WHALE
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Artists: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Jaycee Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Satya Sridharan
Origin and production: USA / Darren Aronofsky, Jeremy Dawson, Ari Handel, A24, Protozoa Pictures
Duration: 117′
An overweight and lonely English teacher tries to reunite with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.
- Oscar 2023 – Brendan Fraser for Best Leading Actor;
- Oscar 2023 for best makeup and hair.
“In the first series, we attend a creative writing class on an online platform. The frame shrinks on the desktop, which is a mosaic of screens. We see the faces of all but one student, the one in the center occupied by the teacher. Only one vote to occupy this black quadrant. The voice that dictates the rules of good writing: “Be sincere!” The shot zooms in on the black window and then reopens at the house of Charlie, the protagonist’s obese, oversized, overcrowded teacher. A larger than life body that occupies space and at the same time makes us rethink space, what is the look, what is the set and the image that is here in 4:3, like the cinema of the authors of the past and like the small screens of today’s world, which Charlie teaches, but who at the same time fears their cruelty, their “malice” – a word that is often repeated in the formal and religious logic of the “Kit”, constantly played into the dichotomy of choice: good / cruelty, body / soul, inside / outside, visible / invisible.
(…) Aronofsky is probably signing his elephant man. Charlie is John Merrick of the 21st century. A monstrous body that teaches others what to see and how to love. But it is also a reflection of the new development of the father-daughter relationship already told in Wrestler, of which it is a kind of metaphysical countersong. However, it is based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, which Darren Aronofsky has wanted to transpose to the big screen for about a decade, and which seems perfect for the kind of crude symbolism and metaphor they’ve always come up with, for better or for better. at worst, a movie by an American director. The house is like an ark. As a place of protection where you can save the Family, Scripture and Love. Aronofsky turns out to be a film director from the Old Testament (Noah), a weaver of apparently complex parables, but in fact very simple, essential ones. One place, four or five characters. The period of time has been reduced to a week, and outside the window it is almost continuously raining, as if there is a “new” universal flood (Noah again), the end of the world, which the young preacher is obsessed with. However, the space set in WHALE looks like organic spaceMother!), sometimes too tight for Charlie’s decaying body, sometimes open to meeting another, waiting for a hug that is the missing image around which the entire emotional center of this beautiful and heartbreaking film revolves. Able to gradually perform the miracle of dissolving the gravity of the protagonist and cinema in the ethereal, spiritual dimension. A real leap of faith.”
Charles Valerie, wild trails