whale movie review guardian

“The Whale” is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

It gawks at the grotesquerie of its central figure beneath the guise of sentimentality, but it also offers sharp exchanges between its characters that ring with bracing honesty.

It’s the kind of film you should probably see if only to have an informed, thoughtful discussion about it, but it’s also one you probably won’t want to watch.

This aligns it with Darren Aronofsky’s movies in general, which can often be a challenging sit. The director is notorious for putting his actors (and his audiences) through the wringer, whether it’s Jennifer Connolly’s drug addict in “ Requiem for a Dream ,” Mickey Rourke’s aging athlete in “ The Wrestler ,” Natalie Portman’s obsessed ballerina in “ Black Swan ,” or Jennifer Lawrence’s besieged wife in “mother!” (For the record, I’m a fan of Aronofsky’s work in general.)

But the difference between those films and “The Whale” is their intent, whether it’s the splendor of their artistry or the thrill of their provocation. There’s a verve to those movies, an unpredictability, an undeniable daring, and a virtuoso style. They feature images you’ve likely never seen before or since, but they’ll undoubtedly stay with you afterward.

“The Whale” may initially feel gentler, but its main point seems to be sticking the camera in front of Brendan Fraser , encased in a fat suit that makes him appear to weigh 600 pounds, and asking us to wallow in his deterioration. In theory, we are meant to pity him or at least find sympathy for his physical and psychological plight by the film’s conclusion. But in reality, the overall vibe is one of morbid fascination for this mountain of a man. Here he is, knocking over an end table as he struggles to get up from the couch; there he is, cramming candy bars in his mouth as he Googles “congestive heart failure.” We can tsk-tsk all we like between our mouthfuls of popcorn and Junior Mints while watching Fraser’s Charlie gobble greasy fried chicken straight from the bucket or inhale a giant meatball sub with such alacrity that he nearly chokes to death. The message “The Whale” sends us home with seems to be: Thank God that’s not us.

In working from Samuel D. Hunter’s script, based on Hunter’s stage play, Aronofsky doesn’t appear to be as interested in understanding these impulses and indulgences as much as pointing and staring at them. His depiction of Charlie’s isolation within his squalid Idaho apartment includes a scene of him masturbating to gay porn with such gusto that he almost has a heart attack, a moment made of equal parts shock value and shame. But then, in a jarring shift, the tone eventually turns maudlin with Charlie’s increasing martyrdom.

Within the extremes of this approach, Fraser brings more warmth and humanity to the role than he’s afforded on the page. We hear his voice first; Charlie is a college writing professor who teaches his students online from behind the safety of a black square. And it’s such a welcoming and resonant sound, full of decency and humor. Fraser’s been away for a while, but his contradictions have always made him an engaging screen presence—the contrast of his imposing physique and playful spirit. He does so much with his eyes here to give us a glimpse into Charlie’s sweet but tortured soul, and the subtlety he’s able to convey goes a long way toward making “The Whale” tolerable.

But he’s also saddled with a screenplay that spells out every emotion in ways that are so clunky as to be groan-inducing. At Charlie’s most desperate, panicky moments, he soothes himself by reading or reciting a student’s beloved essay on Moby Dick , which—in part—gives the film its title and will take on increasing significance. He describes the elusive white whale of Herman Melville’s novel as he stands up, shirtless, and lumbers across the living room, down the hall, and toward the bedroom with a walker. At this moment, you’re meant to marvel at the elaborate makeup and prosthetic work on display; you’re more likely to roll your eyes at the writing.

“He thinks his life will be better if he can just kill this whale, but in reality, it won’t help him at all,” he intones in a painfully obvious bit of symbolism. “This book made me think about my own life,” he adds as if we couldn’t figure that out for ourselves.

A few visitors interrupt the loneliness of his days, chiefly Hong Chau as his nurse and longtime friend, Liz. She’s deeply caring but also no-nonsense, providing a crucial spark to these otherwise dour proceedings. Aronofsky’s longtime cinematographer, the brilliant Matthew Libatique , has lit Charlie’s apartment in such a relentlessly dark and dim fashion to signify his sorrow that it’s oppressive. Once you realize the entirety of the film will take place within these cramped confines, it sends a shiver of dread. And the choice to tell this story in the boxy, 1.33 aspect ratio further heightens its sense of dour claustrophobia.

But then “Stranger Things” star Sadie Sink arrives as Charlie’s rebellious, estranged daughter, Ellie; her mom was married to Charlie before he came out as a gay man. While their first meeting in many years is laden with exposition about the pain and awkwardness of their time apart, the two eventually settle into an interesting, prickly rapport. Sink brings immediacy and accessibility to the role of the sullen but bright teenager, and her presence, like Chau’s, improves “The Whale” considerably. Her casting is also spot-on in her resemblance to Fraser, especially in her expressive eyes.

The arrival of yet another visitor—an earnest, insistent church missionary played by Ty Simpkins —feels like a total contrivance, however. Allowing him inside the apartment repeatedly makes zero sense, even within the context that Charlie believes he’s dying and wants to make amends. He even says to this sweet young man: “I’m not interested in being saved.” And yet, the exchanges between Sink and Simpkins provide some much-needed life and emotional truth. The subplot about their unlikely friendship feels like something from a totally different movie and a much more interesting one.

Instead, Aronofsky insists on veering between cruelty and melodrama, with Fraser stuck in the middle, a curiosity on display.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Brendan Fraser as Charlie
• Sadie Sink as Ellie
• Hong Chau as Liz
• Ty Simpkins as Thomas
• Samantha Morton as Mary
• Sathya Sridharan as Dan
• Andrew Weisblum
• Darren Aronofsky

Cinematographer

• Matthew Libatique
• Rob Simonsen

Writer (based on the play by)

• Samuel D. Hunter

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‘The Whale’ Review: Body Issues

Brendan Fraser plays an obese writing instructor reckoning with grief and regret in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film.

