🏆 2023 Oscar WINNERS: The Whale

Brendan Fraser, who has been out of the picture for nearly 20 years, is awarded for Best Actor for his film The Whale. The film confines the whole story to the narrow home of the protagonist Charlie, showing the different characters encounter life difficulties, spiritual crises, almost inexorable loneliness, and each other's longing, hurt, and redemption. Charlie's home is the stage of the whole story and the world constructed by each character's participation.

In "The Whale", each character appears with their encounter. Whether it is a life crisis or a spiritual dilemma, they appear in Charlie's home with anger, dissatisfaction, grief, and pain. At the center of the story, Charlie is physically and emotionally exhausted. He weighs 272 kilograms, struggles with daily movements, and is on a fast path to death. The film adopts one week as the basic narrative time structure of the story.

Characters and Fiction

Almost from the beginning, The Whale has an air of irrevocable sadness, whether it's Charlie's dark and chaotic home, the constant rain outside the house, or the state of each character. Seeing Charlie's stubborn reluctance to go to the hospital when he knows his health is in danger, we can realize that he is arranging his chronic suicide in an orderly fashion. Under the premise of "suicide," the story of Thomas and his daughter Ellie is particularly tense.

Existential crisis - encounter with the other - collision with each other - salvation - it is a classic narrative structure. The Whale" follows the pattern, a film in which everyone has their own "hell" and the encounter of each wounded soul is almost predetermined. The most typical character is Thomas, who, after running away from home, comes to this strange place with his rebellion, escape and panic on his back. He meets Charlie and the strangers and finds his way back to salvation through them.

A large part of "The Whale" is taken up by Charlie and his daughter Ellie as they try to understand each other, and argue. Or rather, Ellie's anger and questioning of her father's abandonment and indifference to her. Her anger and rebellion are the victim's cries, resistance, and self-help. That is not her problem, but her parents, the school, and society, together. She seems to have an instinctive awareness of her situation, so in a way, she approaches her father to save herself actively.

The Director's repeated references to Melville's work The Whale made me think about the film and the novel's text more variedly. In the film, around the imagination of Charlie, different characters show different desires and abysses: the friend Liz attempts to save Charlie who is dying, but in the end, she can only helplessly comply with his wishes to help him walk a little more comfortably; the daughter attempts to get her father's confession and the proof of his longing and love over the years, and finally, at the end of the film, she gets what she wants; and Thomas hopes to save Charlie's Thomas hopes to prove that he was right to run away from his parent's church and that he is truly able to save others by saving Charlie's soul. Charlie, like Moby Dick in the book, drives Captain Ahab crazy. Or, more accurately, everyone is entangled in their desires, deep in their abyss.

Weight, as a spectacle

Liz's narration reveals that Charlie's boyfriend, Alan, left his parents' church to form a family with Charlie because of his sexual orientation. But Alan ultimately failed to escape the religious concepts he was raised with that led him to doubt his existence. Allen had specifically marked verses in the Bible about the flesh and being alive, but he eventually died precisely from the physical debilitation caused by the hunger strike. He attempted to follow the teaching of this passage, refusing to submit to the body and relying on the Holy Spirit, so his final death might have been for the survival of the "spirit.

For Charles, the death of his beloved was an eternity. Perhaps that is why he disobeys the scriptures and "lives in obedience to the flesh" by systematically eating himself to death. Charlie's overweight body is a "spectacle" that causes the audience physical discomfort and curiosity. Not only is he violating the most basic modern ability of self-rationality - the body health management - but he brings to light the great determination that may lie behind such "indulgence.

The most confrontation with overeating comes from the ancient teachings of Christianity: the devaluation of the flesh/body and the praise of the spirit/divinity. They view the body as earthly and the source of depravity, and therefore its restraint, discipline, and control have been practiced throughout almost all of Christian history and doctrine.

In addition, another profound meaning of Charles' spectacle of the body lies in its exaggerated presentation of the modern philosophical perception that "man lives in the world through the body. The traditional devaluation of the "body-earthly" is turned upside down, as Hannah Arendt does in her "Love and St. Augustine: love of the earthly world. Furthermore, we live in the world we create through our bodies, and it is through our bodies that we love the world.

The mundane nature of the body is such that it seems destined to be incapable of transcendence. Through his "love" of this mundane nature - eating - Charlie makes his body an exaggerated proof of his existence in the world. The despised worldly desires, marginal feelings, and longings are infinitely amplified in this process and thus blossom into intense love.

Bonding

As Hannah Arendt says, the world is not the physical space we live in, but the place in-between, where people sit around the table at dinner. The world is our bond with others, and when that bond is broken, the world will be desolate. The "world" constructed around Charlie provides a possibility for the expelled, confused, and desperate to reconnect with others. Therefore, it is only in this sense that we can truly understand the loneliness or salvation of others.

In "The Whale," Charlie's best friend didn't believe he could save others, but perhaps it was the pessimistic reality that people yearned for dependence and companionship. I find the ending overly contrived, and it seems to be the most questionable part of this storytelling model: can we save others? Can we create a place of light for others who are alone? I don't approve of it.

Loneliness is existence, but we create the world with others precisely to combat these inextricable abysses, and only in moments of encounter with the other can we examine our existence and lives. That is the real reason why the film is so moving. No one is Captain Ahab, and the hunt for Moby Dick will only end in a lose-lose situation. We can find a new possibility to meet authentically, collide, and create with individuals.