Go and see The Whale!

Monday is movies. Or sometimes TV. Today a plea, go and see the best film I've seen in ages. Starts in NZ cinemas this week.

I was lucky to be invited along to see a preview screening of The Whale last night. Opening in New Zealand cinemas this coming Thursday (Feb 2), The Whale is the latest film by Darren Aronofsky, based on the 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, and adapted by the playwright.

It has been gaining notices for its “comeback” performance by Brendan Fraser. And derision by people who believe that an actually morbid obese actor should have played the role, rather than Fraser in prosthetics.

The film premiered in the middle of last year, has been released overseas, and reviews are all over the internet already, so you can decide how much you’d like to be spoiled before heading in. I’m not here to do that. But I’ll talk a tiny bit about what’s in the movie, as I tell you how I felt about seeing the film.

First up, The Whale is yet another Darren Aronofsky film. So I was heading along for that reason alone. I’ve been a fan since his oily-rag psychological drama, Pi, from back in 1998. And card-carrying, since 2000’s bigger-budget, full-announcement, Requiem For a Dream.

Requiem broke me. I thought about it for days after. I have rewatched it a small handful of times, and it is one of the most perfect and harrowing movies I’ve endured in my life. It is filled with exquisite performances, and it shows various drifts towards addictions, and the devastating impacts.

Black Swan, The Wrestler and Mother! are all brilliant too. Also harrowing. For many viewers they will be too much, no escape from real life and rather a confrontation, even with the fantastical elements that Aronofsky deftly weaves. I did love The Fountain, more for its beautiful score and visual panache, and his only dud in my book is Noah – a film I still watched, and took some things from; watching it only (and sticking with it only) because of who made it.

The Whale sits with Wrestler, Mother and Black Swan for its commentary on the human condition, its tough look at tired humans, its blend of daylight horror and existential struggle. But it is most closely linked to Requiem For a Dream in the filmography. This is a tough watch. Beautiful, poignant, and absolutely not for everyone – and as I always add after such a sentence, all the better for that.

Reader, I was blown away by every aspect of The Whale. Aronofsky is a tonal master as filmmaker, from pitch-perfect performances down to spot-on casting, through to incredible music, and a way of going insular on a macro level; the claustrophobia of the one-room view is close to unbearable, but necessary. And when we see Fraser’s character binge-eating pizza, or comfort-eating a bucket of chicken (whilst looking extremely, terrifyingly uncomfortable) it is beyond hokey triggering; it’s a type of voyeurism – equal parts brutal and compelling.

Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese man attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter. His friend and nurse, Liz (Hong Chau) stops by to check in on him. As good as Fraser is here, I was equally moved by Chau’s acting – she might even steal the show. And Sadie Sink (Max, from Stranger Things) is superb in a difficult role. A cameo from Samantha Morton as Charlie’s ex, Mary, is a reminder that Morton is one of the very best actors on the planet. Give her unglamourous, troubled, difficult, harried, and she’ll find the humanity. She’ll break your heart, make you angry, or most tellingly, both.

The Whale riffs around melodrama, it is an American Songbook version of the British Kitchen Sink Drama, it is not shy about its Great American Novel pretensions, and given it references one of the Great American Novels throughout it would be hard for it to hide any of its glee. It is very overtly a stage drama remade for the screen, that’s also impossible to hide – so Hunter and Aronofsky don’t even try. But all of this is, to me, further evidence of the film’s underlying and undeniable brilliance.

The Whale knows it is telling you a lot. It is layering the human complexity, like a flipside to The Wrestler.

It is also filled with familiar Darren Aronofsky themes – religion, guilt, shame, addiction, hope for redemption. These are his Human Condition staples.

It is probably responsible of me to further hammer home, even after saying what I’ve just said above, that this is a tough watch. And I love that about it. I walked home from the cinema after, a little bit broken. In the very best possible way. I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard everyone had tried in this film, and how usually it can be off-putting to feel and even see that about a film, but in this instance it was the masterstroke.

A sidenote here on the music. Sorry. You knew that was coming. I’m a film-score nerd. The first handful of Aronofsky films introduced me to one of my now all-time favourite and go-to composers, Clint Mansell. In particular his work for the Kronos Quartet for Requiem and Fountain would be in my Top 10 film scores of all time. His score for Noah is really its (only?) saving grace. And he was there from day one for Aronofsky. I assume there’s been some severing of ties, since they haven’t worked together now for a decade.

Assuming the role here is Rob Simonsen. I loved his recent work on the films The Way Back and The Adam Project, so much so that I have been planning to dig deep into his back catalogue. Well, that’ll have to wait, because I walked home from the movie last night listening straight away to the score for The Whale. (And then on repeat all through the night). Simonsen has replicated some of the enveloping feel of what Mansell once offered Aronofsky. But it is his own flavour. The strings are grandiose and also graceful. They are all the contradictions and conundrums of the film. They are both big and small, subtly stirring and at times almost too much. I have found a new favourite film score.

Along with a new favourite film.

Go and see The Whale. I’d love to know what you think. I doubt we’ll see a better, more perceptive dig at the conundrum at being human, and what it is to simultaneously care so much about so many things and so many people whilst giving up on yourself or appearing to do exactly that.

Anyone telling you that it was wrong to cast an actor in a fat suit is missing the metaphor of it all. As well as forgetting the role of an actor in a production…