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By A.O. Scott

Charlie is a college writing instructor who never leaves his apartment. He conducts his classes online, disabling his laptop camera so the students can’t see him. The movie camera, guided by Darren Aronofsky and his go-to cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, also stays indoors most of the time. Occasionally you get an exterior view of the drab low-rise building where Charlie lives, or a breath of fresh air on the landing outside his front door. But these respites only emphasize a pervasive sense of confinement.

Based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the script), “The Whale” is an exercise in claustrophobia. Rather than open up a stage-bound text, as a less confident film director might, Aronofsky intensifies the stasis, the calamitous sense of stuckness that defines Charlie’s existence. Charlie is trapped — in his rooms, in a life that has run off the rails, and above all in his own body. He was always a big guy, he says, but after the suicide of his lover, his eating “just got out of control.” Now his blood pressure is spiking, his heart is failing, and the simple physical exertions of standing up and sitting down require enormous effort and mechanical assistance.

Charlie’s size is the movie’s governing symbol and principal special effect. Encased in prosthetic flesh, Brendan Fraser, who plays Charlie, gives a performance that is sometimes disarmingly graceful. He uses his voice and his big, sad eyes to convey a delicacy at odds with the character’s corporeal grossness. But nearly everything about Charlie — the sound of his breathing, the way he eats, moves and perspires — underlines his abjection, to an extent that starts to feel cruel and voyeuristic.

“The Whale” unfolds over the course of a week, during which Charlie receives a series of visits: from his friend and informal caretaker, Liz (Hong Chau); from Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary who wants to save his soul; from his estranged teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), and embittered ex-wife, Mary (Samantha Morton). There is also a pizza delivery guy (Sathya Sridharan), and a bird that occasionally shows up outside Charlie’s window. I’m not an ornithologist, but my guidebook identifies it as a Common Western Metaphor.

Speaking of which, Charlie is not the only whale in “The Whale.” His most prized possession is a student paper on “Moby-Dick,” the authorship of which is revealed at the movie’s end. It’s a fine piece of naïve literary criticism — maybe the best writing in the movie — about how Ishmael’s troubles compelled the author to think about “my own life.”

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The Whale review — Brendan Fraser makes a splash in Darren Aronofsky’s obesity drama

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Brendan Fraser Deserves an Oscar for ‘The Whale.’ He Also Deserves a Better Movie

By David Fear

Charlie is 600 lbs. This is the first thing you notice about him; this is the first thing you are meant to notice about him. He’s always been a big guy, he says, but he “let it get out of control.” On the Zooms in which Charlie teaches online English courses — he’s a professor — his voice is always emanating from a solid square of black, the video permanently disabled, the word “Instructor” the only visual his students associate with him.

But when we first see Charlie in The Whale , director Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s award-winning 2012 play, we get to observe all of him: a bulk of a man, his body bloated and swollen, sitting deep in the corner of his couch, masturbating furiously to online porn. Severe chest pains interrupt his endeavor. Only the arrival of a random stranger, who happens to find the apartment door unlocked, saves his life.

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Fraser is a dream collaborator in that respect, and yet The Whale seems hellbent on making you view Charlie as a grotesque. There’s something monstrous about the way it keeps framing him, how it seems to almost fetishize every roll of his flesh and put the sound of his greasy chomping on fried chicken so high in the sound mix. What this man is experiencing — a horrible sense of shame that’s metastasized into self-destruction — is not pretty. But the movie seems to revel a little too enthusiastically in its own ugliness. That doom-laden score by Rob Simonsen keeps rubbing the despair even deeper into your face. For every sunbeam of humanity Fraser lets shine through this soul, the film summons a half-dozen dark clouds to try and dampen it.

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser Is Sly and Moving as a Morbidly Obese Man, but Darren Aronofsky’s Film Is Hampered by Its Contrivances

The director seamlessly adapts Samuel D. Hunter's play but can't transcend the play's problems.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“The Whale” is based on a stageplay by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the script, and the entire film takes place in Charlie’s apartment, most of it unfolding in that seedy bookish living room. Aronofsky doesn’t necessarily “open up” the play, but working with the great cinematographer Matthew Libatique he doesn’t need to. Shot without flourishes, the movie has a plainspoken visual flow to it. And given what a sympathetic and fascinating character Fraser makes Charlie, we’re eager to settle in with him in that depressive lair, and to get to the bottom of the film’s inevitable two dramatic questions: How did Charlie get this way? And can he be saved?

In case there is any doubt he needs saving, “The Whale” quickly establishes that he’s an addict living a life of isolated misery and self-disgust, scarfing away his despair (at various points we see him going at a bucket of fried chicken, a drawer full of candy, and voluminous take-out pizzas from Gambino’s, all of which is rather sad to behold). Charlie teaches an expository writing seminar at an online college, doing it on Zoom, which looks very today (though the film, for no good reason, is set during the presidential primary season of 2016), with video images of the students surrounding a small black square at the center of the screen. That’s where Charlie should be; he tells the students his laptop camera isn’t working, which is his way of hiding his body and the shame he feels about it. But he’s a canny teacher who knows what good writing is, even if his lessons about structure and topic sentences fall on apathetic ears.

Charlie has a friend of sorts, Liz (Hong Chau), who happens to be a nurse, and when she comes over and learns that his blood pressure is in the 240/130 range, she declares it an emergency situation. He has congestive heart failure; with that kind of blood pressure, he’ll be dead in a week. But Charlie refuses to go the hospital, and will continue to do so. He’s got a handy excuse. With no health insurance, if he seeks medical care he’ll run up tens of thousands of dollars in bills. As Liz points out, it’s better to be in debt than dead. But Charlie’s resistance to healing himself bespeaks a deeper crisis. He doesn’t want help. If he dies (and that’s the film’s basic suspense), it will essentially be a suicide.

It’s hard not to notice that Liz, given how much she’s taking care of Charlie, has a spiky and rather abrasive personality. We think: Okay, that’s who she is. But a couple of other characters enter the movie — and when Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s 17-year-old daughter, shows up, we notice that she has a really spiky and abrasive personality. Does Charlie just happen to be surrounded by hellcats and cranks? Or is there something in Hunter’s dialogue that is simply, reflexively over-the-top in its theatrical hostility?

