Brendan Fraser tearfully touches on The Whale's themes of "redemption" while accepting TIFF performance award
Good: Brendan Fraser getting recognized for his decades-long dedication to his craft. Potentially not as good: The premise of The Whale.
The long-overdue renaissance of Brendan Fraser reached a new high point last night at the Toronto International Film Festival, a homecoming in some ways for the Canadian actor. Fraser received one of TIFF’s highest honors, the Tribute Award for Performance, in recognition of his starring turn in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Based on a 2012 play by Samuel Hunter, The Whale follows Charlie (Fraser), a 600-pound English teacher who struggles to heal (and maintain) the minimal relationships left in his largely reclusive life.
Ahead of its December wide release, the film has been receiving both critical acclaim and consumer criticism. Both Fraser and Sadie Sink’s performances have been thoroughly lauded, and the film debuted to a 6-minute standing ovation at Venice. But some critics have also lamented the monotony of yet another prestige physical-transformation piece and pointed out the overt fatphobia in some of the film’s most glowing reviews.
While accepting his award, Fraser holds back tears while lauding the “cool, creative, and very very lucky” people he was able to work with on The Whale, and thanking Aronofsky and Hunter for taking a chance on him. When he spoke about The Whale’s unrelentingly painful storyline, he evades focusing on Charlie’s weight, instead highlighting the film’s “redemption story.”