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The Whale ending explained: Brendan Fraser breaks down Charlie and Ellie's final scene

Fraser explains his interpretation of what the last exchange between Charlie and Ellie (Sadie Sink) means for both characters: "He's liberated."

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Whale .

It's easy to get swept up in the emotions of Darren Aronofsky 's searing drama The Whale , which follows Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a reclusive, 600-pound literature professor struggling, in the last days of his life, to reconnect with the teenage daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ), whom he abandoned years prior. The film's conclusion, however, might be more difficult for some viewers to read, so we asked Fraser and screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter to break down what the final scene means for Charlie's journey.

The film slowly builds to a key moment for the father-daughter pair, after Charlie spends most of the movie defending Ellie's sporadic outbursts and prickly, wounded disposition — particularly to his longtime caregiver and friend, Liz ( Hong Chau ). Charlie maintains that Ellie, like most people, has an innate capacity for empathy, and regularly heralds one of her blunt, years-old school essays criticizing the classic novel Moby Dick . He see it as a signifier of her purity, honesty, and unbridled passion. Still, Ellie remains skeptical of Charlie during most of the film's running time.

"Ellie torments him, when she cases him out the fist time she sees him," Fraser observes, noting a specific piece of blocking. "You notice that she stands behind him. She knows he can't look over his shoulder. She's torturing him a little bit. She's cross, she's angry for the sadness she feels, and that's how this 17-year-old brilliant kid comports herself. She goads him into taking to his feet, knowing well that he likely can't and that it would make him very uncomfortable to do that without even having the assistance of his walker — but she takes it from him anyway and makes him prove himself, and he can't."

That scene, Fraser says, is key to understanding the film's conclusion, which brings Ellie and Charlie together for a genuine connection, as she reads the essay aloud. Again, Charlie attempts to rise up and walk toward her. That's where things get fantastical, as Fraser calls the final sequence an act of "contrition" for Charlie, in which he's "liberated" after finally breaking through her defensive armor, reaffirming to Ellie that he sees her for the person she is — and always was.

"It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet," Fraser says. "For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly."

Screenwriter Hunter calls the run-up a "hero journey where he gets the elixir."

"He's struggling this entire film to put a mirror up to his daughter to say, 'This is who you are,' and in those final moments, that mirror is this essay," Hunter explains. "When she looks at it, she can't deny turning it in and getting a D, but then, here's her father, all these years later, being like, 'This is the best essay I've ever read.' At long last, he's the only person who sees her, and she knows it."

As for whether Hunter feels Charlie is actually walking in the final shot, he says it's open for interpretation.

"I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it," he says. "In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way."

You can watch and interpret for yourself: The Whale is now in theaters nationwide via A24 . See Fraser explain the movie's ending in the video above.

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Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Whale. Brendan Fraser breaks down his interpretation of The Whale 's ending after it concludes on an ambiguous note. The Whale premiered on December 9 and is an emotional psychological drama starring Fraser. It has been touted as Fraser's comeback film after he disappeared from the Hollywood scene for many years. The Whale follows Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese man who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). The film has received mixed-to-positive reviews so far, with critics being nearly unanimous in their praise of Fraser's performance. However, the film has received some criticism for director Darren Aronofsky's melodramatic adaption of Samuel D. Hunter's 2012 play of the same name.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly , Fraser and Hunter (who also wrote the film's screenplay) shed some light on the ambiguous ending of The Whale . For many viewers, the scene may seem tragic and to others, the religious undertones may evade their understanding. Hence, Fraser and Hunter discuss how they interpreted the ending and how it was a hero's ending for Charlie, one in which he found liberation. Check out their statements below:

Fraser: It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly. Hunter: He's struggling this entire film to put a mirror up to his daughter to say, 'This is who you are,' and in those final moments, that mirror is this essay, when she looks at it, she can't deny turning it in and getting a D, but then, here's her father, all these years later, being like, 'This is the best essay I've ever read.' At long last, he's the only person who sees her, and she knows it.

Related: The Whale Confirms Sadie Sink Is Stranger Things' True Breakout Star

What Happens In The Whale's Ending

Fraser and Hunter's explanation of the ending will be welcomed by some, as The Whale 's final scene is a bit difficult to understand on paper. Before the ending can fully be explained, Fraser reveals that viewers needed to understand an earlier scene in the film. That particular Whale scene was one in which Ellie and Charlie first begin spending time together after Charlie agrees to help her write an essay for school. Ellie, still hurt at being abandoned by her father, tries to hurt him back by challenging him to walk. Unfortunately, at that point in The Whale , he can't stand or walk, and is therefore unable to prove himself to her.

In the final scene of The Whale , Ellie confronts Charlie about switching out her essay with an essay on Moby Dick she wrote in 8th grade. Charlie switched out the essays because he finally saw her and understood that the latter essay was an expression of herself. Though Ellie is defensive at first, the two end up attempting to connect one last time. To do so, Charlie asks Ellie to read the essay to him. As she does so, despite his health failing him, Charlie manages to stand and walk toward her. He is finally able to prove himself to her. However, the effort of walking is more than Charlie can withstand, and he dies as Ellie reads the essay. In the end, a bright light seemingly shines down, which could be interpreted literally as Charlie ascending to heaven or figuratively to prove that he has been redeemed.

Ultimately, The Whale 's ending has many layers to it, and it is tragic in some sense. However, Fraser and Hunter point out that the underlying theme is redemption and liberation. In the end, Charlie is willing to accept his death because he has accomplished the one goal that he had, which was to prove to his daughter that she is seen and understood. It is also an extremely touching portrayal of the relationship between a parent and a child. Even though Charlie failed Ellie in many ways, he proved that his parental instinct and love for his daughter never faded as he was able to see the value and the piece of his daughter within a years-old 8th grade essay. According to Fraser and Hunter, The Whale 's ending isn't ambiguous or tragic but hopeful for all the parents out there seeking redemption.

Next: Why The Whale Is Controversial, Despite Brendan Fraser's Comeback

• The Whale (2022)

The Whale Ending Explained: Step Into The Light

"The Whale," is a controversial and devastating film that seems to be going in an obvious direction, but a growing undercurrent of hope leaves viewers guessing about where exactly our protagonist will end up. Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is an online schoolteacher whose binge eating has cost him his mobility, his health, the possibility of regular human interaction, and any semblance of normalcy. When he finally starts suffering from congestive heart failure and refuses to go to the hospital, he is given a prognosis of just a few remaining days. Charlie doesn't change his ways or seek proper medical attention, but he does finally reach out to his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink).

At their first meeting in years, the callous teenager challenges her father to walk toward her without the assistance of his walker. He fails at first, but in the final moments of the movie, he actually succeeds. As he makes his way to her, she reads him an analytical essay about Moby Dick that she wrote as a child. She does so at Charlie's request — he recites it to himself often throughout the film. He even has another character read it to him during his first health scare at the beginning of the movie because he wants it to be the last thing he hears before he dies.

Charlie makes his way to where his daughter stands in his doorway before levitating and disappearing into his fondest memory of his family. In this memory, he stands on the ocean shore with his feet in the water, while his young daughter plays in the sand and her mother watches on.

So what exactly does this memory mean? Why is it the last image of the Academy Award-winning film? Does Charlie really die in the end? And why is Charlie so fixated on this essay when it doesn't have any apparent relationship to his own life?

What you need to remember about the plot of The Whale

A few things remain sacred to Charlie as he slips into complete isolation and a fatal health crisis. One is Ellie, whom he hasn't seen in years before the events of the film. He remains connected to her through this essay. He is particularly fixated on a line where she says that "Moby Dick" allowed her to "think about my own life." This follows her analysis that Ahab thinks killing the whale will make his life better, but the whale is completely emotionless. This suggests that Ellie views her father as her own kind of whale — not because of his size, but because of his estrangement. She thinks that he is the cause of all the pain in her life and that he doesn't care about her at all, having not heard from him in years.