And what a rage it is! Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things,” acts with a fire and directness that recalls the young Lindsay Lohan, but the volatile spitfire she’s playing is bitter — at her father, and at the world — in an absolutist way that rings absolutely false. Lots of teenagers are angry and alienated, but they’re not just angry and alienated. There are shades of vulnerability that come with being that age. We keep waiting for Ellie to show another side, to reflect the fact that the father she resents is still, on some level … her father.

“The Whale,” while it has a captivating character at its center, turns out to be equal parts sincerity and hokum. The movie carries us along, tethering the audience to Fraser’s intensely lived-in and touching performance, yet the more it goes on the more its drama is interlaced with nagging contrivances, like the whole issue of why this father and daughter were ever so separated from each other. We learn that after Charlie and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), were divorced, Mary got full custody and cut Charlie off from Ellie. But they never stopped living in the same small town, and even single parents who don’t have custody are legally entitled to see their children. Charlie, we’re told, was eager to have kids; he lived with Ellie and her mother until the girl was eight. So why would he have just … let her go?

There’s one other major character, a lost young missionary for the New Life Church named Thomas, and though Ty Simpkins plays him appealingly, the way this cult-like church plays into the movie feels like one hard-to-swallow conceit too many. This matters a lot, because if we can’t totally buy what’s happening, we won’t be as moved by Charlie’s road to redemption. Near the end, there’s a very moving moment. It’s when Charlie is discussing the essay on “Moby Dick” he’s been reading pieces of throughout the film, and we learn where the essay comes from and why it means so much to him. If only the rest of the movie were that convincing! But most of “The Whale” simply isn’t as good as Brendan Fraser’s performance. For what he brings off, though, it deserves to be seen.     

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept. 4, 2022. Running time: 117 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release of a Protozoa Pictures production. Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Jeremy Dawson, Art Handel. Executive producers: Scott Franklin, Tyson Bidner.
• Crew: Director: Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay: Samuel D. Hunter. Camera: Matthew Libatique. Editor: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Rob Simonsen.
• With: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan.

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser Is Towering in a Lesser Darren Aronofsky

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A24 releases the film in theaters on Friday, December 9.

There are two things to be a little worried about and one thing to be extremely excited about when coming into “ The Whale .”

The first element of concern is director Darren Aronofsky, who admittedly has made exceptional films like “Requiem for a Dream” and “Pi” and gotten career-defining performances out of his leads in “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” But his last two films, “Noah” and “mother!,” succumbed to all his worst instincts, creating bloated self-indulgent nonsense that was actively painful to sit through.

In “The Whale,” also slightly worrying is the use of “fat suits,” which contemporary audiences are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with. Much of the use of these so-called fat suits has been to create fat-phobic jokes, particularly by turning thin movie stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Courteney Cox into walking punchlines. Even when the usage itself is fat-phobic, in the case of Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp in “American Crime Story,” there’s also the consideration that heavier actors who often struggle to get roles aren’t getting the opportunity to play fat parts.

However, most of those coming to “The Whale” may brim with goodwill because of Brendan Fraser. Having suffered well-documented injury and abuse from the film industry, Fraser retreated from Hollywood, leaving behind heartbroken Gen X-ers and millennials who adored him in a wide range of roles, from delightful himbos to tragic underdogs and wise-cracking action heroes. After a few tentative steps back into the spotlight in small roles and television appearances, the comeback was further solidified when he was cast in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.” Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” makes it official: The Brendanaissance is on!

Fraser gives a towering performance, in every sense of the word, as Charlie, a 600-pound man who teaches writing courses online and never leaves his apartment. Despite the best efforts of his nurse best friend Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie refuses to go to the hospital, even though he is displaying signs of congestive heart failure and has a blood pressure of 238/134. Charlie has never recovered since the death of Alan, the “love of his life,” a few years prior and has spent the time since on his sofa, slowly eating himself to death. This final week almost operates like an introvert’s companion piece to “Leaving Las Vegas,” a similar journey in self-destruction, but here with a quiet commitment to loneliness. The action of “The Whale,” true to the play it’s based on, never leaves Charlie’s small apartment.

The fat suit is what it is. There are plenty of valid reasons to think this film has unacceptably fat-phobic undertones and positions, particularly a scene where it seems to suggest a person could overdose on mayonnaise like it’s uncut heroin. And many could be triggered by a central fat character being openly called “disgusting” throughout. But in terms of practical effects, it’s hard to not be impressed by the prosthetics, particularly around Fraser’s face, as they do appear reasonably realistic. He’s able to give a funny and devastating performance seemingly without hindrance.

Charlie knows that he’s only got a few more days, so he decides to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he left behind when he fell in love with Alan eight years ago. She’s now 16 and flunking high school. The pair’s only contact has been through child-support payment and sporadic updates via her mother. Ellie is a nightmarish caricature of a teenage girl. Sink unwisely keeps her performance at a 10 in every moment, which is cumulatively grating. Respite comes when her mother, played by the always-excellent Samantha Morton, comes to see Charlie about their troubled daughter landing the film’s biggest laugh in a well-timed “Charlie! She’s evil!”

Despite the hilarity of that cutting assessment, “The Whale” actually works best at its least cruel. When Fraser gets to show off Charlie’s wit in a back-and-forth with a persistent and hypocrite missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins), gently smiling as he reassures him, “I’ve read the Bible. I thought it was devastating.” Or indeed when Liz jokingly threatens to stab him, and he gives her a hug and tenderly makes her laugh by whispering, “What’s that gonna do? My internal organs are two feet in at least.” When his confrontation with Morton is so filled with mutual compassion, it’s hard to believe that this is from the same film that framed Charlie slovenly eating a chicken wing with such brazen disgust.

