After a long time and some recommendations, I finally watched 'The Whale' and it is, unlike the ratings I saw, a good movie for me personally. However, it also has a couple of flaws that some people might have evaluated higher or rather lower, where others might have seen a tool box full of treasure for literature, psychology, sociology, ethics, religion, LGBTQ+, in a form of an fascinating drama or thriller.
What were the hidden gems in 'The Whale'? (Spoiler alert!)
If you have not watched the movie, I highly recommend you to do so before reading on from this point.
Literature
First of all what we notice is that Charlie (Brandon Fraser) teaches a writing class online. He doesn't seem to be a very proficient English teacher because in the eassay he knows by heart (because it was written by his daughter in 8th grade and he's absolutely proud of her for that) contains a mistake. The essay is telling us some general information about the 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville and there is a phrase where Charlie quotes, the author would engage in a conversation with one of the characters. As a literature or writing teacher, he should know that the author never engages directly with his characters but is rather protected by a narrative 'I' which unlike the author can display a story in first-person perspective.
For those who have not read 'Moby Dick', it is a story about a guy called Ishmael who joins a crew with a captain who has made it his life task to hunt and kill a white whale.
With the essay, the story of the whale being in trouble and not being able to realize how much he is in trouble of being hunted, we see some foreshadowing here for the rest of the movie since Charlie also seem to be unaware of his true state of health until he gets hints from his caretaker Liz (Hong Chau), googles his symptoms (product placement), and realizes that he's about to die.
That being said sets the frame for the whole rest of the story because we get to know that Charlie is supposed to be dying within a week of time and that is also pretty much how the movie will end.
Another work being mentioned in the movie are the poems of Walt Whitman which Ellie who is Charlie's daugther and suppoed to write school essays about is about to fail because she is frustrated not knowing how to deal with her family drama, is calling a faggot. Charlie tries to help her by changing her point of view by taking no offense but rather trying to make her realize that her perspective of Whitman is rather 'fresh'. Whitman, allergedly branded as 'gay' is here put into the story to make us aware that Charlie himself turned out to be homosexual, dating his caretaker's brother Alan who killed himself by, as far as we know, drowning himself in a river.
Apart from that and couple of online classes where Charlie us not really teaching but rather stating towards his students what he taught them before and giving them recommendations to improve their essats, we don't really find out more about Charlie's teaching background or literary expertise except that he read the bible and all the publications of a religious group called 'New Life' and that was labelled as 'cult' by both Ellie and Liz after encountering a guy named Thomas (Ty Simpkins).
Religion
Thomas is encountering Charlie almost dying in the beginning of the movie and pretends that he wants to help him, while he is actually a drug addict, refugee of the religious group "New Life" he stole from, and on the run from his family.
He shows up several times until Ellie helps him to reconnect with his family and he finally admits that Charlie is disgusting him, before leaving and not filfilling his role as an intended, prospective boyfriend for Ellie which the movie plot and the cgaracters indicate a couple of times before throwing that plot line off the cliff.
While Charlie stays neutral towards Thomas in the beginning before scaring him off with his emotional outbreak and sending him away with Alan's bible (?), Liz tries to be s open and direct with Thomas as possible, stating that she is a non-believer, and trying to convince him to leave Charlie alone because the 'cult' 'New Life' killed her brother Alan alongside with their deeply religious father who tried to marry Alan to a girl he barely knew after returning from being missionary in South America. What the audience and Liz don't know by this point is that Thomas won't give up because he already spent all of the ca. 2,500 USD he stole from the religious group, and, as he admits to Ellie in a semi-convincing speech, is unable to find out what to do next.
While Thomas seem to be the strongest believer, even telling Charlie that Alan most likely killed himself for not being able to live with his homosexuality, Charlie seems to be more of an agnostic, hoping that God does not exist to not face Alan in an afterlife as he turned out to be after his death.
Liz, Ellie, and Ellie's mother Mary don't seem to care much about religion, Mary clearly being alcoholic, Liz speaking very negatively about her father as a member of the church and her not belonging to this circle, and Ellie just gating everyone and not reflecting about any religious connotations at all. (Not even in her essay about a deeply religious book like'Moby Dick'.