Charlie makes strides in repairing his relationship with Ellie over the course of the film, but he is scared of re-entering her life after his family fell apart when he left his wife for one of his male students. This love, which once offered solace, quickly became its own source of tragedy for Charlie when severe depression and emotional turmoil led his partner into life-threatening anorexia and suicide. Charlie avoids memories of his late partner, even the happy ones, and keeps them hidden away in a locked room or tucked into a bookshelf. But he does allow himself to ruminate on a happy memory of his family. Even though he is kept at bay by his affair, a custody battle, and eventually his weight gain, he knows they are out there living their lives still and thus allows himself to preserve a happy memory of them at the beach.

What happens at the end of The Whale?

At the end of "The Whale," Charlie makes a triumphant march to his daughter as she reads to him from the essay that he loves so much. Despite being on his deathbed (or perhaps death couch is more accurate), he manages to achieve a physical feat that he was unable to do days earlier. He rips off the tubes that aid his breathing, pushes himself to his feet, and trudges towards Ellie as she reads out the words he knows by heart. Just as he reaches her in the doorway, he ascends. His feet fly off the ground, his eyes turn to the heavens, and he is transported back to that peaceful day at the beach. In this memory, he is down to a healthier weight again. His feet are in the ocean, his young daughter plays in the sand, and his ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton) haunts the edge of the frame like a specter, watching on.

So what exactly does this mean? Where is Charlie going? And did he actually get up and walk towards Ellie at all? The answer might seem cut and dry, but there are actually a few competing theories.

Did Charlie die in the end?

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. Although we don't see Charlie's dead body or his funeral, we know he is on the brink of death and that the strain he puts on his body by walking towards his daughter will likely cause his heart to finally fail. However, the ending is slightly ambiguous.

Part of the reason why Charlie's death is questionable is because it's unclear whether he wants to die or not. There are moments where he indulges dangerously in junk food and others where he stops himself, at least momentarily. His commitment to over-eating and reluctance to seek medical attention suggests that he is suicidal, but certain things hint at an optimism or will to live. He puts out apples for a bird that comes to his windowsill every day, something Ellie notices right away. Charlie also makes a last-ditch effort to reconnect with his daughter, and in getting to know her, finds a newfound love of humanity in general, declaring that, "People are amazing!" It almost seems too cruel that this reconnection with Ellie and subsequent optimism would come too late — when his body was too far gone to be saved — and that he would die anyway. So maybe that's not what happened.

Does Charlie go to heaven?

In Charlie's final moment, he retreats again to a memory of himself and his family on the beach. This memory, which Charlie references in conversation with his ex-wife in a previous scene, was a true moment of peace and clarity of spirit for him — perhaps the last he ever felt. So, is this heaven? The answer might guide the viewer as to whether or not Charlie died or not.

It's interesting that Charlie would end up in some version of heaven because of his complicated relationship with religion. Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a missionary from a local New Life church is a frequent guest at Charlie's house in the week leading up to his death. Charlie's late boyfriend Alan was the son of the head of the church and a devout follower. When his father found out about Alan's relationship with Charlie, he exiled him from the church, which is what sent Alan into a depressive episode that eventually led to his death. Charlie was at odds with Alan's faith when he was alive and remains at odds with it after his passing. This religion vehemently rejects homosexuality and insists that a sinner like Alan or Charlie would never get to heaven. The missionary encourages Charlie to deny his sexuality and bodily sins and ask for God's forgiveness so that he might gain salvation in the afterlife, but he refuses. How ironic would it be if Charlie ended up in a blissful eternity anyway?

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.

What has the cast and crew of The Whale said about the ending?

Brendan Fraser, who plays Charlie in "The Whale,"   has a theory about the film's ending that might surprise you. He described the ending to Entertainment Weekly and, in doing so, revealed that he does not think his character perishes in the final moments of the film:

"[I]t's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to [Ellie], humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly."

The white light and skyward look, along with the state of Charlie's health, definitely suggest that this is the moment his life "physically" ends, despite Fraser's interpretation. However, Charlie's march toward his daughter could be interpreted as a purely symbolic moment in itself.

"I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it," added playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who also adapted the work for the screen. "In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way."

The play had a surprising alternate ending

As it turns out, the choice to end the film with Charlie standing on the beach was entirely the idea of director Darren Aronofsky. The production of the play makes reference to Charlie's aforementioned memory through the sound of waves, but it ends abruptly, mid-sentence, with Charlie making his way to Ellie. Hunter gave his candid thoughts on Aronofsky's take on the ending in an interview with Digital Spy :

"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. It was just kind of an incredible surprise. I had no idea until I saw the rough cut, and I was so intensely moved by it. I was just like, 'Oh my God, that's perfect.' [...] In the play, it's the one moment that I script as he's giving that monologue about the Oregon coast that the sound of waves comes in. In the play, it's heightened, and expands a little bit. I think Darren [Aronofsky] took that idea, and kind of ran with it, in this gorgeous way."

Even though the movie ends in a slightly less ambiguous place than the stageplay, there is clearly still room for interpretation. Just like in the original piece from which it is adapted, the film dissolves its realism in this final scene and moves to a place of symbolism or magical realism. No matter how you interpret the ending of "The Whale," it certainly feels like a conclusive end to Charlie's story.

"The Whale" is currently available to stream on Showtime through Paramount Plus, and for rent on all the major streaming platforms.

The Ending Of The Whale Explained

Darren Aronofsky , the director of "Black Swan" and "Requiem for a Dream," returns with "The Whale," a new film that sees actor Brendan Fraser make the comeback performance of a lifetime in an emotional story of compassion. The film, based on the 2012 play of the same name , follows Charlie (Fraser), a reclusive 600-pound man looking to reconnect with his distant daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), while dealing with a resurgence of past mistakes. As Charlie, Fraser shows a range of emotions not seen in his past performances and leads a focused tale full of triumph and heartache. 

From the realization of his worsening health to the constant conflicts stemming from Charlie's past mistakes bleeding into the present, "The Whale" has a strong emotional pull that carries through to its tear-jerking ending. There's nothing as cathartic as watching "The Whale's" final act, which sees Charlie confronting himself and making better efforts to reconnect with Ellie. There are also unexpected revelations, burning themes, and closing arcs that all come so suddenly that the impact of some things could've slipped by. Looper is here to clear things up and dissect everything that happened during "The Whale's" finale 

The truth behind Thomas' visits

When we first meet Thomas (Ty Simpkins), we learn that he's a missionary who goes door to door spreading the word of the cult-like religious group he's a part of that believes the world is ending. While Charlie can accept him since he does help him at the start of the film, his nurse and friend, Liz (Hong Chau), outwardly criticizes Thomas, as both she and Charlie have a bad past with his group. However, Ellie is much more inquisitive about Thomas and is eventually able to get him to open up about himself, which leads to quite a revelation. 

It turns out that Thomas actually isn't a part of that group at all. He's just a runaway who left his home because of his frustration with the religious practices of his church and stole money from them to finance his trip. This reveal makes sense since he constantly said he was "new" to the group and didn't know the name of Liz's father, who leads the group. This also adds to Thomas' belief that he's ordained by God to help Charlie since he became frustrated by his old church's ability to spread its word and sees Charlie as an opportunity for self-fulfillment. It's an unexpected reveal that makes Thomas less of an innocent follower.

Ellie's picture collection

From her first appearance, it's tough to get a read on Ellie because of how closed off she is, and you can't help but question her real intentions. One thing that stands out as strange is how she takes pictures of Charlie and Thomas at different points in the film. Ellie takes pictures of Charlie struggling to use his walker and Thomas when he's smoking weed. Although it just seems like nothing at first, Ellie uses these photos for disturbing projects. 

Ellie uses the photo she takes of Charlie to ridicule him on social media, making fun of his weight and telling him to burn in hell. As for Thomas, she sends the photos of him smoking to his family after hearing his story, and it ultimately results in him reconnecting with his family. Although Ellie's photography might seem harmless at first, it has big implications for those in the photos, and it doesn't always yield positive results. 