Without Brendan Fraser’s innate charm and ability to project gentle sadness through the slightest flicker of his huge blue eyes, “The Whale” wouldn’t have that much else going for it. Faultless performances from Morton and Chau illuminate complicated relationships with Charlie, a man at once lovable, frustrating, and dishonest.

Aronofsky’s direction is cautious but brings a cinematic flair, which plays into Charlie’s claustrophobic existence rather than just feeling burdened by the story’s origin on the stage (where it is confined to a single set). Samuel D. Hunter’s script has elements to recommend it. The “Moby Dick” allusions, which seem onerous in the film’s beginning, build to something moving and, in the film’s final moments, even profound.

For Fraser, “The Whale” is a confident leap forward into the movie-star status that he rightfully deserves. For the normally more muted Venice audience who typically scramble for the exit the moment the film ends, just the sight of Fraser’s name at the end credits made the crowd turn back to the screen to cheer and applaud the actor’s triumphant return. If that rapturous applause carries on throughout awards season, that may prove the most wonderful and moving moment of this whale’s journey.

“The Whale” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A24 will release it in theatres on Friday, December 9.

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‘the whale’ review: brendan fraser is heart-wrenching in darren aronofsky’s portrait of regret and deliverance.

Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton also appear in this chamber drama adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his play about grief and salvation.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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With its airless single setting and main character whose dire health crisis makes the ticking clock on his life apparent from the start, The Whale seemed a tricky prospect for screen transfer. Aronofsky succeeds not by artificially opening up the piece but by leaning into its theatricality, immersing us in the claustrophobia that has become inescapable for Fraser’s character, Charlie. The scene structure of a focal character confined to a few rooms while secondary characters come and go, at times overlapping, remains very much that of a play.

Shooting in the snug 1.33 aspect ratio might seem to box us in even more, and the shortage of light seeping in from outside Charlie’s apartment is perhaps a tad symbolically heavy-handed. But DP Matthew Libatique’s spry camera and Andrew Weisblum’s dynamic editing bring surprising movement to the static situation. The one significant questionable choice is the overkill of Rob Simonsen’s emotionally emphatic score, rather than trusting the actors to do that work.

Aronofsky and Hunter startle the audience early on, not just by exposing Charlie’s severe obesity — Fraser wears a mix of latex suit plus digital prosthetics designed by Adrien Morot — but by revealing this mountain of a man to be still capable of sexual desire. Charlie keeps the camera off during the online writing course he teaches, claiming that the webcam on his laptop is broken. But its video component functions just fine when moments later he’s watching gay porn and furiously masturbating.

Charlie’s crisis is averted by the arrival of his health care worker friend Liz ( Hong Chau , wonderful), who is used to dealing with his emergencies. She tells him his congestive heart failure and sky-high blood pressure mean he’ll likely be dead within a week. Exasperated at his continuing refusal to go to a hospital, ostensibly due to lack of health insurance, Liz is often impatient and angry with Charlie. But her love for him is such that she reluctantly indulges his fast-food addiction, bringing him buckets of fried chicken and meatball subs.

Grief is the ailment that unites Charlie and sharp-tongued Liz, also making her ferocious with the persistently present Thomas. Her adoptive father is a senior council member at New Life, and she blames the death of her brother Alan on the church. Alan was a former student of Charlie’s who became the love of his life but could never get over his father’s condemnation, developing a chronic eating disorder that eventually killed him.

The tidy symmetry of one partner starving himself to death and the other’s self-destruction happening through gluttony is a little schematic, just as the Moby Dick elements are a literary flourish that shows the writer’s hand. But Hunter’s script and the intimacy of the actors’ work keep the melancholy drama grounded and credible.

The teenager’s spiky confrontations with her gentle giant of a father are matched by her needling exchanges with Thomas, whom she manipulates the same way she does Charlie and her hard-bitten mother. Sink (a Stranger Things regular) doesn’t hold back in a characterization that justifies Mary’s description of her as “evil.” But the residual love beneath both women’s screechy outbursts and hurt distance is slowly revealed in some genuinely moving moments, notably as Charlie reminisces with Mary about a family trip to Oregon when he was much less heavy, the last time he went swimming.

Every member of the small ensemble makes an impression, even the mostly unseen Sathya Sridharan as a friendly pizza delivery guy who never fails to ask about Charlie’s welfare from behind the closed apartment door.

The standout, alongside Fraser, is Chau, following her slyly funny work in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up with a nuanced turn as a woman knocked sideways by loss and bracing for another devastating hit of it. In both cases, her inability to intervene has left her helpless, enraged, exhausted and in visible pain. There’s also humor in Liz’s annoyance with Charlie’s innate positivity, which endures no matter how bad his circumstances become. In a movie that’s partly about the human instinct to care for other people, Chau breaks your heart.

His physicality, straining to navigate awkward spaces and maneuver a body that requires more strength than Charlie has left, is distressing to witness, as are his fits of coughing, choking, gasping for breath. On the few occasions where he struggles to stand to his full height, he fills the frame, a figure of tremendous pathos less because of his size than his suffering. But in a film about salvation, it’s the inextinguishable humanity of Fraser’s performance that floors you.

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The Whale Review

03 Feb 2023

Darren Aronofsky appears to be a director fascinated with extremity. With Black Swan , he depicted just how far someone can push themselves to achieve perfection. With Requiem For A Dream , it was the depths to which an addict can spiral. In The Whale , extremity is expressed through a man named Charlie ( Brendan Fraser ), who pushes human limits with his size and hermetic lifestyle. What’s interesting is that the most resonant parts of this film — and Charlie ­­ — aren’t found in the remarkable, but the mundane.

The headline, the audience draw, the thing to be ogled at, is Charlie’s physical form — delivered via relatively convincing (though still inherently dehumanising) prosthetics. He is very, very fat. His belly hangs over his trousers. His jawline disappears into his neck. He’s introduced via a squirm-inducing masturbation scene; we see his body exposed in the shower. Aronofsky’s direction — and Samuel D. Hunter’s script, adapted from his own play — shows a lot of compassion towards Charlie, but still can’t escape the impulse to use his size as a spectacle. His fatness is something to be judged, pitied, explained away, and while the supporting characters largely manage not to fall into those modes, the film itself does little to interrogate the real-world stigma that someone like Charlie faces, and how it would intensify his trauma, shame, and guilt.

