Too Big to Fail?

I would have been struggling to keep up with this week’s new releases even before I opened the door to an Imprint shipment we’d all believed lost in transit over Christmas. (I’ll get to it next week, I think, along with the contents of the other Imprint mailing that turned up the day before, but here’s two words for you: Blue Steel.)

Today, though, I’m tackling two of the 2022 awards season’s biggest contenders: Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. Both are risky, complex dramas that arrived in theatres at the end of the year with aggressive marketing and sky-high expectations. The Whale delivered, while Babylon … well, it has a chance at becoming a cult item somewhere down the line, so that’s something.

I honestly expected it to play out the other way around. The Whale is by far the trickier sell, an adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s stage play that’s ultimately built around the stunt casting of Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a gravely ill writing teacher who, driven by grief and self-loathing, is determined to eat himself to death. It’s a role that tilts towards the grotesque in the same way the character of Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas could easily have gone off the rails into flailing incoherence – but with the right actor, you can get something transcendent.

And Aronofsky has the right actor. As Charlie, Fraser gives the performance of his career – technically, emotionally, viscerally – and watching him fight to repress his natural empathy as a scene partner as well as his warmth and charm becomes a wrenching experience. Given how long it’s been since Fraser has had a leading role in anything – and the awful story behind why that happened – watching him as Charlie, denying people the chance to connect, is excruciating. But it’s also why the movie works.

I was surprised when I heard Darren Aronofsky was making this film, but now it makes perfect sense: All of his movies are about somebody’s annihilation, and the Leaving Las Vegas comparison works even better than I first thought: Both films are studies of deliberate self-destruction briefly interrupted by redemption, with protagonists who are also their own antagonists. The downside is that both movies’ log lines can lead people to dismiss them out of hand – to label them misery porn, or exploitative, or demeaning.

But I once again refer you to the gospel of Ebert: A film is not about what it is about, but how it is about it, and The Whale is genuine and mournful and deeply, deeply sympathetic to Charlie, even as he insists he doesn’t want or deserve our empathy. The slow trickle of his backstory and motivation as the other characters (played by Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins and Hong Chau, who was nominated for an Oscar along with Fraser and the film’s revolutionary makeup team) trickle in and out of his space just makes everything sadder and richer.

Shooting in Academy ratio, Aronofsky makes The Whale a confined, sweaty experience, suggesting the limitations of a live stage and making Charlie's situation feel that much more intimate and immediate. There’s a moment, maybe an hour into the film, when the perspective switches to the other side of Charlie’s door and I was almost shocked that there was an outside to go to.

And while Fraser is very much the center of this film, the supporting players are given the space to be far more than sounding boards for Charlie or Hunter. Like most of Aronofsky’s films – hell, maybe all of them except The Fountain, which has this gonzo fugue thing going on that I never fully grasp but absolutely love – this isn’t an easy watch. But there’s a rapture on the other side of it.

Babylon, on the other hand? Also not an easy watch, because it won’t stop screaming at you. After La La Land and First Man, both of which I like a whole lot and which respectively display a wide-open heart and remarkable tonal control, Babylon finds Damien Chazelle back on the fever-dream bullshit that made Whiplash nearly unwatchable for me. I know everyone else loves that one, so maybe take my rejection of this film as an endorsement? All I can say about Babylon is that half an hour in, when the movie pauses for a main title after a relentless, frenetic party sequence that introduces us to its expansive cast of characters, I turned to Kate and said “I think I hate this.” And we kept watching, and boy oh boy was I right.

I will say this for Babylon: It is exactly the movie its maker wanted to make, of this I have no doubt. It’s a chaotic, staccato parade of idiots and freaks, a meticulously researched vision of Hollywood’s transition from silents to talkies that is somehow convinced everyone was on cocaine rather than opiates and also doesn’t know how to operate a vintage telephone. It’s an answer to the question “What if Singin’ in the Rain, but Boogie Nights” that completely misses the point of both of those films, and Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Jovan Adepo, Diego Calva, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart are stuck playing fictionalized versions of real-life personalities, pitched so high that only dogs can fully understand what they’re doing.

There’s a montage at the end of the film that uses a screening of the real Singin’ in the Rain to offer one character (and the audience) a vision of the future of cinema, leaping forward through the decades to show us the wonders his early work made possible. It’s a rapture that feels completely unearned, unlike the last moments of The Whale; this movie didn’t do the work. Or rather, it did a great deal of work – there’s a half-hour documentary about how much work they did! – and achieved nothing of substance.

I wish I had something positive to say about Babylon, I truly do. The costumes and sets are amazing, and they – along with everything else in the frame – look incredible in 4K. High Dynamic Range does wonders for Linus Sandgren’s dusty, sparkly palette, and the Atmos soundtrack is almost unrelentingly busy, and if this is getting you all worked up to see what’s what, by all means go for it. The steelbook art is very pretty, too. But know this: I hated Babylon. I haaaaaaaaaaated it.

The Whale, though? I did not hate The Whale at all. In fact I liked it so much that I’m giving readers a chance to win one of two copies, courtesy of Elevation Pictures. Just e-mail normwilner@gmail.com with the subject line “Let’s Go Brendan” by noon ET on Wednesday, March 29^th; two responses will be selected at random. (Canadian residents only, sorry.) Best of luck!

In Sunday’s paid edition: David Lynch puts Laura Dern through some stuff in Criterion’s new edition of Inland Empire, and Paramount remasters the lost classic Dragonslayer in UHD. Don’t miss out! Subscribe right here!