The Whale (2022)

"I'm Sorry" (Repeat to ∞)

or

Marked "E" for Effort
 

Darren Aronofsky's latest film— an adaptation of the stage play "The Whale"—sits right in his wheel-house about subject matter, and could, in fact, be a thematic sequel to The Wrestler. Being stage-bound, however, the director does something unusual for him, by limiting it to a single set, and, for the most part, one room, shooting it in the restricting Academy ratio.

 

There's a practical reason for that; the subject of The Whale is Charlie (Brendan Fraser), an online writing course instructor living in Idaho, who is the only one participating in his ZOOM courses "without a working camera". The reason? Charlie is morbidly obese, to the point where he is rooted to his central couch, where he teaches, eats, watches TV (and porn). It's easier to just stay there, set in place, rather than reach for the walker (and the grabber so he doesn't have to bend down) and haul yourself, straining the entire way, in order to be upright and shuffle off to whatever duty needs to be performed. This is the burden he must bear, given how things are...and how he is. Best to restrict what you do to what you CAN do and what you can reach. One must also pre-plan and make sure one is not in a hurry...or the near-occasion of emergency.

But, it's all an emergency. Charlie's health issues are manifold: hypertension, congestive heart failure, and a BP of 238/134—when he looks up those numbers, he is taken to this site, which advises "seek immediate help and call 911." Not to mention the trouble breathing, the danger of choking, lack of oxygen, and a constant nagging cough that clears the lungs of fluid. The immobility weakens blood flow, can cause fluids to build up, and the legs to swell to the point where they crack and flake.

How could this happen, you ask? The Whale will spend its run-time telling you, through interactions with the few people who come to Charlie's unlocked door (it's too much trouble and strain to get up and unlock it). There's the missionary from "New Life", Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is on rounds, walks in on Charlie and decides to make him his mission, help him find God before he dies, whether Charlie wants to or not. There's Charlie's caretaker (Hong Chau), who checks on him every day, begs him to go to a hospital (he won't, he doesn't want to spend the money which he says will bankrupt him), and suffers through his constant apologizing for making her life so difficult—she'll do it anyway, because her brother was Charlie's former lover (whom he left his family for ten years ago). She genuinely loves him and Charlie's health battles are her battles, but without the burden of weight.

Then, there's Ellie (Sadie Sink), his troubled 18 year old, struggling with school and with life. She understandably is bitter that Charlie is not a part of her life, that he abandoned her selfishly. She visits him because he's reached out to her—his health is bad and he violates the "no contact" rule of his divorce from his wife (Samantha Morton) to try to make some sort of amends to the kid. But, she's challenging. Quite literally. At their first meeting in years, she's stalking to the door and turns to Charlie to the couch and says "Walk to me." And it's an epic struggle, one he can't accomplish and ends up causing damage to the world-within-arm's-reach that he perpetually inhabits. There's cruelty to something so simple. But, for Charlie, it's like he's being asked to walk across the world.

So, how is the movie? Despite it being the most succinct and fish-bowlish of Aronofsky's films, he manages to invest a lot of world-building in it. And Brendan Fraser—here's a post of my only encounter with the man—is brilliant in it. The part could literally be a wallow. Encased in the most restricting make-up since The Elephant Man, he manages to make it a physical performance while maintaining eyes constantly clouded with regret.

But, for me, it was personal. Since my last day-job, I had been "care-taking" for a guy I'd met who became a friend. The man had a congenital hip problem, which made moving around very difficult and extremely painful; this last job was the last work that he could physically do without tremendous amounts of pain. After awhile, he just couldn't sit for a few hours. Too tough.

