The Whale--a candid review

What a touching movie I just watched the other night. {Yes, it is from over a year ago but nonetheless, an excellent picture} The entire story takes place in the protagonist's shoddy apartment, mainly the living room, where Charlie, Brendan Fraser, an online English teacher, is dying due to complications of obesity. The Performance was brilliant; the writing spot on with only a handful of a supporting cast. The story encapsulates a dysfunctional father/daughter relationship resulting from a broken marriage and a homosexual affair. The wounds of betrayal and abandonment lie deep within all the women involved in the story—mother, teenage daughter, and a healthcare aide who was Charlie's deceased lover’s sister. Each woman has a story of their own about bitterness and hatred. Charlie, though he is dying and refuses medical attention (the aid tending him out of an affinity carried over from her brother’s tragic life and suicide), is upbeat about those around him and spends the remaining five days of his life tutoring his long-estranged daughter.

Brutally realistic is the tragic account of a binge-eating disorder lock-in who has given up on life, wanting to only set things right with his daughter, at times comparing their lives with Melville’s Moby Dick. Metaphorical does it all get, the characters, the pieces of their broken lives, perfectly summarized in an old essay the girl had written some years earlier, exhibiting her brilliance as well as a window into her soul. It is a story that will linger upon your conscience long after the final scene.