Defending “The Whale”

Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale has aroused more critical ire than your average awards-season prestige film. While it’s gotten some praise, this small movie’s detractors tend to frame it as a catastrophe somewhere between highly distasteful and outright immoral.  As Christy Lemire puts it for RogerEbert.com: “‘The Whale’ is an abhorrent film.” It’s not exactly rare to find such a high level of moral outrage directed at a movie, and I respect critics staying true to their convictions, but when it comes to The Whale I find the critical condemnations odd, inconsistent, lacking justification and also symptomatic of current narrow trends in conventional taste.

Brendan Fraser as Charlie

The Whale is about the last week in the life of Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a 600-pound English professor who teaches remotely from the run-down apartment which he’s determined, perhaps understandably, never to leave. At the outset, Charlie receives a blood pressure measurement equivalent to a death sentence, and the film is simply about his conversations with his best friend and nurse Liz (Hong Chau), a door-to-door evangelizer (Ty Simpkins) and the teenaged daughter (Sadie Sink) with whom he tries to reconnect. The movie was adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his own play, and it feels like a play, much like many, many movies before it. The staginess is presented as a fault by many of the film’s harshest critics, but a relatively small error compared to the film’s greatest abhorrence, that being its supposed prurient, voyeuristic exploitation of its obese protagonist’s appearance. That’s the major theme of The Whale’s many pans:

[The Whale] gawks at the grotesquerie of its central figure beneath the guise of sentimentality[…] [The Whale’s] main point seems to be sticking the camera in front of Brendan Fraser, encased in a fat suit that makes him appear to weigh 600 pounds, and asking us to wallow in his deterioration. In theory, we are meant to pity him or at least find sympathy for his physical and psychological plight by the film's conclusion. But in reality, the overall vibe is one of morbid fascination for this mountain of a man. Here he is, knocking over an end table as he struggles to get up from the couch; there he is, cramming candy bars in his mouth as he Googles ‘congestive heart failure.’
-Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

A large part of the movie’s first hour is devoted to observing Charlie’s daily habits—he needs a grabber stick to pick up objects off the floor! A hook suspended from the ceiling allows him to pull himself out of bed!—with a voyeurism thinly disguised as compassion.
-Dana Stevens, Slate

 [Charlie’s] every groan, wheeze and choking fit means to inspire both empathy and revulsion […] The movie’s crudest moments, the ones in which Charlie’s body is treated as not just a matter-of-fact physical reality but a dare-you-to-look-away spectacle, have already raised legitimate questions and accusations of fatphobia — a debate that tends to arise whenever a Hollywood actor packs on some artificial pounds. 
-Justin Chang, LA Times

 The problem is that Aronofsky is transfixed by Charlie in all the wrong ways, positioning him as a walking house of horrors.
-David Sims, The Atlantic

The Whale seems hellbent on making you view Charlie as a grotesque. There’s something monstrous about the way it keeps framing him, how it seems to almost fetishize every roll of his flesh and put the sound of his greasy chomping on fried chicken so high in the sound mix. What this man is experiencing — a horrible sense of shame that’s metastasized into self-destruction — is not pretty. But the movie seems to revel a little too enthusiastically in its own ugliness.
-David Fear, Rolling Stone 

The takeaway that The Whale is gawking at its protagonist is so common it’s almost hard to doubt, but at the basis of this perspective is a simple claim: that the film is intentionally orchestrated to elicit disgust at an obese man. When I judge that claim against the actual filmmaking choices, it just doesn’t hold up. I can easily think of many films that objectively treat a similar character with disgust, and usually that disgust registers through a combination of filmmaking, casting and storytelling choices which have all been made with the straightforward intention of framing the obese character as a source of humour or repulsion or both. Obese characters come in for this cinematic treatment more often than not; in fact, the first example that comes to mind is a movie I literally watched yesterday, Babylon, which begins with an obese one-percenter squealing with pleasure as he’s pissed on by a sex worker. In that movie, the disgust is obvious and undeniable: the camera tracks in extreme close-up across the man’s belly, the actor playing him is unknown and unlikable, and the storytelling makes it clear that this character is nothing but a one-dimensional metaphor for upper-class decadence. When it comes to The Whale, it’s obvious that the casting and storytelling are meant to generate empathy for Charlie, so only the filmmaking could be charged with creating disgust (some might disagree about the storytelling; I’ll get to that shortly).

