With The Whale, Aronofsky tries to repeat The Wrestler

There is a precise and clear reason why The Whale it does not have the usual rectangular 16: 9 format of modern films but is framed as it once was, in 4: 3, that is the almost square format. The image is narrower and shorter, a square cage that is well suited to the title whale, that is Charlie, an obese man to a very serious level, so fat that he is at risk of death, with a crazy blood pressure and unable to move except through a support. His physique it is the sign of a malaise (he was fat but normally, something happened that caused this degeneration), of one tragedy daily buffered by being a literature teacher via zoom. And if the 4: 3 cages the character and makes his exaggerated dimensions even more confining, the film is also caged, it all takes place in her house, specifically almost everything in the living room. We don’t move from there because he struggles to move.

Method Aronofsky and specifically the technique The Wrestler. The principle behind the film is the same: take an actor who has been famous to give the opportunity for a great performance, focus on something that echoes the events of his life (Fraser really is very fattened) and use it to create emotion, orchestrate a story that starts from the physical to tell a desperate attempt to get in touch with others and also a destiny marked by that body, a destiny that speaks of death. There is no wrestling and the damage it causes but obesity, however the desire to tell the human margins and the extreme ways of painting a man looking for an extreme contact are the same.

It is to be admired the way in which Aronofsky tells this story that comes from a play. She does it by jumping with the assembly among the speaker, always framing everyone in the middle level (almost never in the foreground), in images that are thirsty for information and hold everyone (once again). There is not much of a mystery in the film and yet one stands on the tip of the seat waiting to know more. If anything, the mystery lies in the way Aronofsky he picks up the story, always ambiguous and ready to make everything happen, always interested in human beings for who they are in extreme situations.