Lhe Mostra del cinema, thanks to the policies inaugurated by Alberto Barbera and the happy positioning in the calendar, has been carving out for some years the role of initiator of that path that, from festival to festival, from prize to prize, leads straight to the promotional campaign for the Oscars. There are several films that in the past benefited from the early Venetian exposure, and not only of American production: The shape of waterGolden Lion and Oscar for Best Picture in 2018, The Spotlight case (out of competition in Venice, then Oscar for best film 2016), La La Land opening of the 73rd Venice Film Festival and nominated for 14 Oscars, 6 victories, Rome (Golden Lion in 2018; Oscar for photography and best foreign film), and of course the recent ones Joker And Nomadland.
Certainly, among the competing works this year they have the credentials to start along that path White Noise by Noah Baumbach, Bard by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bones and All by Luca Guadagnino, and among those we still have to see, probably Blonde by Andrew Dominik e The Son by Florian Zeller. But if there is one that openly shows its ambition it certainly is The Whaleby Darren Aronofskybased on Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play and starring Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins.
The Whale director Darren Aronofsky.
The first shot of the film is the screen of an online lesson: Chiarlie teaches a group of young people how to write an essay, how to improve their writing, how to present yourself to the world. And if all the students are clearly visible on the screen, the teacher’s box is black. Is the computer chamber still broken, prof? They ask him. Not so, the viewer knows what the real reason is: Charlie’s body is unpresentable. Obese and beached on the sofa like the title whale, Charlie has chosen the path of slow suicide through food. “I let myself go,” he says, justifying himself to his daughter, the 16-year-old Ellie who he had abandoned 8 years earlier and who, angry and frankly irritating in her fury, when she comes back into his life only knows how to ask him: «Does this mean that I will become obese too?».
Director Darren_Aronofsky. Credits_Niko_Tavernise_
Shot all in one room, with 5 characters plus the man who delivers the pizzas who, after having left in front of the door several four seasons every evening, without ever seeing the recipient of all those calories, feels the need to introduce himself and inquire about his state of health. And it’s one of those kind gestures, along with Nurse Liz’s (Hong Chau) devotion, that counterbalances the idea of the cruelty of life and the inevitability of destiny, the true fuel of the film. The religious element in this plays an important role (and, at least for the films we have seen so far, perhaps it plays a little in the festival tout court): among the rare visitors of Charlie there is also a young missionary. Convinced that the world is about to end, he would like not to convert, but to help, even if in the past the sect he refers to was responsible for the death of the man loved by Charlie.
The rhetoric and the applause
In The Whaleeven if the square meters in which the action takes place are a handful, there is a lot: there is the body of man, there is God, there is the greatness of genius (Walt Whitman, the most quoted American poet in Hollywood, before and after The fleeting moment) but there is also the modesty of the writing of the essay on Moby Dick written in middle school by Ellie and that according to Charlie who finds him so beautiful that he has a thaumaturgical power over him, it would provide proof of his precocious intelligence and that his life was not wasted if he produced such a girlish treasure .
Above all there is a lot, a lot of rhetoric. And in fact she is crying at the press screening of The Whale and, consequently, the applause explodes thunderous on the credits. Brendan Fraser, who has already given interviews in which he reveals all the difficulty of working with a 130 kilos suit created specifically with the 3D printer, has started the superlatives campaign, 6 hours to wear the suit and become “the whale”, the hairs cut by hand one by one… But it’s not just the technical categories that the director’s film aspires to The Wrestler in 2008 he took home the Golden Lion. The Whale it seems made especially for the Oscar campaign. And it probably is.
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