Psychology
The psychological factors that are omnipresent and include sadness, shame, guilt, trauma, misunderstandings, unwillingness to accept reality and even go as far as eating disorders, alcoholism, threats, and toxic family relationships.
Let's start with Mary. She is an alcoholic who only appears towards the end of the movie. She does not seem to have sufficient financial means and much empathy to care about her daughter Ellie which she obviously neglects a lot what she called 'raising her'. She seems to suppress a lot of sadness and fled into alcoholism after finding out that Charlie was in love with a man some eight years ago. (For an eight years alcoholic at least, she looks quite fresh and content in the movie.) She has anger issues though and problematic mood swings making her quite an example of a choleric person.
Then, there is a pizza delivery guy who is called Dan and delivers two pizzas every day. He hears Charlie wheezing and coughing ans seems to be concerned about him. He seems to like to make friends or more but once he sees Chalie opening the door, reaching for the pizza, he clearly runs away and disgust, disappointment or both. He probably cannot cope with the fact that Charlie is not as attractive as his voice (LGBTQ+ trope) or he's simply disappointed by the fact that someone that overweight would still order two pizzas every day.
The next character, we can focus on is Liz. She is one of the more complex side characters because she is Charlie's caretaker, she was adopted into some kind of a religious family and refused from a young age to follow this religious and for her cultish belief that eventually killed her brother. She displays a lot of patience with Charlie, stating towards Thomas she would be the only one who can help him. Charlie lied to her that he only has 700 USD but offered to repair her car during the last winter. The whole truth comes out later in the movie when Ellie starts posting pictures of Charlie on the internet and her mother tries to confront Charlie for breaking the agreement the two of them had. (She raises her and Charlie gives her the money upon her 18th birthday.) Liz most likely suffers from some kind of trauma since her brother died, thinking that rescuing Charlie and bringing him into medical care or simply being there for him woulsd be a remedy for being unable to help her brother finding his way out of the misery of a religious family trying to marry him while being gay and in love with Charlie.
Thomas is a character that appears to be highly insecure but also extremely fanatic about his religious belief. First, he seems to be a naive and genuine person trying to help Charlie to find his way to God through the cultish-religious group 'New Life'. Ellie threatens and exposes him as someone who stole money from this group in Iowa and fled to Idaho, unable to move forward differently then pretending to help people and scamming them for their money. After Ellie finds his parents and they contact him to get him back home, he is extremely thankful towards Charlie and tries to convince him that Alan (which he never met and doesn't know) only killed himself because he struggled with being gay. That is the conclusion he reached after reading parts marked in Alan's bible he stole from Charlie's bedroom. Thomas gets away with everything, seems to feel morally superior and the only limitation he has is Charlie but we say good-bye to him as still being naive and blinded by his own superstition.
Let's focus on Ellie for a bit. She is an angry teenager and daughter of Charlie. She is deeply frustrasted about how Charlie could have left her with her Mum for a man and remembers this trauma very vividly when Charlie invited Alan over for dinner and put more emhasis on cooking the perfect steak for him that he ever did for his own family. In her hatred, we can discover her sadness about the loss of her father that becomes especially obvious in the end of the movie where she wants to find out why he handed her her grade 8 essay about 'Moby Dick' rather than writing a new essay about Walt Whitman's poetry. Ellie is very smart and she cares a lot but is deeply misunderstood and feels trapped by her impossible family situation living with her mother as an alcoholic who is clearly overwhelmed with her. She seeks answers, gets them but it disappointed with them, disappointed with her dad and disappointed from the world that denied her any chance for self-exploration, care, and understanding for what loss she faced when she was 8 years old.
Last one is Charlie himself. He is the center of attention and suffers from an eating disoder, high levels of stress, anxiety, and is about to die of a heart failure. His only aim and goal according to himself is to make sure his daughter is finding her way into life and does not drop out of school and goes the wrong way. He tries to make it up to her and first it seems that it is too late but over time, we see that his efforts, patience and apologetic nature pay of and he actually reaches her before dying in the end. He is deeply traumatized by loosing his boyfriend due to starving himself and the committing suicide that Charlie himself by any means does not want to commit suicide himself. He misses Alan a lot and even kept the bedroom where it is indicated that the two 'made love' in as it was while the rest of the house is more or less falling apart. He lost control according to himself but he is not displaying the villain on the story but rather a misunderstood victim. Unfortunatly, in his attempt to making it up to his daughter so badly, he overlooks Liz's love and care for him and takes it too much for granted which is only adding up to the fatal misunderstandings that create this family drama.
