The new film by Darren Aronofsky, reintroduces a theme that is dense, realistic and difficult to face.
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Darren Aronofsky released The Whale, his new movie since Mother (2017), and he returned not only with a good story but with a solid marketing campaign. On the one hand, he summoned Brendan Fraser, an actor who seemed banished from Hollywood, for the leading role, and completely transformed his appearance, something that fascinates the american industry, to tell the story of a morbidly obese man.
Whoever is faced with an Aronofsky film knows (or should know) that they will not find soft content. Since his first feature, Pi (1998), the director has been involved with dense themes, with strong realistic content and with a narration that goes to the bone. The whale is no exception, but it is also one of the most difficult to see. Few things compare to the final parallel cut of Requiem for a Dream (2000), but Aronofsky's new film is more raw and revealing.
The story centers on Charlie (Fraser), a literature professor who suffers from severe obesity and hasn't left his house for a long time. Facing his imminent death, Charlie decides to reconnect with his daughter (Sadie Sink), while looking back on his life with regret and longing for liberation.
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Being based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter, the film takes place only inside Charlie's house, a gloomy, messy space that is also adapted for a person with reduced mobility. All these aspects are creating the dense universe of this footage that, a few minutes after it begins, offers the viewer a drowsiness that will only grow.
The director paves the way to show us his character in a descent towards bestiality and this is when the title begins to make sense, in addition to its explicit reference to Mody Dick. As in Black Swan, in Requiem for a Dream and in The Fighter, the characters are presented as outsiders and are increasingly unable to live in society, to be part of the norm, which makes them reach a climax of something akin to madness.
The film also raises a criticism of the american health system, given the impossibility of the character attending without having to waste away all his savings. Charlie asks the rest of the characters at various points in the film, “Am I gross?” and this is how, before the gaze of the others, he appears as a monster.
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The interesting operation that Aronofsky does with this character is to show us a complex duality: his sweetness and regret, as opposed to his overwhelming appearance and his boundless voracity that causes terror. Here is one of the director's most courageous gestures: the realism with which he chose to deal with a subject such as obesity.
The whale is part of the filmography of this author with a conceptual repetition: to continue exploring those subjects who cannot be part of and inhabit the margins of a society. It may be due to a monstrous body, it may be due to a doppelganger, drug addiction or a dismal past, but Aronofsky's characters do not live according to the norm and, faced with this, become suffering subjects. There is another key narrative by the director: that we see the tragedy of living in exile from society.