What little fresh ground The Whale finds in its framing of fatness, it makes up for in its authenticity regarding the relentless, oppressive experience of disordered eating.

More compelling than Charlie’s body is his behaviour — his routine of ordering a pizza and hiding from the delivery man; pretending his webcam’s broken so his students don’t see him; self-destructive snacking habits that have little to do with food and everything to do with his feelings. What little fresh ground The Whale finds in its framing of fatness, it makes up for in its authenticity regarding the relentless, oppressive experience of disordered eating.

All that aside, it’s The Whale ’s theatrical origin, and how that translates to a cinematic adaptation, that weighs it down the most. The single location is effective in conveying Charlie’s isolation, but the cold palette and lack of visual variety does eventually become stale. Time spent on do-gooder missionary Thomas’ ( Ty Simpkins ) side-plot feels wasted, and the fleshing out of his backstory is by far the least engaging thread.

The hero is, undoubtedly, Brendan Fraser. It’s impossible not to notice the thematic similarities between his experiences in (and withdrawing from) Hollywood and Charlie separating himself from the world. His screen presence injects much-needed empathy into this movie, adding lightness and innocence to a character comprised of polar opposites — Charlie is both selfless and selfish; incredibly optimistic about his daughter Ellie’s (a spiky, excellent Sadie Sink ) potential but hopeless about his own; able to see his flaws but not take accountability for them. As emotionally challenging as this may have been for Fraser, seeing him given space to take on such a complex role in such a thoughtful, humane way is The Whale ’s true triumph.

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The Whale review: Brendan Fraser shines in a overwrought, underbaked drama

The actor is better than director Darren Aronfosky's stagey adaptation.

In every awards season, there are certain movies whose heat index seems to rise almost solely because of a central performance: actors so indelible in the part they transcend the flaws and missteps of the film formed around them. (Renée Zellweger in Judy was one a few years ago, or Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody ; both won Oscars.) Brendan Fraser 's astonishing turn in The Whale often feels like that to the n th degree: a tender, modest, and momentously human piece of work plonked in the midst of a drama so masochistically stilted and stagey it often feels less like a movie than an endurance test, or even worse, a parody.

The staginess, to be fair, is at least partly because it was in fact a play, one that director Darren Aronofsky spent the last decade trying to bring to the screen (the playwright, Samuel D. Hunter, also penned the adaptation). Why the man who helmed Black Swan , The Wrestler , and Requiem for a Dream would find a bleak psychological drama about deeply broken people appealing is not a mystery; what he found irresistible here though, is less easy to see. Fraser's Charlie, in the opening scene, is just a voice inside a black Zoom screen. That's because he teaches remotely at an online college, but his excuse of a broken laptop camera is a lie: The truth is he's morbidly obese, so large that he can't leave his shabby apartment or even stand up without a walker. He can just about manage to bathe and feed himself, but other activities (masturbation, laughing) leave him too clammy and winded to breathe.

There's a gadget for nearly every physical thing he can't do on his own — handles and pulleys in the shower, a special seat in the bathroom, even a little clawed picker-upper for whatever he might drop on the floor. And a friend named Liz ( Watchmen 's Hong Chau ) comes faithfully every day to check his vitals and bring him groceries. Liz is also a nurse, and she keeps telling him plainly that he's dying. But she's often interrupted by a knock at the door: First an earnest young missionary (Ty Simpkins) named Thomas hoping to spread the good word, and later, Ellie ( Stranger Things ' Sadie Sink), his estranged teenage daughter whose only words for him, primarily, are sneered f-bombs. Ellie, hissing and venomous, hates him because he left her mother ( Samantha Morton ) years ago for another man, but mainly she hates everything.

Aside from a single brief flashback, the action, such as it is, is confined entirely to Charlie's drab apartment and the small roundelay of guests who steadily come through to drop chunks of story exposition or settle scores. Fraser — encased in elaborate prosthetics that Aronfosky revels in shooting like a Caravaggio, all shadows and moody, milky light — welcomes them, down to the missionary kid. Charlie knows that he's killing himself and he knows why, but there's hardly any complaint or self-pity; instead he's emotionally generous almost to a fault, a man still eager to spread his love of Walt Whitman and Moby Dick and only connect, even if his efforts are met with mockery or disgust.

He and Chau, who brings a bright acidity and affection to Liz, often seem to be drawing from a different well than their castmates. But all the actors are left to mine their own layers in characters who have only the scantest backstories and broad traits: Hellish Teenager, Troubled Soul, Man Too Big to Live. Those dynamics may have played out better on stage, where a certain kind of bold underlining serves a live audience. Here it often feels clumsy and maddeningly inconsistent, stranding Fraser in a melodrama undeserving of his lovely, unshowy performance. Whatever he wins for The Whale — and early prizes have already come — he deserves. The rest is just chum. Grade: C

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Review: ‘The Whale’ is a hard but astounding film to watch

This image released by A24 shows Brendan Fraser in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Hong Chau in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Sadie Sink in a scene from “The Whale.” (A24 via AP)

Brendan Fraser poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, to promote his film “The Whale.” (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

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The center of gravity of “The Whale” is obviously the 600-pound man at its center. Look closely, though, and he’s the one with a soul as light as a feather.

Charlie is a reclusive, morbidly obese English literature teacher unable and unwilling to stop eating himself to death. As his health woes mount and his life expectancy is put at just a week, Charlie struggles to reacquaint himself with his estranged daughter. We meet him on Monday and the film goes day by day to Friday.

Charlie is a gentle giant, not raging at his fast approaching demise. He’s an optimist and a fierce believer in truth even though there is nothing in his world reinforcing either. “The Whale” is not always pleasant to watch but the payoff and performances make it an astounding film.

