fbpx

Destructive Authenticity in Full Focus

The Whale is the latest “controversial” film in which the average moviegoer will struggle to discern where exactly the controversy lies. It follows Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a morbidly obese, couch-bound gay man as he reckons with his impending, slow-motion suicide-by-fast-food. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film is adapted from a play by Samuel Hunter (who also wrote the screenplay) and follows an intimate cast as they move in and out of Charlie’s claustrophobic Idaho apartment. All of the characters care deeply about each other even if they do not realize it, and the film unfolds around them learning to be honest with themselves and those they love. While “honesty” is the central theme of the film, it is a particularly modern conception of honesty—one that prizes subjective authenticity as the highest ideal. 

Little subtlety goes into setting the stage for Charlie’s demise. We are introduced to Charlie as a detached voice in a black Zoom square, instructing his uninterested Literature 101 students on effective communication. On Monday, his caregiver and confidant Liz (Hong Chau) checks his blood pressure and tells him, “If you don’t go to the hospital, you will die” by the end of the week. Unwilling to change his habits, he sets out to make amends with his estranged teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he left as an eight-year-old in order to be with his gay lover and former student. Charlie is eating himself to death not for this sin, but out of grief for his lover who committed suicide, a victim of internalized Christian homophobia. The hypocrisy of the church is personified by Thomas, a young evangelist who attempts to save Charlie’s soul in his final days.

The film revolves around the relationship between Charlie and Ellie. She attempts to wound him—calling him disgusting and forcing him to stand without his walker—while he has nothing but compassion for her. Sink has the same chiseled jaw and piercing eyes as a young Fraser, which makes her believable as his daughter. Although she is a much less seasoned actress, her performance works as a teen trying just a bit too hard in her performative wickedness. 

The real question is not, as critics suggest, whether Aronofsky wants us to find genuine compassion, but whether he gives us a character truly deserving of it.

Despite pretending to be only interested in the money and homework help he offers her, Ellie cares deeply for her father and continues to spend time with him. She is wary of being hurt again and her cruelty serves as a shield. For his part, Charlie admits that he stayed away to protect her. “Who would want to know me?” he asks her piteously. Ellie’s mother (Samantha Morton) admits she kept Charlie away because she thought Ellie was “evil.” She feared Ellie would hurt him and blamed her own maternal shortcomings for how Ellie turned out. Through their own insecurities, each member of this dysfunctional little family deceives themselves and winds up hurting the people they meant to protect. Although their flaws are evident, Aronofsky succeeds in making the viewer understand why they did what they did. 

Thus, it is unsurprising that in an interview with the LA Times, the director explained that the film is meant to be an “exercise in empathy.” By his own standard, the film largely succeeds—due in no small part to Fraser’s performance. Although Fraser received critical praise, the film received generally negative reviews from critics who took issue with Aronofsky’s stated aim. The common gripe is that Aronofsky fails to see Charlie’s humanity and instead merely gawks at his condition. His empathy is dishonest because it portrays both negative and positive aspects of Charlie’s condition.

The critics are right that we are meant to gawk. The prosthetics provide a marvel of grotesquerie. We watch in horror as Charlie inhales Snickers bars while Googling congestive heart failure, scrubs his hulking belly as it eclipses the rim of the shower tub, and suffers a heart attack while masturbating. But true empathy requires moving past circumstances that render us naturally unsympathetic to a level of deeper compassion for others—even at the expense of self. Yes, Aronofsky wants us to gawk at Charlie’s appearance as much as his behavior, but the “exercise” is to suppress our own repulsion in order to fairly evaluate the worthiness of his atonement—and hopefully exit the theater feeling somewhat ashamed of our rush to judgment. The real question is not, as critics suggest, whether Aronofsky wants us to find genuine compassion, but whether he gives us a character truly deserving of it.

Charlie struggles for forgiveness on two fronts. On the one hand, he is rightly ashamed of abandoning his family. On the other, he struggles to reconcile what he did with who he is. Throughout the film, he grapples with honesty and authenticity. Hiding his appearance from his ex-wife, his students, and even the pizza delivery boy parallels his deeper insecurity—should he feel ashamed for being gay, since it led to the destruction of his family?

We can rightly feel compassion for Charlie’s condition while still demanding the recognition of the cold, hard truth: he is needlessly killing himself and once again abandoning his daughter.

His salvation comes through the missionary Thomas, the closest approximation of a villain in the story, who unintentionally teaches Charlie to separate his actions from his identity. Thomas reads him a Bible verse: “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). Thomas believes that Charlie’s lover died because he failed to repent for his homosexuality and pleads with him not to make the same mistake. After making incessant apologies throughout the film, Charlie finally has an epiphany: he will no longer apologize for “being in love.” With this realization, he tells his students to forget everything he taught them and just write something honest. When they do, he turns on his webcam and reveals himself. 

After finally learning to be honest with himself, Charlie’s ultimate atonement comes from “saving” his daughter—teaching her to overcome her defensive cynicism and navigate the world in the way he refused to for so long. He sees that all her bad behavior disguises the caring person she truly is, and wants her to see herself as he sees her. He succeeds in the final scene and can die in peace knowing she will lead not just a “good life” in the material sense, but an authentic life of self-love and genuine connection. 

While we empathize with Charlie, it is not clear that we should to the extent that Aronofsky wants us to. A more “honest” assessment of Charlie’s atonement would not reveal a strict mutual exclusivity between his identity and actions. One need not be a fundamentalist Christian to contend that raising Ellie in a stable family ought to have trumped his own desires—no matter how inherent they are to his being. Would the middle ground—postponing his own happiness for ten years until Ellie was grown—really have been such a terrible thing? Aronofsky would like us to think so, but to accept Charlie’s atonement requires prioritizing subjective authenticity over moral obligation to others. 

Since we are instructed to empathize with Charlie’s journey toward self-realization, we are then expected to understand the condition he winds up in. Speaking on his collaboration with the Obesity Action Coalition, Aronofsky said that if the film leads just “one doctor to look and say, ‘Oh I know someone like that, I’ve met Charlie’” then he’s done his job. This ignores that harsh judgment from a doctor was exactly what Charlie needed most. Empathy does no good when it leads to excusing harmful behavior. We can rightly feel compassion for Charlie’s condition while still demanding the recognition of the cold, hard truth: he is needlessly killing himself and once again abandoning his daughter. Choosing authenticity can—and in Charlie’s case does—in fact, lead to negative consequences. When taking this instrumental approach, The Whale becomes a cautionary tale and presents an inconvenient reality for champions of authenticity at all costs, including both the director and his critics.

Given how the moral of the story conforms to pieties of the modern self, it is hard to see why critics overwhelmingly found this to be a controversial and “fatphobic” film. Perhaps it should be more controversial for the reasons laid out, but the average viewer will likely see it as merely an uplifting tale of love and forgiveness. Yet for critics of a certain bent, examining the conditional subtleties required to empathize with a character like Charlie is transgressive. Authenticity cannot be flawed; it is not complex. Blind, unquestioning approbation is the only fitting response. It is a signifier of virtue and a moral action unto itself. In their self-righteousness, critics forget that it is Charlie’s flaws and the ambivalent reactions they trigger that make him such a compelling character. Such complexities are what make for all great characters, and ultimately all great films. If critics had their way, both the artistry of filmmaking and reality itself would be sacrificed on the altar of authenticity. 

The ugly truth is that some things deserve to be gawked at. 

Related