After dedicating two chapters to the analysis and discussion of Darren Aronofsky films in my recent book ADDICTED IN FILM, you can imagine how excited I was to see his latest film THE WHALE. I made it a point to avoid reading any articles or reviews before I saw it. For weeks leading up to the Oscars, my social media feeds were littered with posts of adulation for the film on one side, scorn on the other. Apparently Aronofsky’s work is as polarizing as our current politics, and I didn’t want to end up biased by anyone’s views.
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Okay, so here’s the thing about THE WHALE: It’s actually a play shot in the form of a movie. This is by no means a critique. I love a great play, and throughout the film there were moments where I felt like I was rediscovering the verbal artistry of playwrights like Ibsen, Brecht, Chekhov (the playwright, not the Star Trek character) and Ashby all over again. The fact that a filmmaker like Aranofsky - so adept at fully leveraging every part of filmmaker's toolkit - would choose to shoot a film in a single claustrophobic location with the camera pointed at a morbidly obese gay man throughout, is more a testament to his confidence as an artist, and less a betrayal for the fans who expect him to technically outdo himself with every new film he makes.
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Play-shot-as-a-movie, movie-based-on-a-play? Whatever. Forget about all the window dressing around it, the Oscar win for Brendan Frasier, the fat suit, the accusations of “fat shaming” - at its core THE WHALE is a contemporary artistic iteration of a timeless archetypal story that weaves its way like a metaphorical sinew throughout the history of culture and humanity. In fact, the archetype extends all the way back to paleolithic times, if not earlier. Fifty thousand years ago, the cave wasn’t just metaphorical, it was literal - as in our hominid ancestors actually lived in caves, hence the popular term “caveman.”
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Caves were the primary source of security, protection and warmth for cavemen struggling to survive on a hostile planet circling an ordinary star in an average galaxy in a mercilessly indifferent universe. You’ve heard the term “a million ways to die?” That was the paleolithic. In an ideal world, cavemen could stay in their caves indefinitely and avoid an unpleasant death at the hands of a bear, saber-toothed tiger, or freezing temperatures outside the cave. But the world is not built to be “ideal” - far from it. Unless they leave the cave to find food and water, they’ll die of starvation. The daily conundrum of humanity (literally) then and (metaphorically) now was and still is: Stay and starve, or leave and live.
The Cave metaphor has expressed itself throughout history in different forms, always through external and internal conflicts. A brave woman must leave the safety of her village and risk her life in a war to save her country and her way of life (external). A lonely man looking for love must emerge from the cave of his own insecurities, risk rejection, and struggle to find the love of his life (internal). There are millions of permutations. And hence millions of books and movies. The Cave is a metaphorical reflection of one of the central dichotomies of human existence: Status quo, weakness, inauthenticity, apathy, and defeatism - versus - change, courage, fortitude, authenticity, and possibility. Humans by nature strive for what is possible. It’s the reason we have iPhones and ChatGPT. Injustice is a cave. Sanctimony is a cave. Ignorance is a cave. Prejudice is a cave. Dead end jobs are caves. And of course, and decidedly, addiction is a cave.
Not everybody summons the courage to leave whatever caves they’ve been trapped inside, or trapped themselves inside. People can survive in a cave indefinitely, as long as they have food, water, and decent Wifi. Highly religious people remain in a cave constructed by their faith and will not venture out into skepticism or non-belief for fear of eternal hellfire. Spouses will remain in the cave of an unhappy marriage because they fear being alone on the outside. A teenager will stay in a cave of closeted homosexuality because they’re afraid their parents will kick them out of the house. A humdrum, hen-pecked British civil servant who has performed the same menial task for 40 years and never missed a day of work lives in a cave buttressed by cultural conventions and societal expectations. There is a beautiful movie about how such a man finally summons the courage to leave his cave. It’s called LIVING starring Bill Nighy (who, coincidentally, was competing against Brendan Fraser in the Best Actor category at the 2023 Oscars).
