Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or The Whale - The Whale (2022) Review

I have always enjoyed Aronofsky's films, his Black Swan is one of my favorite psychological thrillers and mother! It's so fucking mad that I love showing it to everyone so I can see what kind of effect it has on them. But by and large, his filmography tends to be better if he focuses on a single aspect, character or plot and The Whale like mother! does have a problem keeping that in mind. I tend to think that's because Aronofsky wanted to spend extra time exploring how hypocritical Church and Religion is and how the character that stands in for "Satan" or "ego" is the ultimate force of goodness and change but talking about that stuff will get us into spoilers and I don't want to do that

Just keep in mind that The Whale works like a stage (it is adapted from a play after all), everyday we have a man who's really obese and sits at home all day and gets visited by people. The movie's structure leans into these somewhat anthological developments by having it's whole story play out in five days and having title cards so on Monday one person will visit and on Tuesday their story moves forward by meeting some other character.

This is the bulk of the film and what makes it really fun however is how emotionally devastating some of it is. I think it's Aronofsky's most hard to watch stuff because I felt really overwhelmed and frankly repulsed by some of the things I saw. This is not helped by the fact that Aronofsky's direction doesn't really leave any room for ambiguity, Charlie can't function outside yet the film tortures him (and us) by having ambient natural sounds burst out loudly and clearly whenever he looks out a window or stands in the doorway.

I love the set design in the film and how real it feels and not to mention how all the paintings or photos hanging on the walls are probably related to the film's plot. There's a definite feeling of Kafkaesque Metamorphosis type shit in this film, how the house actively works against Charlie's weight and also the fact that it's rarely bright. Sometimes it's even hard to tell if it's nighttime or day and that adds to that feeling of being trapped to Charlie's character. Especially with how he thinks he's doing it to himself and there's no escape from his guilt and conscience.

The performances are great, Sadie Sink is so much fun in this film, she's vile and really easy to hate and her antithesis character played by Hong Chau is really well written too. I haven't seen Chau in anything else but her performance felt really alive, like she really cared about her friend.

It's also very open to interpretation, I personally haven't finished Moby Dick so I don't even know much of how it relates to the book but also didn't find that to cause a lesser experience of the film.

Overral: I mostly enjoyed the film outside of a few scenes and loved how hard to watch it was at times. I think it's better than mother! Because it's a more well-rounded film even though it doesn't quite a shocking end like that movie.

7.5/10