Darren Aronofsky's The Whale is not the first thing anyone would think of when it comes to a comforting movie. As a film, it is one of the most emotionally devastating I have ever seen and probably ever will see. It is one of the very few movies I have seen that have genuinely left me speechless. To me, The Whale is more than a narrative film. It's almost like an autobiography, and it's almost frightening how much I see a relationship of my own reflected in two of the story's main characters. A relationship that I was never given the proper capacity to grieve, the story of my grandfather and I.
The obvious standout from Aronofsky's The Whale is the lead role of Charlie Sarsfield, played by Brendan Fraser, who won an Oscar for his spellbinding performance. In this role, Fraser plays a morbidly obese man who has been binge eating as a form of self-harm ever since the death of his partner. But this isn't the character I felt myself drawn to. Early in the film we are introduced to Ellie, Charlie's seventeen year old, juvenile delinquent daughter, played by Sadie Sink.
Upon meeting her, we see her as an abhorrent little brat who mistreats her father and hurls insults at him, unprovoked. She posts mean things about him on her Facebook, responds to everything he says with hostility, you start to feel really terrible for Charlie, who spends the entire film trying to connect with her. Up until this point in the film we've been lead to sympathize with Charlie as a gentle giant with a kind heart who can't help himself. He's a tragic hero, constantly bombarded with cruel remarks, and because of this we're groomed to despise Ellie with every ounce of our being. To the point where it becomes painful to watch every time she yells at him or hurls an insult his way.
It's not until a little way's into the movie that we discover the reason for Ellie's hostility towards her father. Almost nine years prior, Charlie walked out on Ellie and his wife to be with his boyfriend, Alan. Ever since, she has been completely estranged from her father whom she once adored. This revelation forces you to see Charlie in a whole new light as a more nuanced, complicated character. In the years since, Alan has committed suicide, leaving him alone, depressed, eating himself to an early grave. It's due to these profound feelings of love and grief that caused Charlie to leave his family and stay away for such a long time.
I hated Ellie upon first watch. I empathized with Charlie so much and I couldn't stand how she treated him. It wasn't until later that I developed a real sense of pain for her, a pain that I've experienced myself.
When I was seven years old, my grandmother died of Bladder Cancer. Despite being so young, I was extremely close with her, and spent nearly every other day at her house because she lived down the street from my childhood home. Her death was the most profound loss I'd experienced at that point in my life. Almost immediately after, my grandfather, Joseph, began distancing himself from my family. All of a sudden, this man who I saw nearly every day, raked autumn leaf piles for my brother and I to play in, and appeared in almost all of my baby photos... wanted nothing to do with me. I spent my early childhood thinking my grandfather would be in my life forever, but soon he became someone I would only see on holidays. I found myself mourning a man who lived down the street, who left me when I needed him the most.
While my father never ran out on me as a child, I still find myself resonating with Ellie's abandonment. All of her sadness over the years has morphed into a bitter rage that she takes out on her mother, her classmates, and of course, Charlie. Even her own mother calls her "evil" and "a terror." She's insanely jaded but deep down, she just wants her father to care about her.
In the years since my grandmother died, I also felt my sadness boil into anger. Whenever I exhibited any sort of frustration or moodiness I was advised to "not be like your grandfather." He garnered a reputation among the family for being this grumpy, mean, old man who had burned every bridge with his extended family. I soon found myself despising my own grandfather, not just because he left me behind, but because of how he treated the rest of my family.
The scene from The Whale that resonates the most for me is the last scene where Charlie dies of heart failure. Ellie is, like always, furious at her father but upon realizing that these are his last moments, her rage transforms into concern and sorrow. She goes from telling him "just fucking die already" to "we need to get you to a hospital." It's during this scene that Charlie finally properly apologizes to his daughter for the despair he has caused her. He cries through the pain: "I'm sorry for leaving you. I was in love and...I left you behind. You did not deserve that." Soon, all the heartache and misery in the room is replaced with love and forgiveness. Ellie does her best to soak up the last moments of her estranged father's life. The very last thing Charlie sees before dying is his daughter's face smiling up at him.
This scene directly reflected an experience from my own life, standing at my grandfather's deathbed. At this point I hadn't seen him in months, but heard around the house that he was declining and didn't have much time left. When I saw him in the hospital, he was only a head, buried beneath layers and layers of white sheets. I couldn't see below his neck but I still noticed how shockingly skinny he had gotten, it made me realize just how long it had been since I last saw him. His once deep voice had been reduced to a hollow, breathy wheeze. And he did something I'd never seen him do, despite knowing him through the loss of his wife and his daughter, in the face of inevitable death I finally saw him cry. Through his cries he begged me not to forget my late grandmother and my aunt, and he finally said sorry for missing out on my life. I found myself going through the same emotions as Ellie, soon all of the anger and resentment were dwarfed by feelings of pity and sadness. It's an extremely specific moment that holds so much emotional weight, I'm still shocked by how well it was captured in the film.
Throughout The Whale, Ellie is portrayed as the villain of the story, but she's not a villain, she's a hurt teenage girl, angry at the world for being raised without the love of her father. A person who's been raised to think they're not worth love can do some awful things. But Ellie's redemption comes from her forgiveness, and her father who never stopped seeing her potential despite her flaws.
The Whale is a film about humanity and kindness and it not only taught me how to appreciate life, but how to reconcile with my past. It made me understand that the real villain of my story was my grandfather's grief. He couldn't bear to face the world after losing the love of his life. Grief can turn us into people we don't recognize, and it has opened my eyes to the fact that my grandfather's absence wasn't because of hate, it was because of love. In the words of Ellie, this movie "made me think about my own life, and it made me feel glad for mine."
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