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Which brings us to THE WHALE, where Brendan Fraser (who ended up beating out Nighy for that Oscar), plays Charlie, a university professor who abandoned his wife and 8-year-old daughter after he fell in love with one of his male students who eventually contracted AIDS and committed suicide. To self-medicate over the loss, Charlie overeats and has ended up morbidly obese, literally trapped in his dark, dingy apartment - and metaphorically trapped in a cave of apathy, guilt, self-pity, and auto-destruction. If he does not leave this cave, he will die of congestive heart failure within a week.
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So Charlie, like every cave dweller before and after him, has to make a choice. But it’s not a life or death choice. It’s a choice between making the choice to leave the cave, or delaying the choice to leave the cave. Procrastination, in other words. It’s a perfectly adequate albeit temporary solution in the short term. But in the long term, it’s not feasible because the clock is ticking, the caveman’s food is running out, the addict is heading towards rock bottom, and Charlie’s heart is weakening. A dead reckoning awaits. And the full knowledge of this fact causes human beings like Charlie to feel stress, anxiety and guilt over their inaction. So they resort to those coping mechanisms we all know quite well. I categorize them as The 3Ds: Distractions, Delusions and Drugs of Choice.
People in caves are pretty adept at distracting themselves from their problems. Television, the internet, exercise, journaling, video games, sex - these are all perfectly good things to do, but they are also just some of the myriad of ways that people put off making important decisions, and then taking concrete actions to leave their caves. Charlie procrastinates with television news. I sometimes procrastinate by taking a nap.
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Delusions can take many forms. Some people sit in their caves and imagine that an intercessory supernatural phenomenon will suddenly solve all their problems. They develop a sense of “hope” (or perhaps better said “faith”) that an external agent will grant them a reprieve and make the reckoning magically go away. When it doesn’t, cognitive dissonance kicks in and adds even more psychological stress.
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Other cave dwellers delude themselves into thinking that their situation “isn’t that bad,” and that they’re “not like those people” who have similar problems. Or maybe they think that they might get “lucky” this time and avoid the reckoning. I wrote about many of these delusions in the book, especially in the chapter where I discussed REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, also directed by Aranofsky. As the starving caveman would eventually discover time and time again, basic laws of nature cannot be violated by mere wishful or magical thinking.
And lastly, if none of those other strategies work 100%, there’s always the possibility of cave dwellers indulging in their Drug of Choice. Alcohol does the trick nicely for three quarters of a billion people worldwide, and hard drugs do it for a quarter billion. Charlie’s drug of choice is food, and lots of it. What is so sinister about this cave adaptation strategy is that the very drug(s) of choice that is(are) being used to medicate over the anxiety caused by procrastination are themselves the architects and builders of the cave to begin with. Because again, addiction is a cave.
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Assuming a person finally buckles under the guilt and stress of indecision and inaction and finally makes a choice to stay or leave the cave; everything’s copacetic right? Well, that depends. One of the choices a cave dweller may make is to simply resign themselves to the fact that they don’t ever want to leave their cave. They are fully prepared to perish in it, either literally or metaphorically. This seems to be what Charlie has chosen to do in THE WHALE. He has the wherewithal to receive medical attention for his heart problem, but has decided to let his addiction to food play itself out until the very end. Faced with a choice between life or death, Charlie has unequivocally chosen death.
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One of the unpleasant realities of The Cave is that some people like Charlie in THE WHALE or Ben Sanderson in the film LEAVING LAS VEGAS (Chapter 2 of my book), make a conscious choice to commit slow suicide. The reasons may be many (in Charlie’s case he lost the love of his life), but at its core this decision is guided by the fully rational conclusion that continuing to live is pointless. Furthermore, their existence was and is meaningless, and even life itself is meaningless. Sad as it sounds, our freedom as human beings also implies the freedom to choose whether we live or die.
