Brendan Fraser plays a 600-pound gay man confined to a wheelchair in “The Whale. When the screening ended on the Darren Aronofsky drama at the Venice Film Festival, the actor was overcome with emotion as the audience gave him a standing ovation that lasted a full six minutes. Fraser sobbed throughout. Many others inside the theater also broke out a handkerchief during the film’s heartbreaking final scenes.
Fraser hugged Aronofsky several times during the ovation. He tried to leave the theater at one point, but the outpouring of clapping was so loud, he stayed longer and took another bow.
“The Whale” stars Fraser as a man struggling with severe obesity who tries to reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter, played by “Stranger Things” breakout Sadie Sink. The supporting cast also includes Hong Chau, Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins. The movie is based on the play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter, who adapted the stage script into Aronofsky’s feature.
To play the lead character in the film, Fraser wore a prosthetic suit that added anywhere from 50 to 300 pounds depending on the scene. The actor had to endure as much as six hours in the makeup chair each day to fully transform into the character. In an interview ahead of the film’s Venice premiere, Fraser avowed that his prosthetic suit was “cumbersome, not exactly comfortable,” adding, “The torso piece was almost like a strait jacket with sleeves that went on, airbrushed by hand, to look identical as would human skin, right down to the hand-punched hair.”
“I developed muscles I did not know I had,” Fraser told journalists at the Venice press conference about wearing the prosthetic suit. “I even felt a sense of vertigo at the end of the day when all the appliances were removed; it was like stepping off the dock onto a boat in Venice. That [sense of] undulating. It gave me appreciation for those whose bodies are similar. You need to be an incredibly strong person, mentally and physically, to inhabit that physical being.”
In his review of “The Whale” out of Venice, Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman called Fraser “slyer, subtler, more haunting than he has ever been,” adding that he gives an “intensely lived-in and touching performance.” Word is that he’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.
