The Whale

Knowing Darren Aronofsky is directing, you can expect pure human suffering. This film is emotionally intense but impossible to watch without being completely absorbed from the start. Brendan Fraser is nearly unrecognizable and delivers a performance that's nothing short of divine. The Whale is a prime example of a film designed to wring every emotion out of you. When a movie can do that, you're guaranteed an unforgettable experience. (09/03/2023)

If this were a raw last confession of a lost human soul without any pretensions and all sorts of gimmicks, it would be an absolute blast. The Whale shouldn't have been made by the master of allegories, Aronofsky, who combines uncompromising depression with religious motifs, art literature, and strange human creatures that might not be there at all – I was just waiting for parallel universes and other dimensions to appear. Two stars for the phenomenal Brendan Fraser and the moments when the film is exactly the coherent genre composition it should be for the entire runtime and not just a few fragments. (28/02/2023)

An acting masterclass combined with a masterclass in unnecessary directorial manipulation. If Darren had reined in his desire to drag the viewer into a fit of transcendent emotion and had carried the film through to the end as an intimate story about a human mass of guilt and loneliness, it might have had the punch that he last achieved in The Wrestler. Unfortunately, however, this is how the redemption of a self-destructive man becomes more distant the more the director tries to make it poignant. Fraser, on the other hand, deserves maximum respect, as he account for all of the humor and humanism in this dubious dramatic cetacean. (30/12/2022)

Who would have expected such drama from the combination of A24 and Darren Aronofsky? Until a few months ago, probably no one. But the result is superior art that is more or less unparalleled in modern cinema. On the one hand, very sensitive, on the other hand, a depressing, gloomy, dark and almost artistically poetic drama and a devastating collision with reality that at times makes you feel physically sick. Brendan Fraser has always been a mediocre lead actor, but here it's purely his one man show and the role of a lifetime that will be remembered from this day forward and after which he will be referred to as "that actor from The Whale", because such an iconic role will go down in history and be celebrated for a long time to come. Character-wise polished, actor-wise perfect and director-wise masterful, in short, it's clear that everyone here has a perfect sense of scene and can create unexpectedly intense atmosphere and feelings of tension within an "ordinary" drama. I didn't believe that The Whale could be that good a film, but now I know that all the recent awards and titles it has won are simply rightful. (06/03/2023)

After not very well received film Mother! and five long years, the master of depressing and oppressive dramas is back, and he's still on form thanks to (his thematic favourite) God. Within Darren Aronofsky's filmography, The Whale is probably closest to The Wrestler in its somewhat restrained approach by the director's standards, as it also tells the story of the bitter life of a man at the end of his rope who has a problematic relationship with his daughter. In terms of premise, The Whale is not an inherently complex film, but it mixes in some interesting themes and moments that leave the viewer engaged with the action on screen. The lion's share of all this is of course (literally, given the fat-suit) the breathtaking performance of Brendan Fraser. I always had reservations about him, but here he proved his acting qualities to perfection as Charlie. He was ably seconded by all the supporting characters played by Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, as well as Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton. While the film kept pretty much to the ground (or was it Earth?) (thanks to Charlie's mass, and not just Charlie), there were more than a few places where Aranofsky poked fun at his favorite Creator, but not in an underhanded or purposeless way. The Whale, like Charlie, may be naive and overly positive in places, but it also manages to convey the message that people can be amazing if they have support and are honest with themselves in an authentic and not aggressively weepy way. (10/03/2023)