You are not your mistakes, you are not your past, you are not your failures. You are your future. We all deal with setbacks differently, a few too many drinks in the evening, a full afternoon with headphones on listening to your perfectly crafted Spotify playlist featuring songs like “Say Something” or “Glycerine”. You might even deal with it by doing a marathon of the Austin Powers Trilogy. What matters is that you deal with setbacks in a healthy manner. Put down the beer and sober up, turn off the music and write what you feel, and shut ‘Goldmember’ down.
‘The Whale’ is a cautionary tale of what we do to ourselves when we refuse to believe we’re good people. When we hate ourselves, we exaggerate and present ourselves as criminals because we disappointed someone. Charlie made mistakes in his life, abandoning his family for his new soulmate and dealing with the pain of said soulmates death through binge-eating. Throughout the film we’re tortured with watching a human being destroy himself from the inside out for 2 hours straight and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Charlie is a morbidly obese man with a week to live, he’s confined to a walker and later a wheelchair. His goal for the week is to reconnect and fix his relationship with his daughter who just wants him to suffer. As he attempts this near-impossible feat, he is cared for, enabled by and ridiculed by Liz, his boyfriend’s sister and pestered by Thomas, a missionary who wants to help Charlie live a longer and happier life. As his mission continues, his condition grows worse, and he begins to fall into a spiral that can’t guarantee his survival.
Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, no doubt his greatest role since Rick O’Connell, a lovable pushover that you just wish would stand up for himself or realise his impact in other people’s lives. Like Liz, you want him to get better but you sometimes see him as a suicidal idiot. Fraser, and only Fraser, could create such an emotional impact with this character, his sensitive voice, the friendliest smile you’d ever see, Fraser and only Fraser could make you fall in love with this character. Sadie Sink plays Ellie, Charlie’s daughter, a vengeful teenager who goes through a monstrous personality change because of Charlie’s absence. Sink’s greatest ability in this film is making a fatherless teenager into one of the most hate-worthy villains ever seen; in any other instance, you’d see Charlie as the antagonist, yet Sink plays Ellie as psychopathic. Hong Chau plays Liz, Charlie’s nurse who both enables and assists Charlie. Chau plays Liz more as an empty friend, someone who is only with Charlie by circumstance, which makes her character progression a real whirlwind. You can’t decide whether you should hate or love her. Ty Simpkins plays Thomas the missionary with a similar level to Chau. You don’t want him to bother Charlie with religion that arguably won’t help, but you can see his heart is in the right place. Chau and Simpkins performances operate more as a morality seesaw.
Mason’s Top 3 Reasons To Watch ‘The Whale’
- A career-defining performance by Fraser to have you bawling
- An ending with so many different interpretations, you’ll be safe from a bad one
- A sense of relatability and recognition that sometimes we hurt ourselves when we need to love ourselves more
Mason Horsley is a graduate of UOW with a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Arts, majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Theatre. He hopes to write and direct a feature film and has been working on screenplays since he was 17. He writes film reviews for the Tertangala and works on his latest project ‘The Last Film’ while working a full-time job at a fish market. Mason despises reviewing films he dislikes and because of this, every review he writes acts as a recommendation.
Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly