bmake Fraser won’t win the Oscar for The Whale (most likely). He recently won a SAGbut except for a few twists, the best actor statuette goes to Austin Butler For Elvis (most likely); the death of Lisa Marie Presley undoubtedly gave a nice turn of sympathy to the votes. The other blow in favor of the young actor (32 years old) comes from Fraser himself. From the fake 270 kilos of the prosthetic suit (the British call it more effectively fat suit) that has worn to play Charlieprofessor of literature obese and gay looking for redemption.
And today it’s not possible, with the request identity correspondence (physical and character) between character and actor, playing with these old tricks. Go find it, explained the director Darren Aronofskya professional actor who works satisfactorily by pulling himself behind walker and oxygen tank (an insurance festival). And if he existed, he’d be as good as Fraser, or like Daniel Day Lewis with feigned cerebral palsy My left foot (Oscars in 1990)?
But, precisely, “pretend to be” as always in dramatic arthas become the offense that it perpetuates the confinement of bodies and sexualities not complying. And consequently of the professionals who belong to you. Especially if the representation induces pity and an indifferent sense of relief: My life is bad but at least it’s not as bad as Charlie’s.
It doesn’t even change with biopics of famous peoplebut there are different degrees of condemnation: the only victim-beat-abortion Marilyn of De Armas in Blonde was to be rehabilitated; Butler’s kaleidoscope and two-dimensional Elvis is good, innocent as a Rai 1 fiction and, now, risen to a tragic period document (stuff that marketing departments dream of at night).
The Whale: fake and not fake fat, that’s the question
Meanwhile, the Academy that of #OscarSoWhite seeks a tiring moral balance. Candida De Armas, ignores Viola Davis e Danielle Deadwyler (black actresses in The Woman King And Till), also ignores female directors, continues ad love very much the actors who disappear in the rolewhose glamor is no longer seen (Kidman’s fake Oscar-nosed nose in The Hours), but produces virtuoso films. As BrosHollywood’s first romantic comedy with an all-gay, starless cast: a resounding flop. Primarily deserted by the reference public called to duty – and reprimanded for negligence – to make it into a blockbuster (tell people to go see a necessary movie and surprisingly, that turns on Netflix: ungrateful).
Brandan Fraser in “The Whale”. (The Wonder Pictures)
Towards The Whale, homosexuals have been quite benevolent. Get used to Oscars won on their skin for roles as an AIDS patient, as a prisoner in a kimono, as a transgender drug addict (and HIV positive)from rights activist gunned down in common, perhaps they have acquired a zen calm. Everybody except Guy Branum (actor present in Bros), who called it a ugly “metaphor of the pain of being gay, of hiding”.
Different speech for the obese. If the word «fat» must disappear from Roald Dahl’s bookslet alone elsewhere where it can be falsely shown. Roxane Gaywriter and activist who knows about living overweight and wrote his own book better knownon the New York Times was peremptory: «Whale is a free and self-congratulatory showhas very little to do with the lives of fat people.”
The tale of pain closest to us strikes the hardest
The result, continues Gay, is that of a film that exploits a pathological condition as does a bet of Embarrassing diseases. With the suspicion of a reload of abjections by Samuel D. Hunter (author of the staged drama for 10 years and screenwriter of the film).
Any work of art or simple entertainment that talks about painful things very close to us it hits harderbut the “betrayal” Roxane talks about – an immodest exposure that she surely perceived as if it were stolen private footagewith the opposite effect a Elvis become the story of Lisa’s father who died at the age of 54 – for others it may be the discovery (and understanding) of a condition. Even the beginning of an awareness, of a brutal shaking.
And this can also happen with a notorious fat suit, so maybe you can avoid diabetes to the actor who is too diligent with Method acting. In addition to relegation to always equal parts due to the physical fault.
But real kilos are like black and white in photos, they give authenticity and remove the doubt of ridicule. Mimic obesity it’s instead like Natalie Portman’s face stuck to the classical dancer who in the Black Swan he made the most difficult evolutions (another film by Darren, and Oscar). Crushed by all these considerations is the poor Brendan Fraser, for which The Whale it’s the big comeback after a divorce, sexual harassment, depression and fitness which is the result of all three. That is, a state for which Charlie is not exactly lunatic.
“A carnival sideshow”
Miraculously under 2 hoursalbeit for a few minutes, the “carnival sideshow” according to Roxane it takes the classic fight to the extreme consequences of Aronofskyan heroes: the tension towards an inhuman perfection, which often coincides with a liberation, a liberation from the body as destiny, a prison also in the sense of talent. And the director illustrates it with a lot of control.
For Charlie, this cage is double, indeed, triple, in addition to the walled-in house, the kilos, it also has the black square of the cam turned off on Zoom, so as not to be seen by the students. He has always been a chubby person, he says, but after the suicide of his partner (Alan) he lost control.
Sadie Sink is Ellie. (The Wonder Pictures)
Reached the point of no return (physical and spiritual), in 5 days try to recover relationship with daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), left with his wife Mary when the girl was 8 years old.
At home, he is assisted by Liz (Hong Chau, nominated for supporting role as nurse and Alan’s sister), which also acts as a filter with the outsidewith a missionary of the sect to which his brother belonged and with Ellie, a teenager perhaps inevitably compromised, angry and not even subtly sadistic, looking for explanations and favors. In short, there are those who want to save him and those who want to exploit him, but Charlie is both victim and culprit, and everything that revolves around him has the rot of the end.
Is it a voyeuristic show? Obviously
A sum of irrecoverable anger and unhappinessso expanded that it cannot be reconciled. The claustrophobic space moves though. In the midst of the accusations, the shouts, an essay on Moby Dick which represents Charlie’s only medicine (the author’s identity is revealed at the end), The Whale makes you shiver and gives hope. And Fraser makes it despair and humanity with great caremaking the most of voice and eyes (for the denigrators an overeating equal to the woman-robot of Act of force).
Is it a voyeuristic show? Obviously: how do you represent “a train accident” if not from the most catastrophic point of view as does the little boy-Spielberg in The Fablemans. Darren, a less perverse maniacal director than Lars von Trier, adds a masturbation scene to the point of annoyance. American Beauty, the great incipit of American cinema of this century.
But it also gives us a gift by Samantha Morton (superb actress always underused), and even if it carries Ellie’s hostility for an infinite time, concludes the tale with one of the most beautiful endings of 2022 together with that of Blonde (The Whale came out last year).
More beautiful in the sense of how you remember, that social networks invite us to share againhave become the measure of nostalgia and (terrestrial) paradise lost. Charlie wins him back in a flash, Marilyn didn’t even know what it was. And in fact on her dead (spoiler) the camera lingers, she doesn’t want to leave her alone.
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