Stationary and wheezing on his couch, Charlie is repeatedly visited by a constellation of people — a friendly nurse, his teenage daughter and a young missionary from an apocalyptical church. They all need something from this well-meaning but broken man — spiritual, medical or familial. They are all broken, too.

The movie, based and adapted from the off-Broadway play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, is directed by Darren Aronofsky, who helmed such dark tales as “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan.” Hunter’s depiction of the mortification of the flesh perfectly meets a director enamored by the grotesque.

Brendan Fraser has earned lots of Oscar buzz for playing Charlie, allowing his signature puppy dog face to remain despite a massive body suit and swelling prosthetics. And why not? It is one of the most moving performances in years, full of humanity and a redemptive triumph for an actor who hid his talent in quickly forgotten films like “Blast from the Past,” “Hair Brained” and “Airheads.”

The whole cast is perfect, from Sadie Sink as Charlie’s spiky daughter, Hong Chau as his foul-mouthed nursing angel, Ty Simpkins as the missionary with a hidden past and Samantha Morton as his ex-wife with simmering anger and yet still love. There are steady references to Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” which gives the film the title and its doomed vibe.

Charlie has ballooned ever since the death of his same-sex partner, who apparently willed himself to death by wasting away in starvation after their relationship was condemned by his church-leading father. Charlie has apparently decided to die the opposite way.

He is sadly apologetic to his nurse — “I’m sorry,” he says continually — and shuts the video camera on his laptop during his online classes. Even the pizza delivery man doesn’t know what he looks like. “Who would want me to be part of their life?” he asks.

There has been fear that the film might be fatphobic and it’s true that cinematographer Matthew Libatique often leans into unflattering ways to show Charlie, soaping in a shower, straining to stand up or touch the floor, covered in sweat and shoving pizza or fried chicken into his mouth. Maybe some of that could have been touched on instead of lingered on.

But body weight is not what the writer and director want to focus on here. It’s more the weight of guilt and love and faith. “I just want to know I did one good thing in my life!” Charlie shouts. One feels that the underlying issue in “The Whale” could have been obesity as easily as cancer or alcoholism or a blood disorder. Hunter is exploring salvation, redemption, determinism and family.

The play has been sharpened for the screen but there’s no escaping the fact that it is rooted inside Charlie’s Idaho apartment, which he shuffles about in on a walker or later a wheelchair. This doesn’t make for sweeping cinema. Sometimes the apartment feels confining like a ship, adding to the Melville theme.

Some of the filmic attempts are forced, like the symbolically heavy bird that Charlie feeds outside his window, the three times actors rush to leave the apartment only to stop and turn back, and the heavy rain that builds as the film’s climax nears. But this is a film that stays with you and changes you. It is heavy, indeed.

“The Whale,” a A24 release that is in movie theaters on Friday, is rated R for “language, some drug use and sexual content.” Running time: 117 minutes. Four stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://a24films.com/films/the-whale

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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What to Know

Held together by a killer Brendan Fraser, The Whale sings a song of empathy that will leave most viewers blubbering.

With a heartbreaking story brought powerfully to life by Brendan Fraser's starring performance, The Whale 's as hard to watch as it is to look away from.

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser’s Heartbreaking Performance Isn’t Matched by Overwrought Direction

Whatever 'the whale's many imperfections, brendan fraser's relentless display of craft and courage is a must see..

Some things cannot be denied, even at gunpoint. One of them is the power, awe and surprise inherent in Brendan Fraser ’s genuine, realistic and heartbreaking performance in The Whale. The film isn’t equal to the standards he sets for himself in either Samuel D. Hunter ’s phony, long-winded screenplay or Darren Aronofsky ’s overwrought direction. That’s a shame because they both detract from the impact of the star’s center-ring passion and rob him of the applause he so richly deserves. I rarely care much for Aronofsky’s films because he doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtlety and his actors, who seem to adore him, suffer the consequences, and get unfairly blamed for his excesses in harmful ways. It happened to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Hugh Jackman in The Fountain, Jennifer Lawrence in the abominable Mother! and everyone in Requiem for a Dream.

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With luck and a considerable surfeit of skill, the same dismal fate might elude Brendan Fraser, but so many critics hate The Whale that the star has so far won zero accolades in the year-end awards sweepstakes. Prosthetics can be credited with some of the 600 pounds in this once svelte and sculpted actor’s onscreen weight gain, but viewers who believe his shocking transition is just another Hollywood gimmick are advised that in interviews he admits most of the weight incurred from emotional problems in his personal life is real. The camera does not lie and, determined to make a comeback, he is now obsessed with the task of overcoming actual obesity.  I wish him luck because I’d like to see him in more films.

Meanwhile, despite The Whale ‘s many imperfections, I urge you to see the transformation of Brendan Fraser. H e bravely plays Charlie, a gay professor who teaches creative writing online—weak, reclusive, manic-depressive, humongous and ashamed of what he’s done to his body after the death of his lover cost him his will to survive. After a heart attack incurred while masturbating and a diagnosis of congestive heart failure with a blood pressure of 238 over 134, he suddenly sees the writing on the wall and, fearing how it all will end, makes one last concerted effort to reunite with his resentful but caring ex-wife ( Samantha Morton ) and his long-estranged adolescent daughter ( Sadie Sink ), who only pretends to be interested in her father’s health after he promises to ghostwrite her school essays. This dubious pair, along with a long-suffering nurse ( Hong Chau , also currently appearing onscreen as Ralph Fiennes’ homicidal maitre’d in The Menu) who wants Charlie hospitalized, and a young door-to-door evangelist ( Ty Simpkins ) are his only allies in this survival scenario, and the time they spend trying to cure him seems interminable.