The loss of Charlie's lover

After the death of his lover, Alan, Charlie develops an eating disorder that leads him to become incredibly overweight and suffer dangerous health issues. Although Charlie is generally unwilling to talk about Alan's death, Liz finds a moment to talk to Thomas about it. Alan's death also impacted her because he was her brother. According to Liz, her father, who leads the religious group that Thomas is supposedly a part of, was very hard on Alan after he came back from a mission and decided to not engage in the arranged marriage that he set up for him.

Instead, Alan decided to pursue a relationship with Charlie, leading to his father kicking him out of the group and the family. However, Alan still couldn't shake the impact of his upbringing and spiraled into a bout of depression that ended in him taking his own life. This would have a devastating effect on both Charlie and Liz and explains why they're so close. Liz is shown to be protective of Charlie from the start, and the story of Alan's death establishes why. That Charlie, too, could soon die is likely a gut-wrenching feeling for Liz. 

If you need help with an eating disorder or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ by dialing 988 or by callin g 1 -800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Charlie's massive money

To get Ellie to spend more time with him, Charlie makes an offer that he'll pay her for the time she spends with him. It's a hefty amount. His offer of around $120,000 is unsurprisingly too good for Ellie to pass up, and it remains a big motivator for her throughout the film — along with Charlie rewriting her essays to help her graduate from school. However, given his conversations with Liz about not being able to afford better living conditions or a hospital visit, it's tough to believe that he has that money. 

In a conversation with Mary (Samantha Morton), it is revealed that Charlie  does have that money, and it leads to some other realizations and conflicts. Liz is frustrated by Charlie since he could've used that money to help himself and get the medical assistance he needs. Liz's belief that Charlie was broke played a role in some of the sacrifices she's made for him, leaving her feeling like she's been taken advantage of. However, Charlie would've likely never given up any of the money anyway since he always planned for Ellie to have it all. 

A tumultuous reunion

It's no secret that Charlie's marriage to his ex-wife, Mary, ended in shambles. He left her and Ellie to pursue a relationship with Alan, leading Mary to cut ties with him completely. However, when Mary arrives at Charlie's after learning that Ellie is there, we get a clearer glimpse into their fractured relationship and Mary as a character. In their time alone for the first time in a long time, we see these two more open and honest than ever before, and it's a strong example of their complicated relationship.

Although the two end up fighting over what happened between them, Mary is shown to be much more compassionate than previously suggested. She not only shows sorrow for Charlie for his current condition but even tells him a story about helping Alan before he died. This doesn't mend their relationship, and Mary still leaves in a fury over these resurfaced feelings, yet this scene shows the genuine care that remains in their relationship and how Charlie's decision to leave still causes ripples in their family.

A secret room

About halfway through "The Whale," Charlie tries to retrieve a key sitting atop a closed door – only for it to fall into a place he can't reach. Luckily, he gets Thomas to grab the key for him, and he opens a room that looks untouched and pristine compared to the rest of his house. At first, it's tough to figure out what this spare bedroom exactly is, but it eventually becomes pretty clear. 

Even before Thomas grabs a Bible with Alan's name on it from the room, it's obvious that this room is Charlie and Alan's old bedroom. After Alan's death, Charlie was unable to enter the room again and has never let anyone inside. He probably only unlocked it recently because Alan has been brought up in conversation again. He now sees it as solace as he heads towards a tragic end. There are no flashbacks that give us a real look at Charlie and Alan's relationship, but seeing Charlie's face when he looks into the room shows the real love he has for him still.

Charlie's final hope

Throughout "The Whale," Charlie is shown to be incredibly desperate in wanting to reconnect with Ellie. He's not only willing to pay a bunch of money to get her to keep him company but even offers to rewrite her essays to help her graduate. Even when Ellie is immensely cold towards Charlie, he still yearns for her love, and that makes you wonder what Charlie exactly wants from reconnecting with her. 

However, when talking with Mary, Charlie opens up about his desire to reconnect with his daughter, saying that he simply wants her to have the best life possible to create a sense of redemption within himself. He simply sees helping Ellie as the last thing he can do before dying to leave things on a better note and feel like he did something right. It's the wish that any parent would have for their child, and Charlie doesn't want Ellie to feel like she can't accomplish things because of how their family has fractured. 

Charlie's sense of positivity

Even when the worst things are happening to him, Charlie generally has a positive outlook on life and those around him. When Thomas is chastised by Liz or Ellie does something that even her mother views as evil, Charlie always shows compassion to those around him. For Charlie, though, this positivity is both a gift and a curse. While it is nice that he tries to find the good in things, it can lead to him ignoring real problems in his life and not being able to confront things. 

For instance, while it's nice that he makes an effort to remind Ellie that he thinks she's amazing, it doesn't heal the hurt she's suffered from their estrangement. This overt sense of positivity is also what leads to Charlie losing his faith and desiring to see only harsh truths that make "The Whale's" final act really tear at your heart. However, even when Charlie hits his lowest point, he is able to find the good in things again, leading to an emotional final sequence between him and Ellie. Charlie's journey throughout "The Whale" is about finding and understanding the truth about yourself without losing that sense of compassion that makes us care for one another as well as ourselves. 

A final revelation

As shown in the opening shots, Charlie keeps his webcam off when talking to his class because he doesn't want them to see what he looks like. However, after sending them an assignment that asks them to simply be honest, Charlie makes the bold choice to turn his camera on for the first time. With the assignment (or more so the wording of it) getting Charlie fired from his position and his students' submissions inspiring him, he decides to show them who their professor really is. 

In most other movies, this would be played like a truly inspirational moment. Yet, with Darren Aronofsky helming, it feels like a dark slice of reality, as some of Charlie's students can be seen reacting in shock around his square in the chatroom. It's a gut-wrenching affirmation of the truth that Charlie has been trying to hide from for quite some time, and the way it ends, with him throwing his laptop across the room, is legitimately painful. It's a moment you knew was coming, but still feels like a brutal punch to the gut. 

The essay's author

When we're first introduced to Thomas, as he helps Charlie during a painful incident of heart failure, we also learn about an essay on "Moby Dick" that Charlie loves. For most of the film, we're left unsure who the author of this essay is. We just know that it acts as sort of a calming mantra for Charlie that reminds him of something he loves. In the final moments of "The Whale," we discover that Ellie is the author of the essay and that it's been a pivotal part of Charlie's connection to her. 

Any time Charlie is in pain or on the verge of death, he either repeats part of the essay to himself or gets someone to read it to him. With the knowledge that Ellie is the author, hearing her essay acts as a reminder for Charlie of his final wish to make sure that she is in a good place before dies. It's a reveal that kicks off a deeply emotional final sequence between Charlie and Ellie that is undoubtedly one of the most emotionally charged moments in the film. 

Charlie and Ellie's final reckoning

The final moments of "The Whale" are full of rich emotion – largely because of the final reckoning that Charlie and Ellie have before Charlie succumbs to his poor health. Although it seems like Ellie will rush out the door before she and her father can have one last moment together, she stops and fulfills Charlie's request to hear her read her essay. This moment also leads to Charlie getting up to walk towards Ellie, something she requests he does earlier in the film. It's a climactic, full-circle moment bursting with emotion. 

There's something truly powerful about watching Charlie find the strength to get up and walk on his own in those final moments. However, this last act of strength doesn't mean that Charlie avoids death, as he's drawn up into a heavenly light. Darren Aronofsky ends the film on a fantastical vision of Charlie on the beach with Mary and Ellie. The choice to end the film on this flashback to a beloved memory likely signifies Charlie is at peace with how he left things and acts as a harmonious and fulfilling ending to his journey. Although Charlie and Ellie's relationship has been complicated, it's legitimately compelling to watch them come together in this final moment. 

Is this the start of Brendan Fraser's comeback?

