The Whale (2022)

Making a movie version of a stage play is a tricky discipline, especially when the film script (as in this case) is written by the same man who wrote the play and hasn't managed to transform the project to the screen. On film, you can show emotion with close-ups, whereas on stage you have to rely on speech and body language, and unfortunately, a lot of awkward and quite superfluous lines and physical reactions from the theater version have been included in the film, making almost everything seem overacted.

The story is about a grotesquely overweight English teacher's attempt to reconcile with his rebellious teenage daughter in the short time he has left in this world. The daughter was abandoned and deserted at the age of eight by the teacher, falling in love with a male student who later died, and now, burdened with guilt and grief, he has reached the end of a long, painful and gluttonous suicide. The daughter emerges as a misanthropic monster who hates everyone and everything, especially her father, which he consistently refuses to acknowledge. There is a (in my opinion) completely superfluous side story with a young Christian missionary who keeps knocking on his door, whereas his nurse, who is the sister of the deceased gay friend and the fat man's only friend, is an important character who uncovers the events of the past through dialog. Again something that could have been much better told through flashbacks, which would have been a welcome contrast in a movie that takes place almost exclusively in the same gray and boring location. The mnemonic device "Show, don't tell" was not invented for fun.

I'm far from enthusiastic. The only reason I give the movie three points is Brendan Fraser's fantastic performance (as the tragic fat guy), which at the time of writing has earned him an Oscar nomination. It's fully deserved, just as it's fully deserved that neither movie, director (Darren Aronofsky) nor screenwriter (Samuel D. Hunter) have been nominated.