Earlier
this year it was announced Darren Aronofsky and his company Protozoa Pictures teamed
up with production company A24 and star Brendan Fraser to produce a film
adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Whale. An award winning Off-Broadway play conceived
in 2012, it tells the story of a 600-pound man attempting to reconnect with his
estranged seventeen-year-old daughter.
The project represents not only an interesting challenge for the leading
actor, it also presents an opportunity for Aronofsky to regain his stature
among critics and audiences after his previous film mother! (which I
loved) bombed critically and commercially
At the
beginning of the month, Aronofsky’s longtime cinematographer Matthew Libatique
posted on his Instagram account an image of the night sky followed by a quote ‘The
night before Day 1 on #thewhale’, indicating shooting of Aronofsky’s new
project was about to commence. Coupled
with recent news that Insidious star Ty Simpkins recently joined the
project, this is most exciting news for Aronofsky fans eager to see him get
back to basics with an unrelenting character study of a tragic figure. That Aronofsky has reunited with Libatique
cements the project as one that will look characteristically gritty and shaky
yet also occasionally ethereal and kind of gorgeous.
Though
this is all still very early in the game and still in the throes of the uphill
battles faced by films being produced amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the
development is enough to keep Aronofsky fans anticipating the next move in what
could be one of his most audacious pictures yet. Not since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or
Precious has a film like this been attempted and with an auteur as
distinguished as Aronofsky at the helm, the results should be affecting,
disturbing and mournfully heartbreaking.
--Andrew Kotwicki