Although Brendan Fraser was once a notable mainstream star leading franchises like "The Mummy," it's no secret that his career has taken a downturn as he's dealt with personal issues and opened up more about being sexually assaulted . Recently, Fraser has started to work more in front of the camera again with his role as Cliff Steele/Robotman in "Doom Patrol" and appearances in films such as "No Sudden Move" and "Line of Descent." He was even set to appear in DC's now-canceled "Batgirl" movie as the villain Firefly. With all the acclaim he's receiving for his performance in "The Whale," does this role signal a true comeback for Fraser? Absolutely.

Fraser is set to be one of this year's top awards contenders and has already received a best actor nomination at the upcoming Golden Globes with many more likely to come. Ever since he got some big social media buzz for the lengthy standing ovation he received at "The Whale's" premiere at the Venice Film Festival, it seems that audiences have rallied around him. Fraser's performance in "The Whale" and the acclaim he continues to receive for it could easily lead up to a strong resurgence for the actor that fans would be thrilled to see. Who knows? Maybe "The Mummy" franchise could return with him.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

'The Whale' Ending Explained: What Happens in Brendan Fraser’s Comeback?

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Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Whale Darren Aronofsky ’s The Whale has already proven to be one of the most controversial films of the year, which isn’t all that surprising considering Aronofsky’s history of making divisive projects. While Brendan Fraser has received widespread acclaim for his powerful performance as the overweight professor Charlie, the film has been perceived as “fatphobic” by some critics. It will be interesting to see where The Whale ends up landing this awards season; some view it as emotionally devastating, while others consider it to be manipulative and overtly cruel.

What Is 'The Whale' About?

The Whale is based on a play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter , and Aronofsky’s adaptation does a good job of reflecting the intimacy of a stage performance. The film takes place entirely within Charlie’s apartment as his friend Liz ( Hong Chau ) comes to care for him. Charlie has managed to isolate himself from the world; he communicates with his students via Zoom but does not ever show his face. Charlie decides to reconnect with his daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ), who has no interest in him. Charlie agrees to help write her English papers if she will spend time with him and write personal essays from her heart.

Towards the end of the film, Charlie’s world begins to crumble. After making a series of inflammatory messages to his students, he’s fired from his job. His ex-wife, Mary ( Samantha Morton ), confronts him about his relationship with Ellie and criticizes him for his failures in their marriage. After being alerted that he has congestive heart failure, Charlie goes on an eating binge and consumes pizza until he vomits. It’s an emotionally overwhelming experience, especially toward the very final moments of the story.

Why Does Mary Not Want Charlie to See Ellie?

As Charlie reveals early on, he is openly gay and was in a relationship with one of his former students, Alan. Following Alan’s death, Charlie began compulsively eating, prompting Alan’s sister Liz to come and take care of him. As part of their arrangement, Mary forbids Charlie from contacting Ellie; she reacts with rage when she realizes he’s asked her to visit him. While Charlie is apologetic for his failure as a father, he does not apologize for his sexuality. In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Charlie stands up to the missionary boy Thomas ( Ty Simpkins ), whose religion preaches homophobic messaging.

What Happened to Thomas?

As Mary reveals to Charlie, Ellie has been bullying people online through a private Facebook page. Mary feels that she has raised a cruel child and despite how Charlie has hurt the family, Ellie is the true “monster” in their family. In addition to posting pictures of her father, Ellie sends photos of Thomas (a former addict) to his church and family. Despite the seemingly cruel action, Thomas tells Charlie that he has newfound faith in people, as his parents have reached out to forgive him and welcome him home. Thomas also finds a picture of Charlie with Alan and realizes that he only put on the weight as a means of coping with his partner’s suicide.

RELATED: ‘The Whale’ Review: May the “Brenaissance” Continue Beyond Darren Aronofsky's Film

What Happened to Ellie?

Even though her father has been ghostwriting her essays so she can graduate, Ellie lashes out at Charlie when she realizes that he sent in an essay that she wrote when she was younger. Charlie feels that the essay is “honest” in a way that he appreciates, as he’s irritated by his students’ generic responses to his questions and prompts. He’s kept the essay for years and uses it to comfort himself. He tells Ellie how beautiful and talented she is, and for the first time, Ellie believes it. Even though Ellie spends the majority of the story mocking other people, she is in denial of her own talents and insecurities.

What Was Going on With the Pizza Delivery Boy?

Throughout the film, Charlie orders pizza online and has the delivery boy, Dan ( Sathya Sridharan ), leave it outside his door. While Dan tries to spark a conversation with him because he visits Charlie’s apartment so often, Charlie refuses to step outside and show his face. However, Dan decides to wait on the porch when Charlie comes to pick up the pizza and finally sees him for the first time. His immediate response is to look at Charlie in disgust.

What is Charlie Trying to Do at the End?

Charlie’s ultimate goal is to be completely honest with everyone around him. He refuses to apologize for his homosexuality to Thomas, and chastises him for thinking of him as “disgusting.” He realizes that even though Ellie appears to be cynical, she is really just seeking approval. He even shows his face to his students, and compliments some of the responses that they left in the last message board post that he felt were more honest than their previous work.

What Is Happening to Charlie in the Film’s Final Moments?

Charlie is dying at the very end and refuses to go to the hospital. As he bonds with Ellie, he attempts to stand. Between the effort of moving and his overall mental state, Charlie dies and ascends into an idealized version of heaven. It’s not the first time that Aronofsky has tackled religious imagery within his films. Both Noah and The Fountain directly deal with faith, spirituality, the afterlife, and the stories of the Bible-inspired mother! While Charlie meets his fate, he’s able to feel accomplished and unashamed.

What are the Differences Between the Play and the Film?

While both the original stage production and the film are very similar, Hunter made some changes to the script when translating it to a feature. Certain elements of the story, such as the Zoom calls and personal photographs, are detailed in a way that wasn’t possible on stage. While the play was released in 2012, the film takes place amidst the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, as news footage can be seen in the background. The endings are the same, but the film is slightly more hopeful, as Charlie feels that he has accomplished something greater.

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The Whale Ending, Explained

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• The Whale is a comeback film for Brendan Fraser, who delivers a highly-praised performance that won him his first Oscar for Best Actor.
• The film polarized critics due to its portrayal of obesity, with some claiming it stigmatizes and mocks fat people.
• The ending of The Whale is open to interpretation, with audiences debating whether the protagonist dies or experiences a symbolic moment of liberation.

The Whale hit the silver screen in 2022, marking the ultimate comeback of fan favorite Brendan Fraser following a few rocky years in his career and personal life. This Darren Aronofsky film, based on Samuel D. Hunter's 2012 play, was in the pipeline for years, as the director struggled to find the perfect actor to star in it. That remained the case until, eventually, he decided to cast Fraser based on his work in 2006's Journey to the End of the Night , a move that couldn't have worked out better: for his performance, the actor was lauded by critics and audiences alike, and took home his very first Oscar for Best Actor, among many, many other accolades. Joining Brendan in an equally brilliant cast are Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, and Samantha Morton.

With a worldwide gross of over $54 million against a $3 million budget, Aronofsky's film became an instant box-office hit and won several awards. However, reviews were quite polarized : while most critics praised Fraser's performance as the finest of his career and had kind words for the rest of the cast, others harshly slammed the film's portrayal of obesity, claiming that it stigmatizes and even mocks fat people. One thing is for sure: The Whale 's ending baffled many moviegoers. Let's break it down.

A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. Directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

What Is The Whale About?

Unlike other films comprising director Darren Aronofsky's filmography , The Whale has a fairly straightforward plot — though, of course, it's not without a certain complexity. It introduces Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese English teacher, who lives secluded from society in the privacy of his home, a place that is not quite suited to his needs. His sole connection to the world around him is his computer, from which he teaches college students while keeping his webcam off, as well as frequent visits from his friend Liz (Chau), a nurse who goes out of her way to help him. From the very beginning of the film, it is revealed that Charlie's congestive heart failure is worsening by leaps and bounds, and he has only a few days to live.

