Why does a lack of subtlety sometimes work and sometimes not? Darren Aronofsky’s previous film, Mother!, is gloriously over the top and all the better for it. But yet The Whale falls somewhat short of the mark. Maybe it’s because The Whale is trying to tell a very grounded story, and indeed a very sad story, of a severely obese man trying to not lose his entire connection with the world around him. But everything is dialled up to cartoonish proportions. Not just Brendan Fraser’s fat suit, which is what it is, let’s be honest with ourselves, but the emotional melodrama too. Fraser is a fine actor, but he is forced into a too high emotional register far too often here. Aronofsky and screenwriter Samuel D Hunter pull in some obvious reference points, set up macguffins of implied allegorical meaning that they never really do anything with. It’s hard not to feel like you’re meant to gawp, at the same time as the film is pleading for a little humanity. It’s at odds with itself. But, the macro-narrative arc of Brendan Fraser’s renaissance will carry this through the Oscars in a couple of weeks, and we’ll get on with our lives without ever really thinking about this again. Ok.