Huge emotions
BRENDAN FRASER’S PERFORMANCE IN THE WHALE IS INTENSE
THE WHALE (M)
Director: Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler)
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink
Rating:
Heavy going for a hopeful soul
hhhjk
“Do you ever get the feeling people are incapable of not caring?”
The man asking this loaded question in The Whale may not be around long enough to hear it truthfully answered.
His name is Charlie (played by Brendan Fraser). Though a fundamentally kind person, life has not shown Charlie much kindness in return.
In particular, one cruelly tragic event in his past has sent Charlie slowly but surely down the path towards certain self-destruction.
Charlie has spent more than a decade wilfully embracing an eating disorder that all but guarantees a premature death. His emotionally triggered gorging has seen his weight balloon past the 250kg mark.
Despite his big, open-hearted belief in how great the world and everyone in it can be, Charlie lives the smallest, most closed-off life imaginable.
Confined to his apartment out of both personal shame and physical immobility, Charlie spends his days teaching literature online to students who cannot see him (he pretends his webcam is broken beyond repair) and giving in to the last, damning urges of his food addiction.
One of the few people who encounter Charlie on a regular basis is his longtime friend Liz (Hong Chau). A trained nurse, she can sense that he has now almost certainly ventured past the point of no return with his obesity problem.
And yet, faced with the prospect of possibly not even seeing out the month ahead, Charlie avoids seeking the help that may save him.
Instead, he is seeking a different form of salvation in the short time he may have left.
Charlie has a teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). The pair have barely spoken since Charlie withdrew from family life over a decade ago.
Ellie hates him with a passion that must be painful for someone so young to carry around every day. An irrepressible optimist, Charlie believes the best gift he can give her is to relieve her of that spite – and the damage it will do to Ellie later in life – before it is too late.
There is no way to sugar-coat the experience offered by The Whale. It is indeed tough going for the most part, with its emotional intensity amplified by a cramped principal setting (the camera rarely leaves Charlie’s home) and a confronting physical condition.
What saves the movie from either overwhelming or alienating its audience is the mighty performance of Fraser in the lead role.
Much has been made elsewhere of the prosthetic “fat suit” donned by Fraser to fill out his character, as if it were the layers of rubber that are doing the real acting here.
No, the humanity that pours out of Fraser throughout The Whale – particularly through his eyes and voice – is irrefutably the work of a gifted talent (and a talent that has rarely shone through Fraser’s earlier works).
The Whale is in cinemas now
KNOCK AT THE CABIN (M) Rating: hhhkk General release
Without a doubt, the weirdest filmmaker wading in and out of the mainstream on his own flamboyantly odd terms is the one and only M Night Shyamalan. Remember 2021’s Old? You know, the movie where everyone aged an entire life in a single day? That was Shyamalan. Once again, he is here to rough you up, get you in and freak you out with yet another audaciously bonkers premise. There is this cabin in the woods. It is being rented for the week by a precocious little girl Wen (Kristen Cui) and her two doting dads Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge). Shortly after settling in, the trio’s idyll is shattered by the arrival of four strangers. The mysterious quartet’s leader Leonard (Dave Bautista) has an announcement to make. The world is about to end. Only Wen and her parents have the ability to stop the apocalypse.
However, to save the planet, one of them must make a single, terrifying choice. While Leonard and his gang are not as nasty as they sound, they cannot and will not take no for an answer. What follows – particularly when it comes to the proofs offered and pressures exerted by Leonard and company – is patently ridiculous, yet irresistibly compelling.
You won’t believe a shred of what is going on, but you won’t want to miss how this baffling affair is going to end.
TRUE SPIRIT (G) Rating: hhhkk Streaming on Netflix from tomorrow (Friday)
Over a decade later, the achievement of Australian sailor Jessica Watson to undertake a solo journey around the globe at the age of 16 still boggles the mind. Though the complex logistics and genuinely daunting events studded throughout Watson’s voyage are best captured in the documentary format, this dramatised version does a fine job of conveying the magnitude of her remarkable achievement to a younger audience. The adult cast (led by Anna Paquin, Cliff Curtis and Josh Lawson) are solid enough to anchor the movie when it enters cornily contrived waters. As for Teagan Croft – the young actor who blends Watson’s can-do spirit with the right notes of fragility and self-doubt – there can be no doubting she is set for bigger things in the near future.