So, do Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique truly use their camera to “fetishize every roll” of Charlie’s flesh, as David Fear puts it? It would be difficult to point to any shot in the movie and confidently say they’re doing that. Libatique’s style here is almost exclusively unobtrusive; mostly, the camera regards the action with the usual straightforward close-ups, mediums and wide shots of any conventional movie. There are no wide-angle shots meant to exaggerate Charlie’s size, and no extreme close-ups on rolls of flesh, despite what Mr. Fear says. There are two or three scenes where Charlie goes shirtless, and I didn’t notice a change in the camera’s attitude toward its subject compared to any other scene in the movie. In a pained, self-loathing monologue, Charlie describes a deposit of fat on his back which has turned brown, but I don’t recall actually seeing that on his body; a missed opportunity if Justin Chang is correct that Aronofsky treats Charlie’s body as a “dare-you-to-look-away spectacle.” Chang also gives both the oddest and one of the most specific critiques of Libatique’s relationship with his subject:

At times the camera, wielded by Aronofsky’s regular collaborator Matthew Libatique, almost seems to mock Charlie, moving around him with an ease and agility that he cannot muster.

Here we have the rare occurrence of a weekly film reviewer using a specific example from the film to back up his take, and it’s characteristically baffling. I don’t remember any flashy camera movements in The Whale, but even if the camera was zipping around like it was an Edgar Wright movie, what is Chang actually saying? By writing that the camera “almost seems to” mock Charlie, Chang almost seems to acknowledge that it’s quite a stretch to think this characterization reflects any real intention on the filmmakers’ part, but if even Chang almost seems to doubt his own point, then why bother writing it? Just to land a cheap dig at the moral sensibilities of the filmmakers, with questionable basis? In my view, the camera does next to nothing to enhance any discomfort the audience might feel at witnessing the daily habits of a severely-ill 600-pound man.

I wonder if all these critics think the audience should feel any discomfort at all with this subject matter. Much of the evidence they put forth for Aronofsky’s gawking deals with Charlie’s eating: Lemire describes “watching Fraser's Charlie gobble greasy fried chicken straight from the bucket or inhale a giant meatball sub with such alacrity that he nearly chokes to death.” Dana Stevens complains about a “hard-to-watch sequence in which Charlie eats his way through most of the contents of his fridge in a self-destructive binge.” The kind of food comes up a lot in the reviews: the fried chicken, the pizza, the meatball subs, the candy bars; all of this junk food supposedly bolstering the case that the filmmakers view Charlie with disgust. I would just ask these critics: when a man reaches 600 pounds in America, what do you think he eats? Quinoa? The filmmakers have set out to tell a story about a depressed, morbidly obese Midwestern shut-in who uses binge-eating as a means of self-destruction; can anyone imagine a straightforward telling of this story that would not elicit some queasiness from your average viewer? I expect the critical response might be: yes, but the filmmakers went overboard playing up what was off-putting about Charlie. Well, other than saying that I don’t think that’s true, I could add that, from another perspective, one could argue the filmmakers didn’t go far enough in showing average viewers the daily challenges of someone in Charlie’s position. There are people out there who have an unhealthy relationship with food ala Charlie, what’s the moral principle saying there’s a limit to how much of that experience you can show? Why isn’t it the morally correct position that filmmakers should show as much of this experience as possible, to educate audiences? This is the issue I have with staking firm moral positions against works of art that are not created by, say, Dinesh D’Souza: these takes have to be accepted on faith, and that’s just not very interesting, as film analysis goes.

My favourite such example in regards to The Whale is this excerpt from Adam Nayman’s review for The Ringer:

Aronofsky’s trademark grandstanding sadism, disguised here […] as a form of hard-edged empathy for damaged outsiders, crushes the characters and the audience alike beneath its oppressive weight.

One of the joys of reading weekly, short-form criticism is receiving odd opinions like this as if they’re common knowledge. Oh yeah, we’re all aware that Aronofsky’s trademark is his sadism, no need to elaborate! And certainly, an Aronofsky movie is not adequately dealt with via film criticism, no, Nayman has to bust out his skills as a psychologist. How else would his readers learn how Aronofsky uses fiction filmmaking to “disguise” his sadism, in this case a film Aronofsky didn’t even write?

Another odd trend in the reaction to The Whale is the critical distinction between the failure of the filmmaking and the success of Fraser’s performance as Charlie:

But Fraser’s beautifully judged performance isn’t enough to save this abject wallow through a mire of maudlin clichés about trauma and redemption.
-Dana Stevens, Slate

There is more to Fraser’s performance than his exertions […] Fraser attempts, and mostly achieves, a symphony of surprising grace notes. He shows us Charlie’s suffering, but also his sweetness; his grief, but also his good humor.
-Justin Chang, LA Times

Fraser brings more warmth and humanity to the role than he's afforded on the page.
-Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

Fraser makes a powerful effort […] He doesn’t shy away from exposing Charlie’s self-destructive streak, but he foregrounds the character’s abiding love for others, if not for himself.
-David Sims, The Atlantic

Fraser brings a definite gentleness and openness to the role of Charlie, and his performance is good.
-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Fraser nonetheless manages to communicate the humanity in this character even when the film itself does everything it can to undermine his efforts. It’s the way that he uses his eyes and his facial expressions to communicate sorrow, fear, self-loathing, self-pity, hope, desperation, spiritual longing, a fake sense of joviality and a genuine sense of joy. The manner in which his eyes dart around when he’s unable to reach a key that’s fallen on the floor. The burst of giggling accompanying the discovery that his cynical daughter has turned her misanthropy into a haiku.
-David Fear, Rolling Stone

