesy of A24
Several times throughout The Whale, star Brendan Fraser repeats the same credo. “People are amazing,” his character, Charlie, says in various iterations, sometimes through tears and sometimes with a remarkably cheerful disposition. We’re supposed to look on as audiences, wondering just how it is that Charlie—a man who is severely obese and confined to his apartment—is able to maintain this belief, when his own life has shown him the opposite time and time again.
Charlie believes in the good of humankind with such fervency that the film leaves no space for denial. But the thing about Charlie’s philosophy is that people are not amazing. We see this all the time in cinema, cruelty slowly percolating through the frame of even the most well-intentioned of films. Humanity is often wicked, even when it’s not trying to be. And such is the case with The Whale, the first film in five years from director Darren Aronofsky.
Aronofsky is an auteur as acclaimed as he is controversial, and his latest is no different. For a decade, The Whale has been Aronofsky’s passion project. He was moved to adapt the story into a film from its theatrical origins, after he saw its celebrated off-Broadway run in 2012. But 10 years in the digital age is a lifetime in terms of cultural sensitivity. Social mores adapt and change. They’re not the same as when the last curtain fell on Samuel D. Hunter’s play. Even with the film’s screenplay adapted by Hunter, and a blisteringly tender performance by Fraser, The Whale drowns in its own deeply misguided quest for empathy.