“The Whale,” a film review

A play-based film elevated by allegory and musical score

Photo by Daniel Guerra on Unsplash

NOTE: Heavy Spoilers

Darren Aronofsky likes allegorical films. And often at scale, too — 2017’s “Mother!” seems like a small film but explodes into a biblical End Times scenario. In “Black Swan,” it’s the music, the performance, the obsession that’s big. In “The Fountain,” the visuals and the stakes. You get the idea. In “The Whale,” it’s a man. A mild-mannered English teacher named Charlie.

Charlie is a shut-in. Morbidly obese, the movie opens with him sadly masturbating to porn. This just before a young missionary shows up at his apartment door to save him. That opening scene is a bit grotesque, and immediately makes you wonder, “Wait, why am I watching this?” But Aronofsky and writer Samuel D. Hunter are inviting you into this character’s most vulnerable moments, the most vulnerable period of his entire life. Hiding out from the world, blacking out his computer camera from his students, Charlie, we soon find out, is dying.

Yet Charlie doesn’t lock his door. Charlie is actually open to people, whether it’s the missionary, his friend Liz (a nurse), or his estranged daughter, Ellie.

Not everyone who is allowed to enter decides to do so. Though the pizza delivery guy is accustomed to taking money Charlie…