Movie Review

Brendan Fraser is Oscar worthy in distressing-but-empathetic The Whale

Since the start of his career, Darren Aronofsky has been unafraid of making moviegoers uncomfortable. Whether it’s detailing the depths of drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream, showing the brutality of wrestling in The Wrestler, or making a brutal environmental allegory in Mother!, Aronofsky often goes to extremes to tell his stories.

The Whale fits right in with his previous works, as it focuses on Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a morbidly obese man who is unable to leave his apartment in an unnamed town in Idaho. Charlie works from home as a remote English professor, and is cared for by his friend Liz (Hong Chau), who brings him food and checks his health every time she visits.

Photo courtesy of A24

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Charlie is also visited by Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a missionary for a church called New Life, and Ellie (Sadie Sink), his daughter from a failed marriage that ended when Charlie left his wife for a man. Each person who enters the apartment impacts Charlie’s life in a different way, but the reality of his health situation may mean that there is little they can do to actually help him.

Directed by Aronofsky but written by Samuel D. Hunter (who adapted his own play), the film will be tough to watch for many. Aronofsky does not shy away from the reality of Charlie’s life in the slightest, including his need to use a walker to get around, his continued eating of very unhealthy food, and showing Charlie with his shirt off or naked on multiple occasions, giving a full glimpse at the level of his obesity.

But even as we’re witness to the worst part of Charlie’s life, the film makes sure to show that he’s much more than just his body. As seen with his Zoom interactions with his students or his conversations with Liz, Thomas, and Ellie, Charlie gives real thought to academics and the world around him. His control in those areas makes it even sadder that he is unable to rein in his personal impulses.

There’s an easy joke to be made about the title of The Whale, but it goes deeper than just the obvious comparison. From the start of the film, Charlie is shown to be obsessed with one particular essay about Moby Dick, a metaphor that extends to more than his appearance. His musings on that essay and writing in general makes him a truly empathetic character, not just one who garners pity or disgust.

While the film takes place almost entirely within the confines of Charlie’s dark apartment, Aronofsky uses plenty of different viewpoints and angles to keep it from becoming too claustrophobic. Keeping the film in one area also allows the details of Charlie’s life to be fully grasped, showing a lot of sad things, but others that are oddly hopeful.

Fraser’s performance is, in a word, astonishing. Laden with who knows how many pounds of seamless prosthetics, he makes you feel every inch of Charlie’s physical and mental suffering. The erstwhile star of The Mummy series has rarely been in consideration for acting awards, but he deserves to be at the top of the list for Best Actor at next year’s Academy Awards. He’s aided by strong performances from Chau, Sink, Simpkins, and, in a small role, Samantha Morton.

While The Whale makes for distressing viewing at times, it is balanced out by compassionate storytelling and well-rounded characters, making this one of Aronofsky’s most relatable films. The filmmaking and Fraser’s appearance and performance make it impossible to look away.

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The Whale opens in theaters on December 21.

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Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

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