The Oscar-winning movie The Whale is a waste of $5.99, the two hours it takes to watch, and any time spent thinking about it afterwards—unless one can redeem the time and money by writing about it so others don’t make the mistake of watching it.
The moral of the story is nothing new. Hollywood has made dozens if not hundreds of movies with the same moral: Life is miserable and meaningless, but it’s not all bad, so focus on just the good and you’ll feel better. It’s a philosophy popularly known as “cheerful nihilism.” Forrest Gump is a prime example, and a much more entertaining one.
The good in most cases is kindness to others. Not love, really. Nothing so demanding. Just kindness. Cheerfully nihilistic movies are often about the loss or failure of real love, which sets up the need for focusing on the surviving kindness among ex-lovers and the victims of divorce. Such movies are made by and for people whose lives are a mess and whose only consolation is that they are not more of a mess.
The Whale tells the tale of a man named Charlie who has walked out on his wife and eight-year-old daughter to take up with another man, only to see that man kill himself because his preacher-father has disowned him. In grief, Charlie eats himself into morbid obesity, becoming a whale of a man, never seeing his daughter but paying child support and saving his money for her.
The story begins nine years after Charlie abandoned his wife and daughter. He is near death and confined to his apartment, teaching writing online without enabling his camera, lest his student see how fat he is. Five people come to his door over and over again: a clueless teenage evangelist in coat and tie, a surly Asian nurse who monitors his health, the curious young man who delivers his pizzas, his monster of a daughter, and finally his ex-wife, whom he also has not seen in nine years.
SPOILER ALERT
The plot, if you can call it that, is what to do about Charlie’s deeply felt guilt for the mess he’s made of himself and his daughter (his ex-wife doesn’t seem to matter much). The evangelist’s visits give Charlie, the nurse, and his daughter opportunities to declare that he doesn’t need God or salvation and that there was nothing wrong in his love for another man.
His ex-wife’s visit forces the question of Charlie’s responsibility for how his troubled daughter has turned out. His ex-wife says she’s “evil,” and all we have seen of her fits the bill. But Charlie clings to believing that she not that bad, and, lo, she does eventually do one good deed, benefiting the evangelist (who turns out to be not quite on the up-and-up). It’s not all that clear to viewers that his daughter intended her good deed to be a good deed, but Charlie is convinced she did.
It also turns out that the essay on Moby Dick that Charlie reads to himself whenever he is stressed was written by his daughter years earlier. It, too, is evidence of his daughter’s goodness. When his daughter finally realizes how much he loves her, Charlie feels redeemed. His life hasn’t been a complete failure. His daughter has turned out well. At least well enough.
It’s at that point that the whale stands up unaided for the first time in the film. He takes a few steps toward his daughter, standing for the first time in the sunlight, and then we see his very fat feet rise up off the floor as he begins his ascent into the heavens. End of story.
CLICHÉ ALERT
So it turns out that Charlie did need some form of salvation, just not one requiring confession, repentance, or God. He says “I’m sorry” many times in the film, but he never admits he was wrong to leave his wife and daughter to satisfy his desire for another man. This conflict of loves is never addressed, much less resolved. It seems Charlie only regrets not doing more for his daughter after abandoning her. Any harm done to her by his abandonment, well, that’s just life. You gotta love who you gotta love.
Charlie hints at this excuse in his online lectures and arguments with his daughter, in which he repeatedly stresses the need for honesty/authenticity as opposed to “objectivity” in writing: Real writing reveals the inner self of the writer, what the writer really thinks and feels, not what society tells him to think or feel. The same point is made in many movies about writers and artists. It’s the standard leftist take on art, which also happens to fit the gay demand for authenticity in coming out and living gay, whatever harm it does to others.
The role of Charlie won Brendan Fraser the Oscar for Best Actor, and the role of the nurse won Hong Chau an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Neither role seems too challenging to me, besides Fraser’s wearing of a massive fat suit (which won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling). The nurse is a stock character: shrewd, crude Asian woman. The clueless Christian evangelist and troubled teenage daughter are also stock, with little added by the actors playing them (Ty Simpkins and Sadie Sink). The neurotic ex-wife, played by Samantha Morton, is the most original portrayal, but seems a little too real and un-actress-like to avoid the suspicion that maybe it’s just bad acting.
The film seems far less real when showing all three of the women cuddling up to the morbidly obese Charlie. The morbidly obese have trouble keeping clean and often stink, and though the film does show Charlie showering, none of the three women are so close to Charlie emotionally that they would get that close physically, except in the movies.
The film can fairly be called Christophobic for blaming the local “New Life” church for the suicide of Charlie’s gay partner. This is plainly stated by the nurse, who was the dead gay partner’s sister, being the adopted daughter of the same preacher. It’s also underscored late in the film by Charlie’s pious description of the love he shared with his gay partner, in response to the evangelist’s Scriptural relation of the partner’s suicide to living “according to the flesh” (Romans 8:3–14).
A final fault is the film’s disgusting third scene. It certainly shows us how miserable Charlie’s life is, but you don’t want to see it. Same goes for the rest of the film.
