‘The Whale’: Vanity Fair Calls Brendan Fraser’s Performance “Transformative”

Darren Aronofsky’s films are very stylized affairs, but it seems as though the filmmaker took a very different approach with his upcoming “The Whale.” This is going to be a stark, minimalist and stylistically subdued film.

In an interview conducted with Vanity Fair, Aronofsky describes the genesis of “The Whale.” More intriguingly, the author of the piece gives us a some additional details about what to expect:

There is an extraordinary collaboration—and two very different, if equally massive, career leaps—at the heart of The Whale, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival this weekend. There’s Fraser, portraying a reclusive online English teacher near the end of his life, in the most transformative—and, yes, impressive—performance of his 30-year screen career. And there’s Aronofsky, a brazenly stylistic filmmaker, from Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan to Mother!, executing a relatively straightforward kind of movie: a starkly realistic stage adaptation that stays in a single location—Charlie’s home—from beginning to end, without flash or fuss.

Of course, this is a puff piece. I really want to believe this film will be great … a lot of it focuses on Brendan Fraser’s comeback, and that seems to be the narrative that A24 will be going for when it comes to “The Whale.”

The film does finally have a release date. A December 9th theatrical release is being reported in the same Vanity Fair piece.