The whale: The struggle between the soul and the body | Peliplat (2025)

Cinema is an art of empathy, which means, for a film, getting the audience emotionally involved is vitally important. And once that is done, sometimes it’s better not only to tickle the heart but also to tickle the brain of the audience. Darren Aronfsky’s film has obviously accomplished both. Starting with his low-budget film debut Pi in 1998, with his following success of “Requiem for a Dream”, “ Black Swan”, and “Mother”, Darren Aronofsky’s film has always paid great attention to the human condition, provoking audiences to consider absurd and brutal psychological and philosophical themes.

The Whale” follows the pattern. It talks about a lot of things, including discrimination against homosexuals, and repulsion against the obese. It also talks about salvation, either from religion or from the connection with others. It is a tragedy that reflects on the fundamental nature of human existence, which, in this film, is about the struggle between the soul and the body.

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Based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the script), “The Whale” tells a sad story about a man suffering from excessive obesity and heart failure who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter in his last few days.

Charlie, played by a fat-suited Brendan Fraser, is a college writing instructor who never leaves his apartment due to being excessively obese. He conducts his classes online, disabling his laptop camera so the students can’t see him.

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Charlie is trapped — in his rooms, in a life that has run off the rails, and above all in his own body. He was always a big guy, but after the suicide of his lover, to release the pain, his eating “just got out of control.” Now his body weighs 600 pounds, and he is too bloated to move his limbs freely; Lying on the couch, his bulging belly could be used as a coffee table. His blood pressure is spiking, his heart is failing, and the simple physical exertions of standing up and sitting down require enormous effort and mechanical assistance. When charlie realizes he’s only got a few days left. He tries to fix his relationship with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who has never forgiven Charlie for leaving her and her mother for a man.

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Charlie is a beautiful soul living in a repulsive body.

Charlie is both incredibly giving and incredibly selfish, both loving and physically hard to look at. He has the most loveable eyes to look at and yet his body of excessive obesity is repulsive. He’s the kindest person to others who always try to understand people and believe in the best of people, and yet the cruelest person to himself. It’s due to the effortlessly duplicitous way, Aronofsky pushes and pulls the audience into this story of grief and self-destruction.

Aronofsky’s films always focus on obsessive, ambitious characters trying to accomplish something that they would go beyond and pay any price for even if it means self-destruction. The whale also talks about self-destruction but the reason is not that the character tries to accomplish anything, instead, it’s because of grief and self-loath.

When Charlie falls in love with another man, he dumped his family and his daughter for his own happiness. But after his boyfriend committed suicide, Charlie’s life becomes meaningless. All he has is grief and regret. The only reason for him to be in this world is not himself, instead is for the love of his daughter, for the atonement to his daughter for the harm he has caused when he left the family for a man.

He regrets what he has done so he couldn’t forgive himself. He couldn’t live with himself and in order to feel a little bit better and forget about his pain, he would indulge himself in sensual pleasures, and eat a hell lot of food until throwing up. As a result, he declines into an even worst situation.

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The struggle between the soul and the body.

The film opens with Charlie teaching literature in his calm and lovely voice, showing him as a spiritual, soulful person, but in the next scene, he indulges himself in desires and jerks off watching gay porn.

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It’s impressive writing and masterful directing that the audience can empathize with such a repulsive character of excessive obesity who is jerking off to death with heart failure right at the beginning of the film.

“What I really love about cinema is that it is this great exercise in empathy and that you can watch a movie about any person in the world, and if it’s an honest, truthful portrayal, you will be brought into their life, into their circumstance. Because we’re all human,” said Darren Aronofsky.

In the struggles of humanity, we may not suffer as much as Charlie does, but once we get into his life journey, we feel all his pain. We have all been in that situation. We have all done things that we regret, and everyone, to some extent, has been through depression. It’s a situation nobody wants to stay in, especially with self-loath, if you can’t even live with yourself, how can you live at all? Like Charlie, we usually escape the pain by indulging ourselves, whether it's gluttony, indulging in sensual pleasures, excessive drinking, or doing drugs. To make ourselves feel better, we would do all the harm to our body to release the suffering of our spirit.

