January 2023

The Whale Plumbs Deep Water

The Whale is a dark — and heavy — film. The first time we meet the story’s central character, Charlie (played by Brendan Fraser, in ample prosthetics), he’s teaching a remote class on literary composition, represented onscreen by a black window in the center of a matrix of glowing, windowed faces. He claims his webcam is broken. The next scene takes place on an overcast day, in the dim front room of Charlie’s untidy apartment. The camera tracks left in an arc from the open kitchen into a connected living room — revealing the back of the couch upon which Charlie sits, panting — then pans right against the move as it comes around an end table and table lamp next to the couch, revealing a laptop on a stand with a gay pornographic film on...more