Despite Liz's insistence and this bleak prognosis, Charlie refuses to seek medical assistance since, according to him, he does not have the means to do so. Instead, he sets out to rebuild the bond with his daughter Ellie (Sink), whom he abandoned at the age of eight when he left his wife to chase an affair with his former student Alan. In an attempt to get his daughter to forgive him, he offers her a hefty sum of money that he saved over the years, along with doing all of her homework if she spends time with him and writes something honest for him — which she reluctantly accepts.

Related: The Whale Review: Brendan Fraser's Awe-inspiring Performance Keeps Darren Aronofsky's Film Afloat

The Whale essentially provides the audience with a first-hand look at what seem to be the last days in Charlie's life, his overwhelming desire to bond with a daughter who has no interest in him whatsoever, his conflicted relationship with religion explored through his connection with a Christian missionary who seems hell-bent on saving him, and the rampant but useless efforts of the few people around him to get the man to seek medical care once and for all.

What Happens at the End of The Whale?

On his deathbed, Charlie gets one last visit from his daughter, enraged that the essay he wrote for her made her flunk. As it happens, he actually replaced the piece with an essay on Moby-Dick written by Ellie when she was just a child, which is how the audience comes to discover why the real author of the essay of such significance to Charlie throughout the film. Realizing he is in his final hour , the man asks his daughter to read it aloud to him one last time in spite of knowing its words by heart, and as she does so, he manages to stand up and walk over to her with remarkable strength, something he had not been able to do the previous days.

Upon reaching Ellie, they both smile at each other, Charlie's feet are lifted off the ground, and he becomes surrounded by a bright white light. Just before The Whale 's credits roll, we get a brief but significant scene featuring a healthier Charlie dipping his feet in the ocean with his infant daughter, playing in the sand and his ex-wife watching them from afar.

Judging from everything we saw in The Whale , we can deduce that, in the end, Charlie dies, and that this cherished memory of a happier time might be his own idealized version of heaven. Before he dies, he gets the redemption he sought so hard in his final days: Ellie seems to have started to let go of the resentment she holds against him for walking out on her, and Charlie departs this world convinced that he may have turned her life around (though this could very well be his own interpretation of the matter).

But as obvious as this conclusion may seem, Aronofsky makes sure to leave the door open to audiences' interpretation, not only regarding Charlie's tragic outcome, but also the moments leading up to it. This, in a sense, invites us to second-guess the truth of what is unfolding at the end of The Whale . Does Charlie really manage to stand on his own two feet, walk to his daughter, and obtain her forgiveness? Or is this simply a deathbed hallucination before taking his last breath? There are as many possible interpretations of The Whale 's ending as there are people who saw it, yet it's safe to say that this film has certainly left a number of unanswered questions that will continue to spark some very interesting debates.

Related: The Whale Writer Reflects on the Brendan Fraser Film's Success

What The Cast Has to Say About It

The wonderful thing about films with open or ambiguous endings is that they allow everyone who watches them to come up with their own conclusions, even those who made the movie. Brendan Fraser, in particular, attributed a very different meaning to The Whale 's ending: for him, his character does not die in the final moments, but rather goes through a symbolic moment of liberation as he walks towards his daughter.

"It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet", he told Entertainment Weekly . "For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly".

Samuel D. Hunter, screenwriter and creator of the original play, also weighed in: "I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it. In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves, and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way".

Stream The Whale on Paramount+

Writer Samuel D. Hunter digs deep to let loose his truth for ‘The Whale’

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I didn’t set out to write a film. At first, I wasn’t even sure I was writing a play.

Maybe it was something I needed to write for myself, a quiet purgation that I’d keep in the cold, dark storage of my laptop’s hard drive forever.

Maybe keeping it to myself would allow me to put some personal stuff on the line that I’d previously been too scared or too embarrassed to access in my plays. The stuff that made me feel unworthy of being an erudite New York playwright. All that stuff I had pushed way down about growing up gay in Idaho, attending a fundamentalist Christian school, battling depression and subsequently self-medicating with food in my late teens and early 20s.

Maybe I should just write something honest.

This was 13 years ago. My then-boyfriend-now-husband and I were living in an illegal sublet in Hell’s Kitchen and teaching essay writing at a public university in New Jersey to dozens of disaffected college freshmen. I was teaching a kind of writing that felt anathema to my work as a playwright — I was asking students to depersonalize their writing, to stamp out any trace of emotion or personality in service of cold, hard objectivity. But it was better than a 9-to-5. At least it was adjacent to my seemingly unreachable goal of being a working playwright in New York City. (If there’s even such a thing anymore.)

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Deep into the semester, I cracked. I couldn’t take another perfunctory analysis of whatever Malcolm Gladwell essay I had assigned them. My students were just giving me what they thought I wanted so they could take their B-minus and move on with their lives. So I pleaded with them, “Just write something honest. Don’t worry about making it a good essay. Just tell me what you truly think. Let’s start there.”

During a NJ Transit ride back home one night, I read one student’s heartbreaking truth, a line that ended up staying in the play and the screenplay throughout mountains of drafts: “I think I need to accept that my life isn’t going to be very exciting.”

That single line was a turning point in my artistic life. Because right after I read it, I had the thought: “Should I write a play about an expository writing teacher who is begging his students to write something honest? Is anyone going to want to watch that? More frightening than that, is this play a version of this exercise I had just given my students?”

I wrote the first draft in about six weeks, taking a break from grading freshmen essays every Sunday to generate 20 or so new pages of a nascent draft. Early on, I realized that not only was the character trying to connect with his students but he was also using those teaching sessions as a dry run to figure out how to connect with his estranged daughter. It felt entirely different than my previous plays. It was at once easier to write and more difficult, familiar but scarily vulnerable.

Several weeks and several drafts later, I made the decision to share it with my agent. Several months after that, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts produced a reading of it, and the following year, the center mounted a full production. Then — miracle of miracles — Playwrights Horizons, one of my favorite off-Broadway theaters, produced the play in its smaller, 125-seat theater. I had scaled the mountain.

Next came the truly unbelievable plot twist, a scene so grossly overwritten that it can be only real life — “Darren Aronofsky saw the play, and he wants to meet with you.”

It took another decade for the film adaptation to come to fruition. During those 10 years, I steadily worked on adapting the play to a screenplay, and the characters and story grew and sharpened in fundamental ways. The character of Thomas, originally a Mormon missionary (perhaps to slightly shield myself from my own past), now attends a fundamentalist church more similar to the one I was involved with as a teen. More important, my husband and I are now dads to a 5-year-old girl. So the story of a father and a daughter has become far less theoretical.

And during that decade when I was developing the screenplay, I wrote a little over a dozen plays, each of which shares the primary concern of “The Whale”: the tragedy of isolation and the redeeming value of human connection. In many ways, “The Whale” has been the clothesline upon which I’ve hung my entire body of work.

Thirteen years later, I’m glad I made the decision to take this story off my hard drive. Even though I have some distance from it now, at age 41, in certain ways it feels no less vulnerable and personal to me than when I first wrote it. But more than that, it’s been a constant reminder that I came into my own as a writer only truly when I finally took my own advice: Forget what other people want and just write something honest.

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‘The Whale’ ending explained: what happened to Charlie?

Spoilers ahead

Brendan Fraser has swept awards season with his critically acclaimed performance in The Whale , which has a particularly emotional climax.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film follows morbidly obese literature teacher Charlie (Fraser) as he attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), who is torn up after Charlie left her and her mother to start a relationship with a man years earlier.

• READ MORE: Brendan Fraser: “I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m a fraud”

Alongside Fraser and Sink, the film stars Hong Chau as Charlie’s best friend and nurse Liz, Ty Simpkins as Christian missionary Thomas and Samantha Morton as Ellie’s mother Mary.

What happens at the end of The Whale ?

