A screen featuring the faces of students taking a class remotely; in the center, a black box that corresponds to the teacher, but in which there is only voice and emptiness. Behind the computer hides the enormous body of a man with an obesity that literally overflows. This is how the director Darren Aronofsky introduces Charlie, star of his most recent film The Whalestarring Brendan Fraser.
In The WhaleDirector of Requiem for a Dream Y Mother! it retraces the descent into a maelstrom of decadence, now focused on discomfort through the flesh. To add complexity to his show, the director explains the disproportionate body of his protagonist with a tragic story: we are told that, when his daughter was 8 years old, Charlie abandoned his family when he fell in love with one of his students, who later he died.
The filmmaker’s obsessions return and surround the plot in a religious context, in which self-flagellation manifests itself in an eating disorder that brings Charlie to the brink of death. The tape is saved from being just a chain of sensationalism thanks to the work of the actors. In his big return to the screen, brendan fraser he delivers a convincing and superb performance, even under the distraction of kilos of prosthetics and effects that invite you to take a closer look at his dimensions. Sadie Sink is Ellie, the teenage daughter who returns furious with life and with her father; The actress manages to connect with the emotional contradictions that the story demands, even when her dialogues and reactions fall into the commonplace about rebellious teenagers and seem focused on reinforcing the rejection of Charlie. The comic and compassionate nuances are found in Liz (Hong Chau), a friend and nurse who provides support and care for the protagonist, even respecting her decision to let herself be worn down through excess. Beneath the layers of grease and mounds of food, the film is a stormy family drama; it could even be an exploration of the mechanisms behind Christian guilt. But, although the script touches these issues, the director opts for an eschatology without subtlety.
I think of a movie like Short distances (Alejandro Guzmán), who had the delicacy to treat with consideration a character whose life was crossed by excessive weight. In that film there is a respect for the body that rescues the lens from omitting judgments or disdain. Without avoiding addressing the consequences that his physical state has for the character, he is treated with care and prudence. I am thinking, on the contrary, of Darren Aronofsky’s obstinacy in making use of the necessary cinematographic resources (sound, makeup, visual effects that magnify dimensions) to build the protagonist as a kind of phenomenon. Although the emotional of the dialogues and a score devastating attempt to manipulate towards pity about the character’s condition, the film is positioned far from empathy and much closer to morbidity and judgment displayed, for example, in the famous ending of Requiem for a Dream and his fall into drug hell; in the new film, methamphetamines are replaced by chicken and pizza and we see a binge typical of a compulsive eating disorder.
near the end of The Whale, Charlie decides to let his students know what he looks like and opens the camera to his online class; the sequence is presented as a revelation, as if obesity were an extraordinary and surprising anomaly. The reactions can cause empathy or disgust towards the character, but the form of the cinematographic elements is more reminiscent of a freak-show circus or to some red note headline, whose headline presumes MAN LET HIMSELF DIE OF FAT.
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I think of the what for?. Why take pains to generate curiosity and disgust towards Charlie? Why subject it to a cruelty that, I think, speaks more to the director than to the response of the spectators?
The sequence in which the actress Gabourey Sidibe runs with a bucket of fried chicken buried the context of social criticism that was in Precious (Lee Daniels). What do we remember now, if not the morbid obesity of the protagonist and how much she suffered? Something similar happens with The Whalebecause although the story about a family relationship has depth and the performances are precise, the way Charlie is filmed causes one to be left with the heavy breathing, with the pizzas that he gobbles up, with the vomit, with what amorphous of his body, with the repulsion with which Aronofsky frames his character.
fabiola santiago Independent journalist. Addicted to the series in my free time, fan of Harry Potter and cumbia. On a day to day basis I enjoy hunting notes between film festivals, interviews and set visits.