Brendan Fraser is imperious in flawed masterpiece The Whale
One of the biggest stories of Oscar season 2023 has been the comeback of Brendan Fraser. In the Hollywood wilderness for years, the Mummy star returns this month in The Whale, where he plays a morbidly obese man mourning the death of his partner. The film has polarised critics, but now fans can make their mind up.
Fraser plays Charlie, a teacher unable to care for himself because of his weight. He works online and is cared for by his friend Liz, played by Hong Chau. With his health failing, he attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie to mend damages of the past.
Director Darren Aronofsky reinvigorated the career of Mickey Rourke with The Wrestler, which had similar threads to The Whale, being a film about a man trying to undo the errors of his past in his later years.
Aronofsky showed sympathy for Rourke’s ageing wrestler character Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, but his view of obesity is much less sympathetic. From the opening scene where Charlie suffers a heart attack while masturbating, the camera lingers creepily over various parts of Charlie’s body. Scenes displaying eating binges and struggles to bathe feel voyeuristic, from the perspective of a filmmaker plainly fascinated with Charlie as a material being rather than empathetic for his struggles.
It’s an unfortunate direction to take as it’s so at odds with the performances. Brendan Fraser is as wonderful as you’ve heard, and while there have been debates about whether an obese actor should have taken the role, it’s hard to imagine anyone else making Charlie so easy to relate to.
He’s made mistakes, and spends much of the film being shouted at for them. But his performance demands that you see beneath his weaknesses, beneath the regrets, to his beauty and the emotion he feels for the world. Fraser’s been delivering excellent character work for years on the small screen, but it’s gratifying to see that talent shine in a leading role.
He’s helped by strong support, particularly from Hong Chau as Charlie’s de facto nurse. A scowling but kind-hearted ally, she exudes the kind of world-weary courage we associate with the medical profession.
Sink is an impressive co-star for Fraser to do battle with. It’s not a million miles from her wise-cracking character in Stranger Things, but like Samantha Morton as Charlie’s ex-wife, her character is interestingly layered. Ty Simpkins is impressive too as a young preacher from Charlie’s former church, although the character loses purpose as the story rolls on.
If ever a performance saved a movie, it’s Brendan Fraser in The Whale. The voyeuristic elements of the film are outshone by the humanity that radiates from its star and supporting cast, making for a flawed film that nonetheless pulls at the heartstrings.