During my first year at university, I was presented with the difficult choice to read either Ulysses or Moby Dick. I went for the former option, so unfortunately I didn’t get to experience the book which weighs heavy over the narrative of Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale. But I did get to listen to Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Ulysses’ on repeat (‘last night was wiiild’) as I attempted to wade through nearly 800 pages of tiny, dense prose with no full stops to the point where my eyes hurt. What a lotta fun, as Vic Reeves might say.
The Whale pushes us full throttle into the life of reclusive Charlie (Brenden Fraser), a closeted gay man who tries to rekindle his relationship with estranged daughter Ellie (an acidic, brilliant Sadie Sink) before he dies of congestive heart failure. Speaking of which, I studied cloistered individuals when I was at university too, including bnocs (big name on campus, for those not in the know) like Julian of Norwich. But Charlie isn’t that type of cloistered individual. No, all shall not be well, all shall not be well, and all manner of thing shall not be well (if you know, you know). Morbidly obese, Charlie frequently orders pizza, not allowing his delivery driver Dan to witness his hulking figure, instead leaving money in his letterbox for him to collect.
The film has received a lot of criticism for Fraser’s use of a fat suit and prosthetics instead of the director casting an obese actor, but this didn’t bother me too much. Yes, there are numerous, intentionally gruelling scenes as Charlie painfully manouvres around his isolated abode, and Fraser’s performance is so affecting that he largely stifles the film’s formulaic, occasionally melodramatic dialogue (it’s not too difficult to see that the film is adapted from a play, Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 work of the same name). There’s also a side-plot about a missionary trying to save Charlie’s soul that feels somewhat tacked on, but all in all, it’s a worthwhile watch, and a poignant tribute to an actor who’s been exiled from Hollywood for the better part of a couple of decades.
Moving on, we’ve got Women Talking, and again have a narrative that largely takes place in a single area. As seems to be discussed in most reviews, the title apparently doesn’t appeal in its vagueness and during a few interviews with its star-studded cast, there were worries that the title itself would put off large swathes of potential audience members; it’s not a big-budget, action-infested MCU film, after all. But Women Talkingachieves a lot with relatively little, in a minimalist sense. The narrative centres on a small group of women gathered in a shed debating whether or not to leave their colony following multiple savage attacks carried out by their menfolk. The opening narrative speaks to a child not yet born.
The atrocities that dictate the discussions we witness have already happened. In a refreshing choice that has been ignored in recent works such as The Last Duel, the audience are not forced to watch these attacks on screen. We listen to heartfelt pleas from each individual survivor, and despite the opportunity to capitalise and perhaps take advantage of such a brilliant cast, no woman’s word is given more precedence over another’s as they slowly come to their final conclusion. And ‘slow’ isn’t an insult here, it’s just the nature of the narrative, which reminded me somewhat of a revisionist Crucible with the witch hunt-like pressure that’s forced on the women as they have to make difficult choices in a short space of time. It won’t be for everybody, but if you’ve got the time to move away from those action-heavy superhero films for a bit, then Women Talking might be worth your while.
And finally, I’ll end with the big one, Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Shoutout to my auntie Cecilia for recommending this one. It’s a banger. It’s not a show I thought I’d gel with initially; if you know me, you know I generally like my TV and film dark and depressing (speaking of which, I really need to watch The Last of Us, which I’ll get round to very soon), but Woo won me over pretty quickly with its socially awkward heroine, the eponymous Woo Young-Woo in question, an autistic lawyer who learns how to navigate the ins and outs of social interaction when she receives her first job at Hanbada law firm. I could easily emphasise with a character who has a lot of difficulty speaking to new people in forced social situations, and who also has an obsession with making sure her food (primarily kimbap) is arranged and consumed in meticulous order (do I have a tendency to save the ‘best’ food until last at the expense of other food going cold? Perhaps…).
What comparisons does this series have with either of the films mentioned above, you might ask? Well…whales. And lots of them too. No, there’s not much Moby Dick here (sorry Herman Melville, I may have enjoyed reading your work more than James Joyce’s at uni, but I guess we’ll never know), but Young-Woo’s obsession with the aquatic creature provides much amusement throughout the series, whether they appear during fantasy sequences when Young-Woo has an ‘eureka’ moment during one of her cases, or when she’s enthusiastically describing them to colleagues who display varying levels of interest in response (usually not much at all). Woo is also supported by a stellar cast of characters, with big mentions in particular to her childhood friend Dong Geu-ra-mi and Woo’s supervising lawyer Jung Myung-seok.
It’s rare that I get this emotionally invested in a series, and that’s a testament to the acting as well as the show’s eccentric narrative structure. Having mostly watched dramas that are darkly lit shows with heavy adult themes, it’s nice to watch lighter fare that nonetheless still deals with serious issues of discrimination and prejudice (yes Kwon Min-woo, I did direct a fair number of middle fingers in your direction when you tried to do Young-Woo dirty). It looks like Woo could potentially be getting a second season too, which is nice, but it would still stand really well as a single season if it ultimately doesn’t receive further commissions. Definitely give it a look. Even you’re not that interested in whales (or dolphins), you’ll find them difficult not to love after Woo Young-Woo has told you about their many virtues.