He moved into a small, spartan "adult living facility" and he would spend his days in a single lounge-chair. He was fine for money; he was on disability. But, his world shrank as he went from needing a cane to needing a walker, and, finally, a wheelchair (which he never got to use). Being sedentary, he never really burned calories, so he gained weight, which only made his immobility—and the struggle to move around—worse (he never got to the weight of the character in The Whale, not even close). Plus, he smoked, had COPD, and his lungs would fill with fluid, his metabolism slowed, his legs and feet swelled (which only made matters worse). Finally, he was on oxygen (while still smoking, although he never had a tank, just a recycler). His world was reduced to the chair, his TV, and the meals which he had delivered. His diet wasn't the best, but he did love his fruits and vegetables.

He loved movies, but even that got affected. His time-clock went all wonky, where he'd stay up all night, sleep during the day, but his attention span started to falter (I would get texts and phone messages at 4 a.m. because he had no sense of time). Movies he would've liked in the past, he couldn't stay awake through. He particularly didn't like movies with multi-verses; one was hard enough to handle on their own. He loved Batman movies, but hated 2022's The Batman because Robert Pattinson whispered all the time. "Epic fail!!" he texted me when he caught it on The Tube (I just held my opinion, saying I was sorry he didn't like it).* And, like Charlie in The Whale, he would apologize in abundance, not wanting to be "a burden." I never considered him so. But, I wish he could've made more of an effort, even though I knew how taxing those efforts were. It's not like he gave up. It's just that he stopped trying, so sedentary had his life become. He died last year. I miss him. 

And all those memories burbled up as I watched The Whale. Anybody not going through that, or knowing someone going through that, might not believe that someone could get themselves into such a state. And take that for not thinking much of the movie...or the character. It's just that grief can do some devastating things. And doesn't always make the most entertaining movies.

 

It's not that they don't care. Of course, they care. It's that they give up trying. Because it's so. damned. hard.

* One of many projects I have planned here are reviews of movies that he kept insisting I should see, but I never got around to. I'm going to do that this year.

Jurassic World

You Bet Jurassic
or
"We're Just Used to Being the Cat"

It was tough to find parking when I went to see Jurassic World the other day—the parking lot was filled. The film has achieved the status of having the "highest grossing weekend" of any movie in history (surpassing the original Avengers).* That says something: the word-of-mouth is good, the marketing strategy worked, its box-office achievement inspired more movie-goers. In fact, it has surpassed the original in terms of box office crunching. I find that odd. Steven Spielberg's follow-up sequel The Lost World didn't do this well, nor did Jurassic Park III, even though those films had the original stars of the first in them (Jeff Goldblum in Lost World, Sam Neill and Laura Dern in III) and only B.D. Wong is around from the first one here. You could say that all the dino's were the stars of the film, especially the veteran T-Rex's and ingenue velociraptors. The director has only made one other film, the considerably low budget Safety Not Guaranteed, and the films are now far removed from Michael Crichton's original books.  So...why now?

The answer can probably be found in one of the themes of the film—there are many, sourced from other Spielberg films and diverse movie references—the finally-opened-because-we-worked-the-bugs-out theme park attracts visitors, sure.  But, business has leveled off.  So, to bring in the patrons again, they're going for a new route for producing dinosaurs under the dictate "Bigger. Louder. More Teeth."

Spielberg reference: the bait is a great white shark

That sounds like a movie tag line, and I'm surprised it hasn't been used on a poster for this...yet. But, it is "bigger, louder, more teeth" and it has an element that the other "Jurassic's" didn't have—more victim potential. This is the one that follows through on the original intent of the first novel; they've actually opened up a theme park for rich tourists to go see all the cute, cuddly dinosaurs that have been bred for the purpose. The disconnect in the first film was that if they're making a tourist attraction, why breed the most dangerous— and carnivorous—of the dinosaurs that would pose a danger to the folks paying good money. Dead customers are not return customers (one could make the same point about zoo's; tigers are good and all, but you don't exactly having zoo-goers walking amongst them. The park at Isla Nublar turns the zoo concept backwards—the dinosaurs run free, it's the tourists who are behind glass (in this case not the old Range Rovers on a track like the first film, but roving perspex spheres that look very, very vulnerable and prove to be so in the film). One wonders why they would breed the most dangerous of the dinosaurs in the first place, but, hey, what good is a dinosaur park without a T-Rex?