The Whale has moments that touch the heart and passages that engage the mind, but the insufferable parallels it constantly draws between Charlie’s obesity and Moby Dick, Charlie’s favorite book, may have worked better in the stage play by Samuel D. Hunter than they do in his screen adaptation, where they merely ring false and drag the pace to a crawl. The rhythm (or lack of it) in Darren Aronofsky’s direction keeps slowing the movie down to a series of stops and starts. That pretty much leaves Brendan Fraser to make his own lemonade with more lemons than he can safely handle. Scenes abound with him wobbling around naked to the toilet and unable to get up from the seat, wolfing down candy bars and choking on buckets of fried chicken, followed by projectile vomiting that has nothing to do with acting. When I wasn’t  covering my eyes, I found myself listening to numbing dialogue about redemption that didn’t ring true. So I admire the effort and the relentless display of craft and courage that score high marks for Brendan Fraser in a film I’m glad I saw, but never want to see again.

Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.

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‘The Whale’ Review: May the “Brenaissance” Continue Beyond Darren Aronofsky's Film

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'Rebel Moon' Director’s Cut Review: Somehow, Zack Snyder’s Netflix Movies Got Worse

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This review was originally part of our 2022 Venice Film Festival coverage .

Brendan Fraser was one of the biggest movie stars for a solid decade. His disappearance was sudden, but it perhaps didn’t register because he was a different type of movie star. He was likable. There was no method acting, bad boy drama. And the movies that made him famous were easily likable, too, without being arthouse favorites. Attentions drift to headline makers and new thunderbolts who balanced complicated fare with blockbusters.

The Whale is Fraser’s first leading role in a theatrical movie in a decade. It’s directed by Darren Aronofsky and has been placed at various film festivals by the biggest indie label of modern times, A24. That’s what the business likes to call a comeback vehicle. And Oscar? They love a comeback story. And Fraser’s comeback doesn’t come from working back through addiction or bad behavior on set it comes from self-care after a retreat inward. The Whale is ultimately about trying to provide the tools of self-care to someone else. People can’t be saved by others. They must save themselves, but they can be helped by others. Therein lies part of the problem of The Whale , the main character is not a vessel for his own journey but for a secondary character, and, by extension, the audience.

Fraser plays Charlie, an English teacher living with extreme obesity. He conducts online lectures with his camera off. He has a set routine, which includes regular visits from his caretaker, who has ties to his past ( Hong Chau ), and Dan, the pizza delivery guy who follows the regular instructions of delivery — leave on the ledge, money is in the mailbox. His routine is disturbed by two young people. An unwanted visitor and a desired visitor. The first is a missionary ( Ty Simpkins ) who knocks on the door the moment that Charlie is close to suffering a heart attack while masturbating to pornography. The young New Lifer decides it’s his mission to check in regularly on the state of Charlie’s soul—before his inevitable death. The other is Charlie’s estranged daughter ( Sadie Sink ), whom he hasn’t seen in eight years and hopes to reconnect with before his inevitable death.

RELATED: Brendan Fraser Explains How 'The Whale' Impacted His Priorities When Choosing New Projects

The estranged daughter story, of course, sounds very similar to Aronofsky’s The Wrestler . And though that tangent of The Wrestler is the weakest angle in that film it does expose who The Wrestler works better than The Whale . The Wrestler had a world to explore. There, it was professional wrestling many rungs down from what’s on television; local fare, low paying, with codes to protect each other but serious bodily harm is a constant threat.

The Whale not only has no outside world and, being contained to one setting, all the characters arrive to make declarations. Single-setting films can definitely feel cinematic and bigger than the location due to well-written characters. But the characters in The Whale only speak direct wants, needs, and desires every moment they are on screen. It does not feel organic or real.

The best moment is when Sink’s mother arrives, questioning the contact that was made because she has full custody (Charlie left the family because he was in love with a man; though blissful for a time, it ended in tragedy). It’s a single scene between Samantha Morton and Fraser. It’s the best scene in the movie because it’s the least predictable. There’s time to reflect, to pause in a doorway to make an offering. And the area to explode through years of shared shattered expectations. Morton, too, was more of a mainstay in the early 2000s and has faded into lesser roles. Fraser’s best emotional acting is opposite her. There’s a flicker of a long faded connection. Outside of this scene, it’s primarily a parade of battling testimonies from the two younger characters, with Chau there to calm down an overbearing musical score.

Aronofsky, too, does seem to amplify Fraser’s manipulated body with some questionable shots. Not quite body-shaming or disgust, but they do have a carnival quality of step right up, folks! See the Whale!! (Reminder: the character is physically introduced through masturbation which signals the desire to shock with his body, right from the get, something opposite of the tear-drenched ending and partially why the ending doesn’t feel earned to me). This could be due to the single-location setting, with the only place for Aronofsky to provide visual flair, but it runs counter to an attempt at empathy. Instead, it feels like gawking.

The Whale did not move me because most of the character interactions announced themselves loudly and with increasing frequency. It is inorganic, gimmicky, manipulative, and its lessons are simplistic. As a character, Charlie remains mostly a body. He has a kindness to him, but this role is mostly to react to the wants and needs of others. The Whale does not engage outside of the known narrative of the actor in the film — it’s his comeback! Despite what the Internet might be broadcasting, it is possible to be happy for a Brendan Fraser “Brenaissance” and still think this is closed-circuit claptrap.

The Whale is now playing in theaters.

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The Whale: movie review round-up of new Darren Aronofsky film starring Brendan Fraser and Sadie Sink

Senior Journalist

Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale has had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

And with critics finally getting their eyes on the long-awaited film - which stars Brendan Fraser as a reclusive and obese English teacher attempting to connect with his estranged teenage daughter - the first reviews are coming in.

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So, is The Whale another Oscar contender for director Aronofsky, and the start of a Brendan Fraser renaissance - a ‘Brenaissance’ if you will - or will the movie be beached when it hits cinemas later this year?

Here’s what the reviewers are saying:

‘Fraser richly deserves to be nominated for a best actor Oscar’ - Nicholas Barber, BBC

The BBC’s Nicholas Barber is so convinced that Fraser should be in contention for an Oscar come awards season, that if he isn’t nominated, the reviewer “won't just eat my hat, I'll eat as many pizzas and cheese-and-meatball sandwiches as Charlie gets through in the film.”

