The Whale - Darren Aronofsky's new film with Brendan Fraser in a fat suit

Watched it after it finally got a normal torrent. Overall good film for the tragedy in it and the acting, but the deathfat in it is more of a plot element rather than the focus, which is a bit of a miss. Though I do think they intentionally had the protagonist's nurse be a textbook enabler, with her seeing him get to his state over a couple of years and not doing anything about it (if not outright supporting it by giving him food), though this isn't really developed or called out.

It does use a lot of overused plot beats like the protagonist being a closet gay with his boyfriend committing suicide due to being of a religious background. Besides the bland "religion bad", it also treats the actions of the protagonist leaving his wife and daughter as somewhat understandable, despite it never passing if it was a 30 something professor leaving his wife for a female student.
 
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Le epic bump: I'm about half way through watching it. I don't like it but I'm glad George of the Jungle got his Oscar. He's good in it but it's so... Maudlin. It's emotional pornography. It's "Don't you feel bad for this man?" Vibes all throughout which is a fundamental problem with the story. The opening with the missionary was WTF and just lazy story telling. All the female characters are very unlikable which makes sense for the daughter but not so much for the nurse/friend of Frasier's character Charley.

The opening looked like the opening to a horror movie and I have a theory that since this is an A24 production that Arronofsky was making a deliberate callback to so-called "elevated horror" or not? The score sounds like a score for a horror movie too and I was shocked that it wasn't scored by Clint Mansell. I'm guessing a rift happened between Arronofsky and Mansell because they collaborated on every single movie until Noah and that movie really fucking sucked.

It's not a bad movie but I wouldn't recommend it. Farmers watching the Boogie thread might get a kick out of it because the character has a similar suicidal pact in that he just wants to die and chose to eat himself to death. The difference is that this character is sympathetic whereas Boogie is obviously not.

Arronofosky hasn't made a great film since The Wrestler and I really hated Mother and Noah. Black Swan was okay but sabotaged by the casting choices of Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman.

Edit: everyone is so nasty to the Missionary character and he's not obnoxious or anything like that. Keep in mind that I'm an atheist.

The daughter is an extremely one note character too. That disappointed me. Don't get me wrong because the daughter has a reason to be a little edge lord cunt but she's written so stereotypically like a teenage cunt from the 90's.
 
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BrunoMattei said:
All the female characters are very unlikable which makes sense for the daughter but not so much for the nurse/friend of Frasier's character Charley.
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Enablers are fascinating to me and I think the nurse should have gotten way more attention and shit for her actions in the years before the movie. She should have put strict boundaries on the main character up to involving his family and cutting his finances. Her being a nurse makes it even worse since she should have known better.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
Enablers are fascinating to me and I think the nurse should have gotten way more attention and shit for her actions in the years before the movie. She should have put strict boundaries on the main character up to involving his family and cutting his finances. Her being a nurse makes it even worse since she should have known better.
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It reminds me of Boogie and in one of his vlogs he claimed that he had a friend who would constantly make fun of him for his weight and try to chide him to lose it. Assuming this isn't another one of his lies. And there came a confrontation where the friend was honest that he was disgusted by Boogie's appearance and eating habits. Ultimately, Boogie declared him to be a bad friend and severed ties.

Obviously that was a good friend (once again, assuming the story is true) because no one wants to see someone you care about slowly kill themselves.
 
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BrunoMattei said:
It reminds me of Boogie and in one of his vlogs he claimed that he had a friend who would constantly make fun of him for his weight and try to chide him to lose it. Assuming this isn't another one of his lies. And there came a confrontation where the friend was honest that he was disgusted by Boogie's appearance and eating habits. Ultimately, Boogie declared him to be a bad friend and severed ties.

Obviously that was a good friend (once again, assuming the story is true) because no one wants to see someone you care about slowly kill themselves.
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I think enablers can be divided into people who are manipulated by the cow (usually close friends), people who passively believe that the cow will fix itself on its own volition (usually family), and ones getting a kick out of the degradation/fetishists (discord/Twitter inhabitants).

It would have been interesting to have Fraser's character activly manipulate the nurse by saying how it's too hard for him to stop eating. But she seems to just deliver food for him like it's second nature.
 
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The acting is OK but for the most part I couldn't shake the "well this is definitely a play" feeling, because as adaptations go what else can you do with a houseridden hambeast. There are a couple of layers of subtext within Fraser and his daughter, as well as exwife and his friend the nurse, but alas I am no film buff so they flew over my rube head.
 
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He's great, the film feels like someone's first play from about a decade ago, which it turned out to be exactly what it is. Outside of his lack of mobility, it just really feels like a bad play with the way the characters interact, and go in and out.

Though I would have loved the film if at the end,
when he clearly dies with his daughter there, she'd been crushed under the weight of his body. Add even more unpleasant realism to his obesity.
 
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If anything seeing Fraser in a fat suit while possibly gaining some weight for this role just reminds me of when Matthew McConaughey had to lose weight and still look like he can be able to walk for an AIDS victim like role in Dallas Buyers Club. Much like Fraser, he ended up winning an Oscar for it, and it was debated whether or not Leo DiCaprio was robbed for the statue.

Either way, I’ll probably give this film a shot, since I remember watching Fraser in my youth when he was fit and healthy before the depression and sexual assault almost drained him for a few decades. He literally was an underdog now turned a hopeful A-lister again.
 
I saw it today, and while I related to it to an extent, it's only worth watching for Fraser.
His daughter is a complete cunt too and I have no idea why he wanted to connect with her.




On a side note of all the stuff by Aronofsky that I've seen, I only liked The Wrestler and I'm one of the few who liked mother!
 
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The Cunting Death said:
On a side note of all the stuff by Aronofsky that I've seen, I only liked The Wrestler and I'm one of the few who liked mother!
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I never thought much of Pi but I like the cinematography. Requiem for a Dream is great. Maybe a masterpiece. I loved The Fountain and never understood why people rip on that one.
 
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