The Whale. Brendan Fraser is back! (Darren Aronofsky)

[Stevie]

 

 

 

[Festoon]

What anime is he stealing shots from this time?

[IcEBuRN]

So I just saw this as it's "out there" in all 4k glory.

 

All I can say is...wow. WOW. The ending as well. OMG.

 

Obviously Brendan Fraser is amazing in this, but I guess the whole internet knows that by now.

[Stig]

I watched it this week too and I'm sitting on the slightly dissappinted side of things. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I was expecting to love it more than I did.

 

The performances are fantastic and Fraser really drew me in with his acting. He was so believable as a man struggling with these issues.

 

However, I did have a few problems with it, mainly at how "stagey" it all felt. I know it's taken from a stag play, but the camera and characters at times were set up like we were watching this on stage and it was a little jaring at times. I also had issues with

Spoiler

how manipulative it feels and how the story painted Charlie as the victim in all this, whereas the reality is he's the root problem and cause of everyone else's heart break/issues. DA gave him such a Christ complex that the last shot is quite laughable.

 

So yeah, amazing performances wrapped around a rather poorly structure film.

 

3/5

[pledge]

Reading through the IMDb trivia

 

Quote

Tom Ford was originally attached to direct with James Corden to star.

 

[IcEBuRN]

U fuckin wot m8.

 

That would have been horrendous! 

[NecroMorrius]

I really wish this was a better film. Just as Brendan is trapped in a fat suit and his character is trapped in his house, the performance is trapped in a stagey, overly earnest film with cringeworthy dialogue and an incredibly simplistic view of the world. I really hoped for more. Brendan is a revelation though. 

[JPL]

I hope he does George of the Jungle 2 next.

[PK]

I wrote a massive long post about this and then got embarrassed and hid it. The gist was it's a good film, but not a great one. All the performances are superb, and it perfectly captures the way your world shrinks as your morbid obesity grows. I don't think you could film it in a way that didn't feel like a stage play given how small Charlie's world has become. For 95% of the time the film manages to tread the line between making you feel sympathetic for Charlie while also being honest about how selfish his self-destruction is, how it's negatively affecting the lives of people he knows & even people he's never met face to face, and how he's incorrectly accepted it as an inevitability over which he doesn't have agency. I recognise that situation & mindset and it was refreshing to see it depicted with a balance of sensitivity and honest criticism. 

 

The ending undoes all of that and is a massive misstep though:

 

Spoiler

Charlie completes his long, drawn-out suicide by forcing his daughter to watch him have a heart attack, while she reads something out loud to make him, and only him, feel better about it. And then he receives a blessed release and apparently goes to heaven, happy that he's done his good deed and is redeemed. Except what he's actually done is left Ellie with a huge amount of trauma from which she may never recover. And Liz too. It's a bafflingly shit ending given the honesty that's come before it.

The screenplay ends differently:

 

 

I'm not sure how early a draft that is, would be interested to know who pushed for the change. For me it's a much better ending in line with the rest of the film, as it seems to finish with a moment of realisation from Charlie, in the instant before his death, that there is no happy ending and his actions have ultimately been incredibly selfish and irredeemably damaging to people who care about him.

 

'Charlie looks up' seems to me to be him thinking "Oh shit, Ellie has a life too, and I'm leaving it filled with trauma". It's pretty bleak but is much more honest than the embarrassing shaft of light / feet raising off the floor, and final saccharine beach shot.

 

 

[Mawdlin]

2 hours ago, PK said:

I wrote a massive long post about this and then got embarrassed and hid it. The gist was it's a good film, but not a great one. All the performances are superb, and it perfectly captures the way your world shrinks as your morbid obesity grows. I don't think you could film it in a way that didn't feel like a stage play given how small Charlie's world has become. For 95% of the time the film manages to tread the line between making you feel sympathetic for Charlie while also being honest about how selfish his self-destruction is, how its negatively affecting the lives of people he knows & even people he's never met face to face, and how he's incorrectly accepted it as an inevitability over which he doesn't have agency. I recognise that situation & mindset and it was refreshing to see it depicted with a balance of sensitivity and honest criticism. 

 

The ending undoes all of that and is a massive misstep though:

 

  Hide contents

Charlie completes his long, drawn-out suicide by forcing his daughter to watch him have a heart attack, while she reads something out loud to make him, and only him, feel better about it. And then he receives a blessed release and apparently goes to heaven, happy that he's done his good deed and is redeemed. Except what he's actually done is left Ellie with a huge amount of trauma from which she may never recover. And Liz too. It's a bafflingly shit ending given the honesty that's come before it.

The screenplay ends differently:

 

 

I'm not sure how early a draft that is, would be interested to know who pushed for the change. For me it's a much better ending in line with the rest of the film, as it seems to finish with a moment of realisation from Charlie, in the instant before his death, that there is no happy ending and his actions have ultimately been incredibly selfish and irredeemably damaging to people who care about him.

 

'Charlie looks up' seems to me to be him thinking "Oh shit, Ellie has a life too, and I'm leaving it filled with trauma". It's pretty bleak but is much more honest than the embarrassing shaft of light / feet raising off the floor, and final saccharine beach shot.

 

 

I agree with your analysis. The ending to the film was actually unintentionally funny.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Is suicide selfish? Is becoming so mentally ill that this seems viable selfish? I don't want to criticise anyone, or their opinion of the movie, but extreme self destructive behaviour is not selfish any more than any eating disorder is. It's an incredibly powerful illness that consumes you entirely. Food became this guys grief management. There's so much religious backstory that the psychology of his disorder screams at you. He is criticised for his optimism by the people around him despite killing himself slowly. The ending is fine. He found peace. He deserved peace. We all do.

 

I thought it was a good movie.