32: Physical Transformation

I'm making my way through my stack of screeners for awards season and as I do so, I'm reminded of the kinds of storytelling we tend to value as big and important. There are precious few genre movies, and almost never any comedies. Usually there's a war story and an addiction story; more often than not there will be a drama about dementia or cancer. There's always at least one movie about ~the magic of the movies~ and how we wouldn't be human without them. Awards movies tend to be Serious Fare, movies that telegraph their intentions to make grand statements about what it means to be human. Movies that get released at other times of year can do this too, of course, but the movies we tend to call Oscar Bait are the ones that tend to be marketed that way.

I've been thinking about this mode of self-important storytelling mostly in relation to Darren Aronofsky's latest movie, The Whale. Based on a stage play of the same name (the script was adapted by the original playwright, Samuel D. Hunter), the film follows the final week in the life of Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive English teacher who is slowly eating himself to death as he seeks reconciliation with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink). Being an Aronofsky film, The Whale is consumed by questions about humanity, sin, damnation, and redemption. Aronofsky himself has claimed that his movie is a work of "empathy;" the line about "empathetic" storytelling has made its way into the film's for-your-consideration promotional copy.

I found The Whale to be excruciating, not empathetic. Aronofsky's adaptation clings to Charlie's apartment, and the brief moments we spend outside on the porch are a relief, a moment to breathe away from the film's protagonist. Fraser tries so hard to lend a sense of humanity to Charlie under the pounds of prosthetics and the sheen of sweat coating his skin, but the film is marked by a sense of loathing, partly Charlie's, and partly Aronofsky's. When Charlie eats, the film makes him out to be an animal, unable to control himself and presented as monstrous by both his appetites and by the leer of the camera. It's possible to make an empathetic movie about someone who hates themself, but Aronofsky doesn't succeed here; the metaphor of the movie is so heavy-handed that it blots out any hope of nuance or understanding.

Brendan Fraser's physical transformation is a form of body horror. Here is the one place where the Academy Awards are willing to intersect with the trappings of the horror genre: by honoring Best Actor nominees who transform their bodies into something other than themselves. Brendan Fraser's return to leading roles–and, by extension, his bid for Best Actor–is part of a long line of actors in recent movies who put on a series of prosthetics, or who have affected disabilities, in order to portray human suffering. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant, a bear mauling and exposure to cold). Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody, prosthetic teeth and eventually the effects of HIV/AIDS). Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour, a fat suit and significant facial prosthetics). Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything, a wheelchair and a contorted body). Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club, the effects of HIV/AIDS again). All of their performances have to do with physical transformation into something that their respective movies present as "beyond human," but which in practice means something "other than human." With the exception of maybe Churchill in Darkest Hour, each of the men above become characters who are to be pitied: see, here is a fate the audience should fear. Pity makes these characters into something outside of the audience. It others, rather than empathizes.

Anthony Hopkins in The Father and Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea are also recent Oscar winners as objects of extreme pity, but there's no physical transformation for either performance. They do both experience extreme loss–Hopkins' character of his cognitive abilities to dementia, Affleck's children to a house fire–and as such both exist on the bubble of human suffering, and are therefore worthy of filmmaking awards, because they play characters who have lost something crucial to their identities. The only recent Best Actor winner that was not earned through portrayal of extreme suffering is Will Smith, who won last year for King Richard. The performance does incorporate facial prosthetics, but Smith isn't playing a character who is dehumanized by his own movie. His win is still characterized as a loss today because of his behavior at the awards ceremony, and his latest movie Emancipation leans on physical debasement in the line of other Best Actor-winning pictures. A loss for cinema in multiple dimensions.

I truly hope that Brendan Fraser does not join the long line of Best Actors who must suffer for their art. Pity is a powerful drug, an easy avenue for superior feelings. It paints its objects with a broad brush, and it telegraphs how the audience should feel. Art shouldn't be so easy. We can do better.

‌‌Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts, or just want to drop me a line, feel free to get in touch.

What I talked about:

This week on Seeing & Believing podcast, Kevin and I reviewed James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water and Noah Baumbach's White Noise.

We also released a bonus Seeing & Believing episode about Aftersun. I wrote about the movie for paid subscribers here; it was good to process it further with someone else. Aftersun is unassuming, but it's been rising in my estimation since I first saw it this past fall, and I think it's safe to say it's one of my favorites of the year.

What I listened to:

I listened to Chicago rapper Saba's latest album Few Good Things for a future episode of the Think Christian podcast. The album's terrific, both expansive and introspective. Stay tuned for our conversation about it as one of the best of the year.

What I'm reading:

This lovely piece by Michael Robins about loss and the way that art can connect us with others across the long span of years.