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The issue of suicide is a dark corner of the philosophical landscape where few thinkers feel comfortable enough to tread. The notable exception is Albert Camus, the French-Algerian writer who introduced the world to Absurdism. To him, and to a lesser extent philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, the world is entirely pointless, and no matter how much cave dwellers like Charlie and Ben use their reasoning capacities to find meaning within it, theirs is a Sisyphian task - hence the title of Camus’ book THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS. Faced with this grim reality, there are several choices people can make: Continue to bury their heads in the sand and do nothing (J.P. Sarte called this “bad faith”), commit suicide, align their existence to the whims of a higher power, or accept that existence is entirely absurd and do anything, everything, or nothing - it doesn’t matter either way.
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In this context, it is possible to view Charlie’s journey in THE WHALE as a 117 minute dramatic examination of these choices being played out. The dramatic tension in the film (ie. the conflict) comes about as internal and external forces challenge Charlie’s decision to commit slow suicide. The first external challenge comes as his nurse/caregiver/friend Liz (played by the amazing Hong Chau) tries to convince him to seek medical treatment. But Charlie sees no point in that because his continued existence has no meaning. He is free to make that choice.
The next external challenge comes in the form of Thomas (played by Ty Simpkins), a Christian missionary who tries to convince Charlie to turn his life over to Christ. But Charlie is not swayed by promises of the “hereafter,” because to him even the “hereafter” is pointless - assuming it exists at all. Thomas is fixated on the notion that “there is a reason God led me to your door,” a variation of the popular and metaphysically calming notion that “everything happens for a reason.”
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But does it? Does it really? Here we see the epic clash of two competing philosophical worldviews on how to extract meaning from a meaningless universe: Essentialism versus Existentialism. Some people put the cart before the horse. Their quest for meaning is a pull strategy versus a push strategy. Essentialism says that humans are born with an essential calling in life, and that every action they take throughout their lives pulls them closer in alignment with an existential meaning that was carefully selected for them by some supernatural agency, or the universe as a whole. Jesus take the wheel, in other words. But Charlie doesn’t buy into that notion, regardless of how hard Thomas tries to convert him.
No, Charlie has chosen to put the horse before the cart. In the film, he pushes to develop a relationship with his estranged daughter Ellie (played by the certain-to-be-huge-Hollywood-star Sadie Sink) in a desperate attempt to create “a meaning” for his existence, instead of aligning with one that was already chosen for him. In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the film, he asserts, “I need to know that I have done one thing right with my life!”
Perhaps because I’m a parent, I wept when I watched this scene. I have a 9-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. On days that the universe makes no sense to me, and I’m too cynical or exhausted to push forward and find new sources meaning in my life - like Charlie, I find my ultimate meaning and purpose in the fact that I’ve created two lovely human beings who care about me, and will love themselves and others around them long after I’m gone. Sure, I have a lot of grandiose projects going on, and fabulous plans for the future, but at the end of the day, my kids are the greatest achievement of my life. This makes the climax of THE WHALE all the more satisfying. At least for me.
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My apologies if you thought that this analysis of THE WHALE would inform the national conversation about eating disorders. It’s an important conversation, and I interact with individuals who are struggling with these disorders every day. But THE WHALE will not tell you much about eating disorders, it will just show you an example of one playing itself out in morbidly obese fashion through the character of Charlie. Like in other Aranofsky films I discuss in my book that examine addiction to drugs (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM Chapter 4), or addiction to perfection (BLACK SWAN Chapter 13), THE WHALE is less about the substance or behavior of choice, and more - much more - about the deeper philosophical questions and metaphorical archetypes being examined as his characters search for some meaning - any meaning - on an absurd planet that provides little guidance as to what it all means, and why we’re even here to ask that question to begin with.
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Ted Perkins
Author, ADDICTED IN FILM
Founder & CEO, RECOVERY MOVIE MEET-UPs
