Posted BY: Tim Jones
One of the more successful indie movies of the last couple of years is The Whale that’s now playing in theaters across the country and recently crossed the $10 million mark at the box office. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s another film by Darren Aronofsky, who’s known for directing edgy films like Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, and Mother! Like The Whale, the first two portray various kinds of addictions; addiction to perfection in Black Swan, drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream and food addiction in The Whale where Brendan Fraser plays a morbidly obese man Charlie, a professor who teaches college writing courses online.
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The other primary characters are his daughter Ellie, his nurse Liz, and a young Christian missionary Thomas, who wants to save Charlie spiritually in order to save his earthly life since he’s basically committing slow suicide with his eating compulsion. To summarize as best as possible, his eating disorder started when his gay lover, the brother of Liz, committed suicide over the extreme guilt put upon him by the head of the ministry that Thomas is a part of. Ellie is extremely angry with her father Charlie since he left the family for a relationship with a man. A subnarrative involves Ellie exposing Thomas as once a pothead and a thief before turning to religion to straighten himself out.