As Charlie nears death in his home, Ellie confronts him after receiving a low grade for an essay he’d rewritten. Charlie explains that he replaced her rewritten essay with the Moby Dick essay Ellie had previously written when she was in eighth grade – deeming it the most honest piece of writing he’d ever read.

Charlie asks Ellie to read the Moby Dick essay to him one last time. She initially refuses and goes to leave, but stops at the door in tears and proceeds to read it. As she reads, Charlie stands up and attempts to walk towards her, which he had failed to do when Ellie first visited.

As Ellie completes the reading, Charlie starts to ascend to the heavens as he looks up towards a white light in the sky.

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Speaking to Entertainment Weekly , Fraser gave his interpretation on the ending. “It’s important because it’s a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it.

“While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn’t need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he’s got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie – with a touch of magic realism – finally does fly.”

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‘The Whale’ Ending Explained: Brendan Fraser’s Uncomfortable Drama Ends With a Final, Cruel Tragedy

Where to stream:.

To say The Whale is a difficult watch is the understatement of the century. The movie—which is now available to purchase on digital platforms like Amazon Prime Video —is a relentlessly uncomfortable and cruel two hours documenting the (spoiler alert!) final week of a 600-pound man, who has isolated himself from the world, and is now facing imminent death due to health issues caused by his weight.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky—the same man who brought you uncomfortable, divisive movies like Black Swan and mother! — The Whale is based on a 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. Hunter, who also adapted the screenplay for film, based the story on his own experience with obesity in college. “I know many people who are big, happy, and healthy, but I wasn’t,” Hunter said in an interview for the films’ press notes. “I had a lot of unprocessed emotions from attending a fundamentalist Christian school where my sexuality came to bear in an ugly way, and that emerged in an unhealthy relationship with food. When I started writing The Whale, I think it all just came pouring out of me.”

Thus , The Whale features many hard-to-watch sequences of binge-eating junk food, beads of sweat rolling down Brendan Fraser’s heavily make-upped face, and Fraser struggling to move around in a squishy, rolling fat suit. If you manage to make it to the end of the film, you’ll be met with a moving but ambiguous conclusion. Don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for an analysis of The Whale plot summary and ending explained, including what happens at the end of The Whale , and whether Charlie dies. Major spoilers ahead.

The Whale plot summary:

We meet Charlie (Brendan Fraser) as he is giving a virtual lecture for an online college English course. He keeps his camera off, telling his students that his webcam is broken. In reality, he is ashamed of his appearance as an obese, 600-pound man. Charlie can’t walk on his own and never leaves his house. Through the course of the film, he is visited by several recurring characters. There is Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie’s nurse friend who cares for him. Liz informs Charlie that his blood pressure is at a dangerous level, and that he needs to go to the hospital, or he will very likely die of congestive heart failure by the end of the week. 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.

Another visitor of Charlie’s is Thomas, a door-to-door missionary from an evangelical church called New Life. Thomas walks in on Charlie while he is hyperventilating and at risk of having a heart attack. Charlie thrusts an essay about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into Thomas’s hands and instructs him to read it. After Charlie calms down, Thomas asks why Charlie asked him to read it. “I thought I was going to die, and I wanted to hear it one last time,” Charlie says. “It’s a really good essay.”

Charlie is also visited by his teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he hasn’t seen since she was 8 years old. Charlie, a gay man, left Ellie and her mom when Ellie was 8 because he fell in love with one of his (adult) students. Charlie tells Ellie he wanted to be part of her life, but that her mother forbade him from seeing her. Ellie is an exceptionally angry teenager and is exceedingly cruel to her father. When Charlie learns that Ellie is in danger of flunking out of high school, he offers to help her with her upcoming essay. He also offers to pay her to spend time with him—all the money he has, which is over $100,000.

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Thomas the missionary returns to Charlie’s home because he believes he was sent by God at the exact right moment to help Charlie. Liz is upset by Thomas’s presence and tells him to leave Charlie alone. We learn that Liz’s brother, Alan, was Charlie’s romantic partner, as well as a member of the New Life church. Liz blames New Life for her brother’s extreme unhappiness—because he was told his sexuality went against the will of God—which eventually led to Alan jumping off a bridge and killing himself. Charlie, in his grief, began binge-eating in response.

Charlie’s health is rapidly declining. Liz brings Charlie a wheelchair to help him move around his house. Ellie once again visits Charlie and demands that he write her essay assignment. Charlie agrees. Despite how cruel Ellie is to Charlie, he insists she is an amazing person. Ellie slips Charlie sleeping pills, and while he is unconscious, Thomas the missionary once again comes to visit, and Ellie threatens to kill her father if Thomas doesn’t smoke pot with her. She snaps an incriminating photo of Thomas, and then confronts him: She knows he’s not from New Life, because she knows that New Life no longer has door-to-door missionaries.

Thomas confesses that while he used to be a missionary—after his parents sent him away to the church when they discovered him smoking pot–he grew frustrated with the church’s lack of social outreach and felt he wasn’t truly helping people. After a blow-out argument with the pastor, Thomas stole all of the church’s petty cash and left. He confesses to Ellie that he is almost out of money, but is too afraid to go home. Ellie secretly records his confession.

Liz and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), show up and discover that Ellie has drugged her father. After Liz coaxes Charlie back to consciousness, she finds out that Charlie, despite his protests about hospital bills, does, in fact, have money. He’s just been saving all of it to give to Ellie. Liz is furious that Charlie has refused to buy the medical care and equipment he needs, and storms out. Ellie storms out too, telling her dad to “just fucking die already.” Charlie gives Ellie the essay she asked for before she leaves.

Charlie and Mary talk about their life and marriage. Charlie shares a memory of going to the beach with Ellie and Mary and swimming in the ocean. Mary tells Charlie one reason she kept Charlie away from Ellie is that she was afraid Ellie would hurt him. Mary says Ellie is “evil,” and shows Charlie a cruel picture of himself that Ellie posted on social media, mocking him. Charlie continues to insist that Ellie is amazing and that she’s a great writer. Mary leaves in tears, and Charlie, also in tears, tells her that he has to believe he’s done one good thing in his life, aka Ellie.

After Mary leaves, Charlie goes on a binge eating session that ends in him vomiting. He rashly posts a prompt on his students’ online message board, challenging them to write something honest. Thomas visits one last time and shows Charlie a Bible passage highlighted in Alan’s old Bible. Thomas believes Alan died because he turned his back on God and gave into “the flesh,” aka homosexuality. Charlie, for once, stands up for himself, and more or less tells Thomas to piss off. Thomas informs Charlie that Ellie sent his recorded confession to his church and parents, and that both parties forgave him, meaning he can finally go home.

In his final webinar class, Charlie reveals he has been fired. He reads some of his students’ responses to his prompt to be honest. Moved by their honesty, he vows to be honest in return and turns on his web camera to show them his entire body. The students react in shock and disgust.

The Whale ending explained:

On the last day of his life, Liz returns to Charlie to take care of him. Even though she is angry, she loves him. Charlie tells Liz that he believe Ellie ratted Thomas out because she wanted to help him, because, “people are amazing.” Ellie storms into the house, angry with Charlie because she failed her essay assignment. When she sees the shape Charlie is in, she uncertainly asks Liz what’s wrong. “He’s dying,” Liz replies. Ellie says to call an ambulance, but Charlie replies, “No.” Ellie asks to speak to Charlie alone, and although Liz doesn’t want to leave Charlie, she agrees. Liz seems to realize that she is saying goodbye to Charlie, and tells him she’ll wait downstairs.

Ellie demands to know why Charlie failed her assignment and accuses him of purposefully screwing her over. Charlie, who is beginning to hyperventilate, tells Ellie that he didn’t write the essay—she did. It’s an essay on Moby Dick that Ellie wrote in 8th grade. Ellie’s mom sent the essay to Charlie, and Charlie believes it’s the best essay he’s ever read. Charlie sobs that he is sorry for leaving Ellie. As he begins to actively have a heart attack, Ellie turns to leave. Charlie begs her to read her essay to him, and she relents. As Ellie reads about the whale in Moby Dick , Charlie stands to his full height, entirely on his own. (Get it? He’s the whale!)

