Brendan Fraser has been the odds-on favorite to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Actor since reviews from the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 4 started pouring in. This was when the first images of Fraser’s transformation into a 600-pound reclusive online English teacher began to surface. Suddenly, Austin Butler (Elvis), this year’s darling and thought-to-be shoo-in, had a serious contender for the top prize for acting. With a few more films still to debut at the time of this writing, this category is a two-actor race. However, having seen both performances, first Butler and now Fraser in Darren Aronofsky’s (Black Swan, The Wrestler) The Whale, there is a strong case for either man. These two performances transcend anything I have seen in a year that could be stronger in this category. However, Fraser’s redemption story of a once A-list actor who has fallen into almost complete obscurity for the last decade will undoubtedly play a significant factor in the voters’ minds. This performance lived up to its hype, and this award feels like Fraser’s to lose.

Charlie (Fraser – School Ties, The Quiet American) teaches an online exploratory writing course at a fictional college in Idaho. The film takes place during the 2016 presidential elections. While the film has nothing to do with politics, it was interesting that Aronofsky chose to have coverage of this election as the backdrop for Charlie’s television viewing options. My thoughts on that are two-fold, with the first establishing a timeframe for a film that might otherwise be missing and the second being that an event, such as the presidential election of 2016 (a divisive one that most people had a strong opinion on) did little to change his perspective on the political landscape unfolding around him. Charlie lived within his little bubble, with television and the Internet being the only two tools separating a story that could have otherwise felt as if it had occurred 50 years ago.

Be forewarned that The Whale is not a pleasurable watch. It is a bleak,  joyless experience. It sometimes feels extremely uncomfortable (more and more so as it nears its conclusion). It almost feels as if we are getting an intimate real-life peering into the life of a person so obese that they can’t leave their home, something that even surpasses our wildest imagination. However, this was precisely what Aronofsky was going for. He wanted this to be an agonizing experience by putting us so front and center. He nailed it.

The film occurs entirely inside Charlie’s second-floor apartment, save for a few scenes from the railed porch outside his front door. It can safely be assumed that Charlie last left his home a few years ago. His online course is for aspiring writers. It is a lecture-based course. In the film’s first scene, Charlie keeps his camera off, responding to a student’s question about his webcam continuing to be broken. It’s a lie, but one that Charlie is comfortable with telling one that he’s been telling, and one that he will continue to speak. He does not want his students to see him, and he’s found the perfect avenue for his vocation.

Soon after that, we see Charlie masturbating to online pornography. After climaxing, he experiences intense chest pains. He quickly picks up a nearby piece of paper, an essay on the book “Moby Dick.” He begins reading it aloud, and while we don’t know his reason, we can assume that this is not the first time that he has experienced this kind of physical pain, and hearing it, in some form, is a way to relieve that tension. However, we later learn that he expects the worst with each new episode of chest pain, and this essay is the last thing he wants to hear before he dies.

Liz (Hong Chau – The Menu, Downsizing) is Charlie’s nurse and only friend. We meet her soon after his latest episode with his chest. She measures his blood pressure. It’s astronomically high. He is at high risk of congestive heart failure and likely won’t live another week unless he goes to the hospital. It’s not the first time the two have had this conversation, as he reminds her that he cannot and will not go to the hospital because he does not have health insurance. If I do have a knock on The Whale, it is because of conversations such as this. Aronofsky uses conversations between his characters to inform the audience of a backstory, tension between characters, relationship history, etc. He certainly isn’t the first director to use this common trick, but it often cheapens, if nothing else, the dialogue. I felt very pronounced in this film, much to its detriment. Liz’s friendship with Charlie does not come about because she is his nurse. Their friendship dates back almost a dozen years, involving a mutual relationship with another character referred to frequently in the film but never physically seen or heard. Charlie and Liz’s relationship is tender, mainly because they both know she is the only person who cares about him.

The two other characters are Thomas (Ty Simpkins – The Nice Guys, Jurassic World), a 20-year-old missionary who arrives at Charlie’s door precisely to help him with his most recent chest pain. His presence remains throughout the film, constantly revisiting and inviting himself to Charlie’s home to try to convert him to Christianity. Similar to each character, Thomas is also suffering from trauma. Nevertheless, he and Charlie form a connection, one that is built on a foundation that each knows that the other is a good person. Nevertheless, there is some underlying tension and disagreement around Christianity, which Aronofsky successfully flushes out under a two-hour runtime.

Unfortunately, Aronofsky is less successful with Charlie’s relationship with his 17-year-old Ellie (Sadie Sink – The Glass Castle, Netflix’s Stranger Things), the daughter he’s been estranged from for over a decade. Charlie believes Liz when she says he will not live to see another week unless he goes to the hospital, something he refuses to do. Instead, Charlie uses whatever time he has left to reconnect with Ellie, who has a great deal of resentment since he engaged in an affair with his student Alan, choosing to chase love rather than remain committed to his wife Mary (Samantha Morton – The Messenger, She Said), ultimately leaving Ellie to be raised by her mother alone. Ellie is an angry high school senior on the verge of not graduating unless she can pass her English course. Charlie volunteers to write an essay for her if it results in her spending even a few minutes with him.

Charlie does not ever make us feel as if he’s a victim. Though he did suffer a loss that paralyzed him, he takes the blame for letting his weight get out of control. He makes it a point to tell Thomas and Ellie that he wasn’t always like this. His frustration was probably more so that he didn’t do anything to get help, as the weeks of binge eating became months, and the months became years. Charlie had become so depressed from his loss that he immersed himself in food like an alcoholic would with alcohol, a drug addict might with drugs, a sex addict might with pornography, etc. Yet, for all his suffering, he still can see the world’s beauty in its natural form. His most comforting memory is the singular, repeated flashback of his standing on a beach, with the cold water running over his feet as he looked back to see a six-year-old Ellie building a sand castle. At one point, he tells us that this was the last time he ever swam. Charlie paints a poignant picture of regret, loss, guilt, and despair that come with our choices, the consequences of these choices, and the choices we make going forward.

If Fraser wins the Oscar, it won’t be because of the prosthetics, padded suit, makeup, costume, wig CGI, and weight he gained to play this character. Instead, it will be because of his eyes. The ways that Charlie intently watches those in his apartment as they either scold him for his unhealthy lifestyle,  plead for him to go to the doctor, persuade him to find God, or demand answers to burning questions as to why he walked out on a daughter who needed her father is incredible. Fraser became Charlie in physical, mental, and emotional forms.

For those who say that The Whale feels very similar to Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, I can’t disagree. In both films, we have lead characters whose lives have spiraled away from them and trying to make amends before it’s too late. In both films, the lead character is estranged from their high school daughter. Aronofsky’s choice of Fraser is eerily similar to his casting of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. At the time, Hollywood had cast aside Rourke (in a similar fashion to what it’s doing to Fraser now). His comeback performance earned his first and only Oscar nomination (the Oscar that year went to Sean Penn for Milk). Fraser will undoubtedly do the same. He also has a far greater chance to win than Rourke because of the more complex character he portrayed, the physical transformation he put his body through, and a weaker field in the Best Performance by a Lead Actor category.

Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing  9/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 10/10 (a somber score accompanies the piece from opening to closing credits)
Hook and Reel 8.5/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
88.5%

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