The Whale (2022) Review

Charlie is a reclusive English teacher who has been delivering online college courses from the security of his own home, suffering with extremely severe obesity which is slowly killing him. Can he reconnect with Ellie his estranged teenage daughter before it is too late?

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*LFF 2022 Preview Screening*

Charlie only seems to have one friend left that being Liz who visits him everyday and as a nurse cares for him the best she can. He constantly refuses to go to hospital claiming that he cannot afford it as does not have medical insurance. His life has been somewhat tragic that he has not spoken to his daughter Ellie since she as eight years old when he left his wife Mary for a man, who he loved deeply. Following the death of his lover he could not cope with life and turned to binge eating which then led to the situation with his severe obesity.

The health struggles brought from this see him struggle to even stand up and move around the apartment he is living in. The use of a walking frame but even getting to that point truly takes it out of him. In the opening scene we actually see his attempts at masturbation nearly take his own life with how out of breath it makes him. Just as Thomas a religious missionary arrives at his house and actually helps save his life. At this point I really was not sure about how the film was going to go, and I didn’t really know a massive amount about it before this screening.

Another thing I actually worked out was that it was based on a play, I always feel you can really tell with the dialogue heavy nature of a film, not many characters and only one or two different places that the story takes place. I throughly love films that have gone from stage to screen for those reasons, it allows fantastic acting performances to be on display and that is more than what we get from the small but incredible cast as part of this film.

I have to admit that given the nature of the story and the character of Charlie I was very quick to pass judgement on how he looked and ended up in that state. It’s always been something I have struggled to understand given my sports background and working within the area. This film highlights how those views do not help the person who is then too scared to leave home or actually cannot physically leave because of the state of their health.

The thing is though within this story Charlie was such an incredibly nice person who was trying to make a difference still in his daughter’s life as well as the students he was working with online. He would constantly say that his camera was broke though so they didn’t have to see him. I think I lost count of the number of times he said “sorry” to someone. I really did pity him and constantly wished he would go to the hospital for proper support and health after Liz informs him of his heart failing.

It was always going to be very tough to see Ellie being such a tearaway teen, as in Charlie’s head she can still do no wrong. Even though he doesn’t really know her that well anymore. She is extremely cruel to him, which for some parts of it we can actually understand that because he didn’t have anything to do with her for 8/9 years. We do get some incredible heartbreaking moments and I was so very close to tears streaming down my face a couple of times.

Brendan Fraser has received so much praise for his performance as well as a lot of minutes of standing ovations during the film festival season that the film has been part of. He more than deserves all of this praise and quite frankly it is rather amazing at this stage of his career which seemed to have stalled after his success more in the 90s. He comes across as such an incredibly nice man as well, which is a bonus for the early Oscar buzz surrounding this performance.

In a film based on a play you need all of the cast to also be fantastic and we certainly get that with Hong Chau as Liz being impressive and working well in the scenes with Fraser. Samantha Morton pops up in a small but very effective role and I always wonder why she hasn’t been in so many more films. Sadie Sink was equally impressive as Ellie and Ty Simpkins making up the cast.