With a massive effort, Charlie walks toward Ellie. When Ellie reads Charlie’s favorite line in the essay—”And I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters, that were just descriptions of whales, because I knew the author was trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while,”—Charlie imagines stepping into the ocean, all those years ago when he wasn’t so obese.

Ellie steps toward Charlie. She begins to read the next line of the essay, “This book made me think about my own life, and then it made me glad for my–” but she cuts off. Charlie and Ellie smile at each other. Then with a gasp, Charlie floats off the floor and into a bright white light. With that, the movie ends.

Does Charlie die in The Whale ?

Yes. While one could argue that The Whale ending is up for interpretation, my interpretation is that Charlie’s feet leaving the ground is a clear metaphor for Charlie’s body leaving this earth, aka, that he has died of heart failure. The movie has made it clear throughout that Charlie only has about a week to live, and is careful to denote each day of the week. Liz said at the beginning of the final scene that Charlie is dying.

This is slightly different from how the stage version of The Whale ends, with a hard cut to black. But in an interview with editor Andrew Weisblum for the film’s press notes, it seems clear that the filmmakers intended this scene to indicate “the end” of Charlie’s life, and that it mirror the first scene that Charlie has with Ellie. “It was important to set that up structurally, these two moments that reflect each other—where in one Charlie fails and in the other, he succeeds. The cutting patterns and shot choices of the two scenes are very similar. But the power of that final scene is that we know Charlie is facing the end.”

What was the end of Ellie’s essay in The Whale ?

But what about that final line of Ellie’s essay, that we never got to hear? What is she glad for? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. The full essay is never read in the movie and always cuts off before that final line.

While we never get to hear what it was that Ellie was glad for in her own life, it’s clear that this is the most impactful part of the essay for Charlie. Did she write that she was glad family, perhaps? Or is she glad her dad left her when he did, to spare her his sad story? Or for the fact that she has books to read, to escape her own sad story, just for a little while?

It’s up to you to fill in the blank. Because the movie is so bleak, I choose to interpret it as Ellie feeling grateful for both her mother and her father, who love her. I just need Charlie to know that Ellie was grateful for his love. He needed to know he did one good thing with his life, he said. Maybe he’s clinging to that essay because the final line, written by Ellie, confirms that he did.

• Ending Explained
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"The Whale" is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

It gawks at the grotesquerie of its central figure beneath the guise of sentimentality, but it also offers sharp exchanges between its characters that ring with bracing honesty.

It's the kind of film you should probably see if only to have an informed, thoughtful discussion about it, but it's also one you probably won't want to watch.

This aligns it with Darren Aronofsky's movies in general, which can often be a challenging sit. The director is notorious for putting his actors (and his audiences) through the wringer, whether it's Jennifer Connolly's drug addict in " Requiem for a Dream ," Mickey Rourke's aging athlete in " The Wrestler ," Natalie Portman's obsessed ballerina in " Black Swan ," or Jennifer Lawrence's besieged wife in "mother!" (For the record, I'm a fan of Aronofsky's work in general.)

But the difference between those films and "The Whale" is their intent, whether it's the splendor of their artistry or the thrill of their provocation. There's a verve to those movies, an unpredictability, an undeniable daring, and a virtuoso style. They feature images you've likely never seen before or since, but they'll undoubtedly stay with you afterward.

"The Whale" may initially feel gentler, but its main point seems to be sticking the camera in front of Brendan Fraser , encased in a fat suit that makes him appear to weigh 600 pounds, and asking us to wallow in his deterioration. In theory, we are meant to pity him or at least find sympathy for his physical and psychological plight by the film's conclusion. But in reality, the overall vibe is one of morbid fascination for this mountain of a man. Here he is, knocking over an end table as he struggles to get up from the couch; there he is, cramming candy bars in his mouth as he Googles "congestive heart failure." We can tsk-tsk all we like between our mouthfuls of popcorn and Junior Mints while watching Fraser's Charlie gobble greasy fried chicken straight from the bucket or inhale a giant meatball sub with such alacrity that he nearly chokes to death. The message "The Whale" sends us home with seems to be: Thank God that's not us.

In working from Samuel D. Hunter's script, based on Hunter's stage play, Aronofsky doesn't appear to be as interested in understanding these impulses and indulgences as much as pointing and staring at them. His depiction of Charlie's isolation within his squalid Idaho apartment includes a scene of him masturbating to gay porn with such gusto that he almost has a heart attack, a moment made of equal parts shock value and shame. But then, in a jarring shift, the tone eventually turns maudlin with Charlie's increasing martyrdom.

Within the extremes of this approach, Fraser brings more warmth and humanity to the role than he's afforded on the page. We hear his voice first; Charlie is a college writing professor who teaches his students online from behind the safety of a black square. And it's such a welcoming and resonant sound, full of decency and humor. Fraser's been away for a while, but his contradictions have always made him an engaging screen presence—the contrast of his imposing physique and playful spirit. He does so much with his eyes here to give us a glimpse into Charlie's sweet but tortured soul, and the subtlety he's able to convey goes a long way toward making "The Whale" tolerable.

But he's also saddled with a screenplay that spells out every emotion in ways that are so clunky as to be groan-inducing. At Charlie's most desperate, panicky moments, he soothes himself by reading or reciting a student's beloved essay on Moby Dick , which—in part—gives the film its title and will take on increasing significance. He describes the elusive white whale of Herman Melville's novel as he stands up, shirtless, and lumbers across the living room, down the hall, and toward the bedroom with a walker. At this moment, you're meant to marvel at the elaborate makeup and prosthetic work on display; you're more likely to roll your eyes at the writing.

"He thinks his life will be better if he can just kill this whale, but in reality, it won't help him at all," he intones in a painfully obvious bit of symbolism. "This book made me think about my own life," he adds as if we couldn't figure that out for ourselves.

A few visitors interrupt the loneliness of his days, chiefly Hong Chau as his nurse and longtime friend, Liz. She's deeply caring but also no-nonsense, providing a crucial spark to these otherwise dour proceedings. Aronofsky's longtime cinematographer, the brilliant Matthew Libatique , has lit Charlie's apartment in such a relentlessly dark and dim fashion to signify his sorrow that it's oppressive. Once you realize the entirety of the film will take place within these cramped confines, it sends a shiver of dread. And the choice to tell this story in the boxy, 1.33 aspect ratio further heightens its sense of dour claustrophobia.

But then "Stranger Things" star Sadie Sink arrives as Charlie's rebellious, estranged daughter, Ellie; her mom was married to Charlie before he came out as a gay man. While their first meeting in many years is laden with exposition about the pain and awkwardness of their time apart, the two eventually settle into an interesting, prickly rapport. Sink brings immediacy and accessibility to the role of the sullen but bright teenager, and her presence, like Chau's, improves "The Whale" considerably. Her casting is also spot-on in her resemblance to Fraser, especially in her expressive eyes.

The arrival of yet another visitor—an earnest, insistent church missionary played by Ty Simpkins —feels like a total contrivance, however. Allowing him inside the apartment repeatedly makes zero sense, even within the context that Charlie believes he's dying and wants to make amends. He even says to this sweet young man: "I'm not interested in being saved." And yet, the exchanges between Sink and Simpkins provide some much-needed life and emotional truth. The subplot about their unlikely friendship feels like something from a totally different movie and a much more interesting one.

Instead, Aronofsky insists on veering between cruelty and melodrama, with Fraser stuck in the middle, a curiosity on display.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Whale (2022)

Rated R for language, some drug use and sexual content.