A future of high-cholestoral may await Barber yet, as the critic ultimately awards The Whale just three stars, and says that “for a film that opens with a 40-stone man suffering chest spasms after masturbating to online pornography, The Whale turns out to be disappointingly stodgy and sentimental.”

But Fraser’s performance could still win out, fighting through the cloying, claustrophobic staginess of a film adapted from a play just as much as the actor must battle “the biggest ‘fat suit’ since Terry Jones exploded in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.”

“There's a remarkable nimbleness to his facial movements and a soulful gentleness to his voice,” says Barber, “but it's his wide, pleading, hopeful blue eyes that make it hard to imagine anyone else being as captivating in the role.”

‘This sucrose film is very underpowered’ - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Peter Bradshaw over at The Guardian again praises Fraser’s performance, but once again notes how it is surrounded by a “vapid, hammy and stagey movie,” eventually awarding The Whale just two stars.

He calls the film the Venice Film Festival’s “biggest and most surprising disappointment”, saying “the writing clunks; the narrative is contrived and unconvincing and the whole film has a strange pass-agg body language.”

But the leading actor again draws positive comment, with Bradshaw saying “Fraser brings a definite gentleness and openness to the role of Charlie”, but though “his performance is good... it is upstaged by the showy latex and the special effect.

“Like a very serious male version of the ’Fat Monica’ prom video scene in Friends.”

‘It’ll be no surprise if Darren Aronofsky’s psychological drama wins a hatful of awards’ - Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent

The Independent’s review draws attention to the same staginess that other critics have poured scorn upon, but Geoffrey Macnab seems to take a different approach in his opinions.

Watching the “stagy and mawkish” film - which Macnab awards four stars - “you feel grossly manipulated”, but “the approach is undeniably effective.”

Director Aronofsky “goes so far out of his way to portray Charlie in the early scenes as a repulsive bum that it’s inevitable the character’s better qualities will soon emerge,” and “Fraser retains the genial qualities which made him so popular with audiences in mainstream 1990s movies.

“At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.”

‘It is possible to be happy for a Brendan Fraser ‘Brenaissance’ and still think this is closed-circuit claptrap’ - Brian Formo, Collider

Brian Formo from Collider hopes that Fraser’s comeback isn’t halted by his latest film, which the reviewer describes as “ inorganic, gimmicky” and “manipulative.”

That’s likely due to the film’s origins as a stage play - from which it has been adapted for the big screen - which sees The Whale contained to the single setting of Charlie’s apartment.

“Single-setting films can definitely feel cinematic and bigger than the location due to well-written characters,” says Formo. “But the characters in The Whale only speak direct wants, needs, and desires every moment they are on screen. It does not feel organic or real.”

Despite “what the Internet might be broadcasting”, Formo hopes it is still “possible to be happy for a Brendan Fraser ‘Brenaissance’ and still think this is closed-circuit claptrap.”

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The Whale review: Brendan Fraser comeback is grossly manipulative to an effective degree

The star of ‘the mummy’, covered in layers of prosthetics, is sad-eyed and awards-friendly, article bookmarked.

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First seen masturbating as he watches online porn, Charlie ( Brendan Fraser ), the main character in The Whale , isn’t just morbidly obese; he is a lumbering leviathan of a man, so immensely fat that he can barely manoeuvre himself off his couch, let alone leave his apartment. He sweats profusely, vomits into dustbins and almost chokes on the junk food he gorges himself on. “Who would want me to be part of their life?” he asks plaintively toward the end of the film. Even his daughter calls him disgusting. Darren Aronofsky’s film is stagy and mawkish. Watching it you feel grossly manipulated, but the approach is undeniably effective.

Fraser was the star of films like The Mummy and George of the Jungle in the days when he was a more conventionally shaped leading man. Now, covered in layers of prosthetics, he gives one of those sad-eyed performances, like a dog with an injured paw begging for a bone, that many audiences will find very hard to resist. He’s already received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.

Charlie makes a living by giving online English literature tutorials. He lies to his students that the camera on his laptop is broken so he doesn’t have to reveal himself in his full grotesquerie. As the film progresses, we gradually discover why he has allowed himself to grow so monstrously out of shape. Just under a decade before, he walked out on his marriage, abandoning his then eight-year-old daughter to take up with a student called Alan with whom he had fallen in love. Alan is now dead. Charlie is eaten up with guilt. He is also suffering congestive heart failure which could kill him at any time.

The film is based on a play by Samuel D Hunter. Aronofsky does little to open up his source material for the screen; the entire story takes place in Charlie’s apartment. In its lighter moments, The Whale is disconcertingly reminiscent of American family sitcoms full of eccentric relatives and friends who bicker incessantly but love each other really . Various characters turn up at Charlie’s door. One regular visitor Liz, (Hong Chau), a sharp-tongued but affectionate woman who has a demanding job yet still tends to his medical needs and keeps him in food.

Also continually re-appearing is Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a hapless young missionary from a cult-like religious group, who wants to save the fat man’s soul. Then, most important to Charlie, there is his estranged daughter, Ellie ( Stranger Things ’ Sadie Sink), now 17 and in danger of flunking out of high school. She wants him to help her with her school essays but doesn’t hide her contempt for him. Her mother (Samantha Morton) doesn’t know she is there.

Physical drama comes whenever Charlie tries to move a few steps across his apartment, or to go to the bathroom. The slightest exertion exhausts him. In spite of his decrepitude, he is a sweet natured and optimistic character with an engaging sense of humour. The title of the film refers not just to his shape, but to an essay written by a disgruntled kid, dissing Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick . He knows the essay by heart and regards it as his favourite piece of writing.

Aronofsky goes so far out of his way to portray Charlie in the early scenes as a repulsive bum that it’s inevitable the character’s better qualities will soon emerge. Fraser retains the genial qualities which made him so popular with audiences in mainstream 1990s movies. He demands honesty from his students but there’s nothing cynical about him.

The pathos is laid on very thick. At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.

Dir: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton. 15, 117 mins.

‘The Whale’ is in cinemas from 3 February

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