Solving the obstacle of the theatrical sensation in a film that precisely adapts a work is one of the biggest challenges in one of those movies. At least I am among the kind of people who are left out when something gets too close to the energy of “filmed theater”, which revolves around actors who are usually very good, because the text encourages it, but He does no more to try to tell what is in the script.
Of course, then there are cases that do try to find kinematic solutions to this kind of problem, but end up giving a strange result or a resounding failure for other reasons. As the director tries by all means to make a kind of movie that does not fit and you feel a certain falsehood in the whole set. This is the case of ‘The Whale’.
hunting an impossible
Darren Aronofsky’s film adapts an impressive play and he got Brendan Fraser an Oscar as an actor that was celebrated after his years away from the spotlight and experiencing episodes of injuries and harassment. A film already available to watch on Movistar + that, from the independent and artistic facade, hides his ambitions to emotionally exploit the viewer.
Fraser plays a morbidly obese English literature teacher, who hides his face from the students he teaches via Zoom while gorges himself to death before the eyes of his closest entourage. When his daughter comes to him in an impulsive and unconscious act (because she can no longer hate him after abandoning her and her mother), the ill-fated guardian will attempt an act of redemption so that she is at least something good that he leaves behind. the world.
Although, is there really anything about Sadie Sink’s character and performance that suggests there’s a kind soul within her? The script insists that it is, but viewers, like all non-main characters, have trouble identifying it. Aronofsky’s attempt to give another spin to a concept that he already explored in ‘The Fighter’ has here more irregular results.
‘The whale (The Whale)’: shouted metaphors
But, in general, his approach to the material is less than genuine. Here we find a story of a man who has internalized so much that he must hate himself (for his actions, his physique, but also for his sexual condition) that he decides to take it to an obsessive extreme. Despite the commendable makeup job and a Fraser who wants to convey the character’s heart to the audience, the film around him is forcing gears all the time to excitebecause the director has a style that is too cynical and bizarre to make anything we see credible.
That is why ‘The Whale’ leaves more of an aftertaste of a histrionic film perfectly designed to make you feel like a bad person for not getting excited about this trip. But his façade is often cigarette paper, with scenes that seem like an adaptation of that scene from The Simpsons where Bart washes himself with a rag tied to a stick that are shockingly grotesque but crude. In the end, there is a film of shouted metaphors that works less on film than it could on stage.
In Espinof | The best movies of 2022