We'll put in the pterodactyls later...or is it The Birds?

Less of an insurance risk, actually.

And...really, everything has gone so well there in the past, what could possibly go worng?

Let me count the ways. For one thing, they're breeding hybrid dinosaurs, creating a new one called the "Indominus Rex" from sources unknown. Then, there's a visit from an overenthusiastic and ambitious InGen "suit" (Vincent D'Onofrio) who is all giddy about the possibility of "weaponizing" dinosaurs (oh, that's a really good idea—set 'em loose, get the job done and wait for them to attack their minders). Then, we've got the surly park ranger, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) who fancies himself a "raptor whisperer" attempting to train velociraptors—oh, there's a really, REALLY good idea. Part of the appeal of the 'raptors from the earlier films is that they were dinosaur bad-asses—you couldn't trust them and they were cunning and relentless. So, here's this guy who thinks you can train these things like a poodle. For the movie franchise, isn't that a bit like undercutting the brand? Say, like making "Godzilla" a good guy? (Oh, wait, they've done that).

Then, there's the Park's Operations Manager Clair N. Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who while all of this is going down, meeting with investors, as well as a visit by the CEO of the corporate holding company (Irrfan Khan, always a pleasure), as well as having to take care of her two nephews who have been tossed by their parents (Judy Greer, Andy Buckley) who are hoping to have some time away from their kids so they can plan their divorce. She's also had a short-lived dating thing with Grady that didn't amount to much because they're such polar opposites. Things are probably problematic on a GOOD day, with so many guest-stars arriving, things will probably go south and in a big hurry.

Normal at Jurassic World

Now, don't get me wrong, Jurassic World is pretty-darned good, and in a way that's not so familiar in feeling to the other films, while being slotted to be an entertainment machine: it's constructed of so much past history of JP and a lot of other movies, it has a nicely formed cookie-cutter familiarity to it, which gives it a nice comfort level in its ability to provide discomfort. And it is so gleeful in its depiction of a corporate Disneyland with killing machines, it didn't remind me so much of an adventure movie, as say, Jurassic Park was, so much as a "Summer Movie" placeholder, designed to make audiences feel good. 

Not-so-normal at Jurassic World (it must be "Fog" theme-day)

Let me explain: Jurassic World does not put me in mind of Jurassic Park, so much as Jaws 2. Remember that one? The original Jaws was an adventure story about peril that disrupted a resort Summer. It was moody, and had high stakes, even while Spielberg was trying to milk as much screams and nervous laughter out of the material. Its sequel (which is odd because Spielberg had nothing to do with it, while he was part of the development of this film) had the trademarks of the first film (sharks chasing people, Summer, tourist season), but it had a peculiar mood, which featured cute teens in jeopardy, water-skiers in jeopardy, a general "fun-in-the-sun" kind of vibe that just didn't play well with any sort of adventure at sea aspect that was at the heart of the Jaws concept. It was Universal Studio's attempt to "theme-park" a meteoric success, to disassociate it from its roots and shoe-horn it into "Summer fun" activity.

Grady and Dearing realize they're going to have to do some re-stocking.
The Indominus Rex kills for sport.

Jurassic World has that same feel. As competently made as it is, one gets the feeling there's an attempt to shoe-horn more entertainment value by 1) putting tourists in jeopardy; 2) making the velociraptors more relatable to audiences, making them almost personalities (maybe the film-makers remember the dinosaur scene from The Tree of Life with its 'raptor that spares its helpless prey?); 3) promoting the Universal brand by emphasizing the "theme park" aspect of it and tying it into the "Summer" activity feel of things. Jurassic World isn't so much a movie blockbuster as it is a cross-promotional activity designed to re-emphasize the money-potential to be garnered by the corporation that produced it. It has more things on its agenda than merely being an entertainment in its own right. It has to be an advertisement, as well.

Probably the dumbest thing about Jurassic World:
"Release the 'raptors..."

*