Deborah Ross

Both compelling and repulsive: The Whale reviewed

It's hard to take your eyes off 600lb Charlie, much as you’d sometimes wish to

Brendan Fraser as Charlie in The Whale. Credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO 
issue 04 February 2023

I can’t work out if Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as a man weighing 600lb – that’s 42 stone in real money – is ‘abhorrently cruel’, as some have said, or a film of ‘rare compassion’, as others have said. Either way, it is compelling, although whether that’s for the right reasons or wrong reasons, I also can’t work out.

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