These critics have a weird idea of how movies are made. The David Fear quote demonstrates this confusion beautifully: somehow Fraser gets all the credit for moments that were: likely written in the script, directed to have the right emotional valence and selected by Aronofsky and his editor to appear in the finished film. This begs the question: given that about 90% of the content of The Whale is Fraser’s performance, in which these critics all agree he shows a tremendous amount of empathy for this character, is it possible that the filmmakers who facilitated Fraser’s performance were also invested in communicating that empathy? If so, how does that square with the filmmakers’ supposed aim to cruelly gawk at Charlie’s appearance? Are the filmmakers confused, or are the critics?

Perhaps if The Whale were written and directed in cinema verité style, the critics wouldn’t read phoniness into its depictions of Charlie’s unattractive situation. But The Whale was adapted from a play, and critics take issue with its theatrical style and lack of realism:

What stymies the film [is] the stagy clunk with which other characters enter and exit that space.
-Anthony Lane, The New Yorker 

[Fraser is] hamstrung with plot points and dialogue that have not weathered the translation from stage to screen well.
-David Fear, Rolling Stone

[The Whale is a] vapid, hammy and stagey movie […] the writing clunks; the narrative is contrived and unconvincing […, the problem is] the convoluted plot that surrounds Charlie.
-Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

All this drama bursts out in freshets of stagy verbiage and blubbering. The script overwhelms narrative logic.
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times 

“The Whale,” straining to both honor and break free of its source material, unfolds over a few consecutive days, during which Charlie receives a series of visitors. Their regular appearances at once modulate the drama and expose its artificiality.
-Justin Chang, LA Times 

[Fraser is] saddled with a screenplay that spells out every emotion in ways that are so clunky as to be groan-inducing […] The arrival of yet another visitor—an earnest, insistent church missionary played by Ty Simpkins—feels like a total contrivance.
-Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

Much of the above relies on the reader to take certain descriptors as unequivocally negative: “stagy” (pick your spelling), “contrived,” “artificiality.” The critics like to point out how the secondary characters enter and exit scenes. In The Whale’s original production, Charlie’s apartment would have been the stage, and the playwright had to invent reasons for the characters to come and go. Aronofsky chose to keep the film version exclusive to Charlie’s apartment as well (understandably, given Charlie’s mobility), therefore the explanations for the other characters’ entrances and exits are maintained. What these critics seem to resent is that these explanations register transparently as dramatic inventions and therefore, I suppose, detract from the illusion of real-world spontaneity that, if you have this perspective, The Whale should maintain at all times. This is just the current critical bias preferring realism over any whiff of the theatrical – at least, when it comes to “serious” films – but there’s no reason to think either approach is fundamentally superior.

It’s almost not worth pointing out that every moment of every fiction film is contrived to create some kind of effect, and it’s limiting to believe that the worthiest effect to contrive is the illusion that no contrivance has occurred. Personally, I enjoyed The Whale’s theatricality and rigorous storytelling. Each development has a specific purpose and nothing is left hanging, each character has strengths and faults which serve the story in equal parts, the themes are clear throughout and build up to a comprehensible artistic statement; in other words, this is a traditional drama. Being adapted from a play, most of the important stuff happens in the dialogue, so complaining things are “spelled out” or that the film doesn’t abide by “show don’t tell” seems like an objection to the whole enterprise that, to me, betrays an unwillingness to engage with the work as what it is.

Lastly, there’s the controversy that Charlie has been cast with an actor who is not himself obese and therefore had to don a “fatsuit.” This complaint comes from the Twitter crowd more than the critics and will only make sense if you share that group’s belief that actor and role must have certain identity characteristics in common. To this critique, the response seems obvious: any overweight actor you can think of would still have to wear some kind of prosthetic to play Charlie. Marlon Brando, at his largest, would still have had to wear some kind of prosthetic to play Charlie. Anyone who looked capable of standing up and walking around would not look convincing in the role. One can imagine a countrywide search for a non-professional, 600-pound actor who was both A) competent and B) right for the role, sure, and I hope your next movie is made on the condition that such a search works out, on schedule. We could also question the ethics of putting an actor in such dangerous health through the physical and emotional workout of playing Charlie, who is in almost every minute of this 2-hour movie and would therefore require long days and many, many takes to perform. Of course, the people raising these issues usually don’t talk about movies as pieces of art made by craftspeople, but rather as opportunities to declare pass/fail moral judgment of said craftspeople.

I haven’t said much about my own thoughts on The Whale. I think it’s an extraordinarily moving film, full of memorable characters, first-class performances and precise, intelligent dialogue. In my view, the criticisms addressed above are nothing but thin assumptions and irrelevant biases; possible I would see them differently if the critics made a stronger case.