The body is the cag of the soul

Aronofsky's longtime cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, has lit Charlie's apartment in such a relentlessly dark and dim fashion to signify his sorrow that it's oppressive. Charlie has been trapped inside the dark house, also inside his huge body.

With the metaphor about the body being the cage of the soul, the director finally demonstrated charlie's spiritual sublimation in a surreal way in the final scene. Charlie finally breaks away from the bondage of the body and flies, which also predicts Charlie's physical death. As the time his body dies, he breaks away from the bondage of the body and finally, he’s saved spiritually.

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Salvation

The film doesn’t endorse salvation from religion. It actually reckons that religious people judge people too much. Once people think they have found the truth about life, they begin to think of themselves as better than others, and also act superior to others. They treat the people who believe differently as lost souls need to be saved.

If religion makes you judge people instead of understanding all humanity. Maybe that religion is just not the truth about human existence and it’s definitely not the way out.

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“I’m really not interested in being saved”, That’s Charlie's response to the young missionary when the missionary is trying to convince Charlie that only god can save Charlie from his excessively obese body and give him a better one.

From the film, it looks like all religion has done is harm people. Charlie’s boyfriend committed suicide because of abandonment and judgment from his own Christian belief. The young missionary tries to save Charlie by saying all judgemental things about his sin of being gay. The young missionary can’t even save himself since he steals from the church and runs away from home worrying about being caught. Eventually, he’s saved by Charlie’s uncaring daughter who talks and acts evilly all the time. What an Irony.

I don’t think the director is trying to judge god, instead, he talks about religion, which in reality, has gone astray from its original belief and become some kind of tyranny.

Can people save each other?

“I don’t think I believe anyone can save anyone,” said Liz, Charlie’s home nurse who has been taking care of Charlie.

“People are incapable of not caring.” “people are amazing” responded Charlie.

Liz's unselfish love and relentless care for Charlie are very touching. Charlie and Liz share a deep memory of the same person, who’s Liz’s brother, also charlie’s lover. She loves Charlie deeply, but she understands Charlie’s choice to die, so she agrees to let Charlie go since the world is just too harsh for him and death is kind of a release.

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Charlie's only interaction with his ex-wife Mary is also very touching. Looking at her sick and excessively obese ex-husband, Mary feels sorry for him. Mary Lies on Charlie’s chest and listens to the throbbing beat of Charlie’s dying heart. Both of them try to remember their happy family days at the beach. They used to love each other.

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“I just want one thing done right in my life.” Charlie wants to bring the kindest back to his daughter’s life before he dies. He wants to save her daughter from sinking into a life of hatred because of him. His life is already ruined. He doesn’t want to be the reason that ruins his daughter’s life.

People tend to believe things after what happened to them in life. Ellie believes people are evil and holds hostility toward the world since she was dumped by her father when she was 8.

Charlie keeps on reading his daughter’s essay because there’s love towards him, that’s the only moment that he could escape from grief, depression, and self-loath. He believes there’s still kindness in his daughter. When Charlie’s about to die. He asks Ellie to read her essay one more time to him. Eliie gets afraid and walks out.

When Eliie opens the door, the light shines on her face. Ellie has been in the dark all the movie time, and at this last moment, the light shining on her face just echoes the change in her mind. At this moment, she really feels her father's love and his remorse for her, and at this moment, she decides not to escape but to forgive and help her father.

When Ellie reads the article to her father, Charlie feels enormous spiritual strength break through his huge physical body that bound him and stands up.

Ellie is also saved by her own written words. She remembered the time when she wrote those words, the time when she could still trust others, when she could still feel happiness and joy, and when she could still love her father unselfishly.

Maybe, even in the most desperate moment, people can still save each other.

The whale: The struggle between the soul and the body | Peliplat (2025)
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