The Whale (2022)

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Darren Aronofsky doesn’t make movies about lovable characters.  They are usually so steeped in personal gloom that you have to work to find their center.  That was true of Natalie Portman in Black Swan, Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Jennifer Lawrence in mother! and even Russell Crowe in Noah, a film that I did not like.  They’re always complicated, always layered, always interesting and, of course, always soaked in some form of horrifying family discourse.

I think he’s topped himself with The Whale, based on a 2012 stage play by Stephen D. Hunter about an obese shut-in named Charlie who works from home as an online English teacher and, for reasons of his own, never seeks medical help.  He’s dying, and through varying circumstances ends up reacquainting with his rebellious teenage daughter Ellie (‘Stranger Things’s Sadie Sink).

The movie is like an onion, peeling back the layers of its characters, their hidden motives (some reasonable, others seemingly manufactured) but there’s always a sense of human beings in the room.  Everyone has an agenda, from Thomas the yeah-God Jesus freak that keeps coming by, to Dan the unseen pizza guy, to Charlie’s friend Liz (supporting actress nominee Hong Chau) who is his caretaker, confidant and conscience.

Reaction has been mixed on The Whale, but I see it as Aronofsky’s most literate and human work, despite his usual bizarre flourishes (read: the movie’s ending).  Still I got caught up in it.  It isn’t just a pity show for a man with a weight problem.  Charlie comes off as a real person, a layered person, a sensitive person with strange motives.