The Whale

Rating: ** ½

As a warning on obesity,The Whale stacks the odds against the protagonist so high that he almost drowns in the drama of grotesquerie that assails our senses.Brendan Fraser, not quite a thin reed of a man himself, jumps into his character Charlie ‘s body suit with an earnestness that goes a long way in giving the film its tone and tinge of time-ticking immediacy.

Charlie is a ticking timebomb. His weight can trigger off a heart failure any moment. His nurse and companion Liz(Hong Chau) seems to have given up on Charlie. She orders loads of unhealthy food for him and allows him to gorge . Or, at least that’s how it seems. Liz obviously likes the thought of taking control of Charlie’s life(whatever is left of it) and hates it when his rebellious daughter Ellie(Sadie Sink, all flaring nostrils and flaming eyes ) shows up at his doorstep to claim her obese father’s fattened inheritance.

As they say where there’s a whale, there’s a will.

There is something loftily theatrical about the way The Whale unravels. Director Darren Aronofsky has told some very ugly stories in his time. Nothing can beat the sight of those babies being manhandled in Aronofsky’s Mother! . But The Whale comes close. The sight of Brendan Fraser’s Charlie trapped in his dingy dark Gothic home by his loathsome lethargy, is a modernday horror tale akin to any horrific sight you are likely to see on screen.

I don’t know if that is the director’s intention. But instead of creating empathy for Charlie the film creates revulsion in the audience. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this man? Or are we supposed to be revolted by his complete lack of initiative to pull himself out of that hell-hole which he calls his home?

Charlie is not only a food addict he is also gay. When we see him for the first time he is sitting wallowing in his flab and masturbating to porn.

I know . Yuck.

Fraser’s central performance helps to keep us invested even when Fraser’s Charlie is at his selfindulgent worst. The redemption, if we may call it that, is so , pardon the irony, slim that the bloated self-denigration seems to mock at any attempt to give Charlie’s character any dignity .

As he sinks deeper and deeper into that basement of debasement we can only grit our teeth and pray for his quick release. And ours too.

I am afraid this film doesn’t offer us a, heh heh, whale of a time. But it does make us think about how deep a human being can fall into the pit of self-degradation. Charlie hides his physical self from the world. But his soul is hardly any better. That’s what is most troublesome about this experience.

What kind of an out-of-shape hero is this?Did we really need a film on Charlie’s loathsome life?