The most obvious conclusion to draw from this ending is that Charlie has perished from the congestive heart failure that is slowly killing him over the course of the film. The movie catalogs his final days, beginning on a Monday when his dear friend and nurse, Liz (Hong Chau), says he will be dead by the weekend.
As The Whale ended, Charlie went into a white light and the last thing he saw was an image of him, his wife, and their daughter on a beach from the past. It was a sign of hope. The stage play kept showing how bad things were getting until Charlie died, and it all went black and deathly silent.
Why does Brendan Fraser float at the end of The Whale?
After begging Ellie to read the essay aloud to him, an emotional Ellie reads it to him as Charlie stands up and attempts to walk over to her. As Ellie concludes her reading, Charlie begins to float before being engulfed in white light - indicating his death and passing over to the afterlife.
The Whale's ending is devastating as it sees the end of Charlie's life. He tried reconnecting with his daughter Ellie, but it was always one-sided. Ellie was cruel to Charlie throughout the movie, but there is hope she could finally see in herself what Charlie did all those years.
Charlie implored his students to write something honest. The Whale may have had a metaphoric meaning, referring to Charlie's size, but this movie was not about his size; it was about honesty and being redeemed for mistakes.
Having grown angry at the world due to him abandoning her and her mother for his late boyfriend Alan, she acts hostile and abusive to anyone she comes close to and wants absolutely nothing to do with Charlie, who makes efforts to try and reconnect with her.
Does Charlie go to heaven at the end of The Whale?
The religious themes of the movie suggest that Charlie did in fact die and go to heaven in the end, but they may have just alluded to a kind of spiritual peace or death of ego that does not necessarily imply a physical death.
"The way the play ends is, Ellie has the last line of the essay: 'It made me feel glad for my…' And she's cut off by the stage direction – 'a sharp intake of breath'. 'Charlie looks up, and has a sharp intake of breath. End of play. ' I actually didn't know about the beach scenes until I saw a rough cut.
The Whale is not a true story but is based on a 2012 play by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the film. Dale Calandra played the original Charlie in a similar transformation to Fraser's for The Whale movie, during the play's original run at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago.
The white whale is a metaphor for the destructive force of nature. Although nature is an anonymous force which takes no sides and simply follows its own natural course, Ahab seems to see nature as something that has power over him, which is something that he cannot accept.
Is Brendan Fraser wearing a prosthetic in The Whale?
While filming the Darren Aronofsky-directed movie, Fraser wore a prosthetic suit that he had mixed feelings about. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the 53-year-old called the suit, created by makeup special effects artist Adrien Morot, “cumbersome, not exactly comfortable."
How much weight did Brendan Fraser gain for his new movie The Whale?
Fraser donned a prosthetic suit for the role, which was also aided by a small amount of CGI. As he moves around the apartment, always helped by a walker or a wheelchair, the actor's transformation is stunning. A recent Vanity Fair article reported that Fraser carried an extra 50 lbs. to 300 lbs. during filming.
After Alan's death, Charlie's grief turned into depression and led him to develop a binge eating disorder. His unhealthy diet is a way for him to deal with negative emotions.
Why doesn t Charlie go to the hospital in The Whale?
Charlie refuses to go, citing the fact that he has no money and can't afford the hospital bills. He instead decides to spend his last week of life attempted to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Charlie believes that Ellie thought that the food dish was drawing the bird away from its family, so she broke the dish to send the bird back home. This fills him with emotion because he sees it as proof that Ellie is a good person.
Charlie eats to sadly harm himself. He is the manifestation of trauma. That what he puts into his body for all that harm that he has endured all his life, he's been derided. It's manifest on who he is as a human being, that's a lot of pain for this man.
Charlie hopes to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie, whom he abandoned eight years ago when leaving his wife Mary to be with his lover Alan.
The Whale is not based on a true story. It is a work of fiction, even if the play was inspired by Hunter's life. Brendan Fraser's character, Charlie, is not a real person, nor are any of the characters in the film based on real people.
But Fraser has his reasons; issues with his own health and his mothers who has since passed away, personal issues, and being the target of sexual harassment have been cited as reasons he left and stayed away. A journey from which, according to his last performance, he seems to have recovered successfully.
Emphasizing whole, nutrient-rich foods over processed options, Fraser's approach underscores the adage "you are what you eat." His diet focused on lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, facilitating not just weight loss but improved overall health.
In the years since, Charlie is completely estranged from Ellie (Sadie Sink), and Alan died by suicide after a period of sleep deprivation and anorexia.
What happened to Charlie's boyfriend in The Whale?
Charlie is reticent to interact with strangers, and he is visited most often by his friend Liz (Chau), a nurse who is very concerned about Charlie's health. Liz's concern is two-fold, for she is the sister of Charlie's partner Alan, who died by suicide.
Around 20 or so years ago, Charlie met and fell in love with a woman named Mary. The two started dating and eventually had a daughter named Ellie. At some point they were also married.