Ethics
The main moral question of the movie is dignity which comes over and over again. Charlie has no dignity for himself and is wondering if others would still love him, accept or even tolerate him for what he has become. While Ellie openly admits in her anger that he is disgusting for her, and Liz seems to have an unconditional bond with him over her dead brother and yherefore wouldn't ever tell him the truth in his face to hurt him, he is pinning down Thomas to tell him if he finds him disgusting or not. Thomas is lying in the first place but later admits that he finds Charlie disgusting. The delivery guy Dan also leaves with an expression of disgust or disappointment on his face when seeing Charlie grabbing the two pizzas from the front porch.
Another moral concept we find in the movie is righteousness. All of the characters seem to have coping mechanisms to deal with their past mistakes and be 'good' from now on but fail tremendously but they offer help to others despite the fact that they have no power to rescue themselves from their threatening faith. Charlie facing death, Mary facing to lose her daughter, Thomas facing imprisonment, Liz facing the loss of another 'family member', they are all traped in the feeling of being on a holy mission putting their own issues aside and caring for someone else while realizing that it is them who needs love and care the most. The tragic of the film is that only Thomas makes it out of his personal dilemma by being forgiven by his parents but through this way out without consequences fails to offer a 'proper solution' of salvation for other characters just like Charlie or Ellie to rescue them from their misery since he is too naive and doesn't realize that their family conflict is far more complex that his issue of stealing some money and running away from home.
Expectations and reality
The movie was actually much better than the expectation I had from the trailer or in general. My first impression was interest how the fat guy is regretting and thinking about getting his life back together before dying while watching, I realized that he is actually the one with the least problems in the movie and rather helps others to reflect and regret their life choices.
The movie is wasting potential at some points. It fails to give Thomas a proper punishment and giving him the feeling that he got away and it free. It also does not offer any kind of salvation for Liz or Mary while Charlie is dying in the hope Ellie would realize how amazing she is and Ellie is finding comfort in the fact that her father truly loved her and cared for her.
The relationship between Ellie and Thomas could have been far deeper giving her a friend or companion in crime and him a partner to rightfully question his morality and making him aware of his failures.
The movie also fails in questioning properly why everyone is body-shaming, hating, and humiliating Charlie rather than deeply reflecting on themselves why they would victimize him for their own egoistic traumatherapy.
Unfortunately, the acting of Branden Fraser is carrying others through the movie and some scenes like Thomas' confession, Liz' and Ellie's anger, and Mary's alcoholism are too flat and lack believable talent to display their misery appropriately. They are all more mimicking impostors around Charlie making the movie rather dull and exhausting to keep up with.
All in all, the movie was loaded underlying hints, different philosophical, social, and psychological questions but is also giving away a lot of good opportunities to show emotional dilemma and avoiding the question of 'why are they doing this?'
The movie is surprisingly shocking and the first of its kind making a highly obese, dying man the hero of the story.
Even though, there are some flaws as certain motivs and relationships remain unexplored, some bad acting, and obvious mistakes are mde throughout the entire movie, the satisfaction of watching comes from the insight that we start reflecting on our own prejudices, disgust, and concepts of life and death. Similar to what Ellie wrote in her essay:
"I think this is sad because the whale doesn’t have any emotions, and doesn’t know how bad Ahab wants to kill him. He’s just a poor big animal."
"I knew the author was just trying to save us all from his own sad story, just for a little while. This book made me think about my own life, and then it made me feel glad for my [...]"
We do not find out what Ellie was glad about and it is never explained if she herself even ever finished the essay but the fact it made Charlie survive for so long and is the last thing he wanted to hear before dying thas a poetic tragedy that is sad and beautiful at once and reminds us of the fragile state in which he all wander around on this planet.
If you have noticed any details in the movie that you ould like to mention or discuss, feel free to leave a comment below this blog. I am happy to find out about your interpretation of the movie and open for things you might have seen differently or interpreted in a different way.
Comments