117 minutes

Brendan Fraser as Charlie

Sadie Sink as Ellie

Hong Chau as Liz

Ty Simpkins as Thomas

Samantha Morton as Mary

Sathya Sridharan as Dan

• Darren Aronofsky

Writer (based on the play by)

• Samuel D. Hunter

Cinematographer

• Matthew Libatique
• Andrew Weisblum
• Rob Simonsen

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The Whale writer didn't know about the ending change from the play

"I had no idea until I saw the rough cut."

In an interview with Digital Spy , the writer talked about the original ending and how the different ending was perfect for the film.

"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. It was just kind of an incredible surprise," he said.

Related: The Whale ending explained

"I had no idea until I saw the rough cut, and I was so intensely moved by it. I was just like, 'Oh my God, that's perfect.' Because of the play, when there's that first flashback in the Mary scene, when you see him on the… Right? Is that the Mary scene?

"In the play, it's the one moment that I script as he’s giving that monologue about the Oregon coast that the sound of waves comes in. In the play, it’s heightened, and expands a little bit. I think Darren [Aronofsky, director] took that idea, and kind of ran with it, in this gorgeous way," he said.

The film’s star, Brendan Fraser, who scored a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal, recently opened up about how he wasn’t scared to take on the role.

Related: Brendan Fraser on not being scared of The Whale role

"I didn't feel scared. I felt – I don't know – energised. I felt enthusiastic. I felt like: 'That's going to be a good challenge. That's new. I haven't seen that before.' I felt really inspired," he explained.

"I also felt like it was something I wanted to do so bad, I could feel it in my bones. And the feeling of also having had that many times before in my life – in my career – and seeing that ship sail enough times," he added.

The Whale is out now in UK cinemas.

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Shivani Dubey is a freelance writer covering entertainment, culture, social trends and lifestyle. She has been published in Vice, Vogue India, Refinery29, Mashable, i-D, Little White Lies, HuffPost and The Daily Beast among other titles. You can find her on Twitter .

Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times , OK! , The Guardian and Grazia , is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies . 

She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids . In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic , and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie .

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‘The Whale’ Review: Brendan Fraser Is Sly and Moving as a Morbidly Obese Man, but Darren Aronofsky’s Film Is Hampered by Its Contrivances

The director seamlessly adapts Samuel D. Hunter's play but can't transcend the play's problems.

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“The Whale” is based on a stageplay by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the script, and the entire film takes place in Charlie’s apartment, most of it unfolding in that seedy bookish living room. Aronofsky doesn’t necessarily “open up” the play, but working with the great cinematographer Matthew Libatique he doesn’t need to. Shot without flourishes, the movie has a plainspoken visual flow to it. And given what a sympathetic and fascinating character Fraser makes Charlie, we’re eager to settle in with him in that depressive lair, and to get to the bottom of the film’s inevitable two dramatic questions: How did Charlie get this way? And can he be saved?

In case there is any doubt he needs saving, “The Whale” quickly establishes that he’s an addict living a life of isolated misery and self-disgust, scarfing away his despair (at various points we see him going at a bucket of fried chicken, a drawer full of candy, and voluminous take-out pizzas from Gambino’s, all of which is rather sad to behold). Charlie teaches an expository writing seminar at an online college, doing it on Zoom, which looks very today (though the film, for no good reason, is set during the presidential primary season of 2016), with video images of the students surrounding a small black square at the center of the screen. That’s where Charlie should be; he tells the students his laptop camera isn’t working, which is his way of hiding his body and the shame he feels about it. But he’s a canny teacher who knows what good writing is, even if his lessons about structure and topic sentences fall on apathetic ears.

Charlie has a friend of sorts, Liz (Hong Chau), who happens to be a nurse, and when she comes over and learns that his blood pressure is in the 240/130 range, she declares it an emergency situation. He has congestive heart failure; with that kind of blood pressure, he’ll be dead in a week. But Charlie refuses to go the hospital, and will continue to do so. He’s got a handy excuse. With no health insurance, if he seeks medical care he’ll run up tens of thousands of dollars in bills. As Liz points out, it’s better to be in debt than dead. But Charlie’s resistance to healing himself bespeaks a deeper crisis. He doesn’t want help. If he dies (and that’s the film’s basic suspense), it will essentially be a suicide.

It’s hard not to notice that Liz, given how much she’s taking care of Charlie, has a spiky and rather abrasive personality. We think: Okay, that’s who she is. But a couple of other characters enter the movie — and when Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s 17-year-old daughter, shows up, we notice that she has a really spiky and abrasive personality. Does Charlie just happen to be surrounded by hellcats and cranks? Or is there something in Hunter’s dialogue that is simply, reflexively over-the-top in its theatrical hostility?

And what a rage it is! Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things,” acts with a fire and directness that recalls the young Lindsay Lohan, but the volatile spitfire she’s playing is bitter — at her father, and at the world — in an absolutist way that rings absolutely false. Lots of teenagers are angry and alienated, but they’re not just angry and alienated. There are shades of vulnerability that come with being that age. We keep waiting for Ellie to show another side, to reflect the fact that the father she resents is still, on some level … her father.

“The Whale,” while it has a captivating character at its center, turns out to be equal parts sincerity and hokum. The movie carries us along, tethering the audience to Fraser’s intensely lived-in and touching performance, yet the more it goes on the more its drama is interlaced with nagging contrivances, like the whole issue of why this father and daughter were ever so separated from each other. We learn that after Charlie and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), were divorced, Mary got full custody and cut Charlie off from Ellie. But they never stopped living in the same small town, and even single parents who don’t have custody are legally entitled to see their children. Charlie, we’re told, was eager to have kids; he lived with Ellie and her mother until the girl was eight. So why would he have just … let her go?

There’s one other major character, a lost young missionary for the New Life Church named Thomas, and though Ty Simpkins plays him appealingly, the way this cult-like church plays into the movie feels like one hard-to-swallow conceit too many. This matters a lot, because if we can’t totally buy what’s happening, we won’t be as moved by Charlie’s road to redemption. Near the end, there’s a very moving moment. It’s when Charlie is discussing the essay on “Moby Dick” he’s been reading pieces of throughout the film, and we learn where the essay comes from and why it means so much to him. If only the rest of the movie were that convincing! But most of “The Whale” simply isn’t as good as Brendan Fraser’s performance. For what he brings off, though, it deserves to be seen.     

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept. 4, 2022. Running time: 117 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release of a Protozoa Pictures production. Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Jeremy Dawson, Art Handel. Executive producers: Scott Franklin, Tyson Bidner.
• Crew: Director: Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay: Samuel D. Hunter. Camera: Matthew Libatique. Editor: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Rob Simonsen.
• With: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan.

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‘The Whale’: Read The Screenplay For The Play-Turned-Film That Made Brendan Fraser An Awards-Season Frontrunner

By Patrick Hipes

Patrick Hipes

Executive Managing Editor

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Editors note :  Deadline’s  Read the Screenplay  series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will factor in this year’s movie awards races.

Darren Aronofsky held the movie rights to Samuel D. Hunter ‘s award-winning 2012 play The Whale for a decade before he finally got the elements he wanted. The wait was definitely worth it: The A24 film has been a success from the first second of the six-minute standing ovation it and the film’s star Brendan Fraser received after its world premiere in September at the Venice Film Festival.

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Fraser and Sink star in the movie alongside Hong Chau, who plays Charlie’s caregiver. The cast also includes Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton.

Fraser has been Oscar-buzzed since the beginning of the season, and has already scored Critics Choice and Golden Globe Best Actor nominations among others. Aronofsky told the Deadline Studio in  Toronto  where the film was in the lineup that he spent 10 years searching for the actor to play Charlie, describing the process as the “biggest hurdle” to making the film.

The Whale hit theaters in six theaters in Los Angeles and New York on December 9 and scored 2022’s best per-theater average. It later expanded, with its box office cume now sitting at $8.58 million.

Click to read Hunter’s script below:

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Might we soon understand sperm whale speak? | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on June 6, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: These gentle giants of the ocean have long been a source of fascination for us humans. And while researchers have made huge gains in fostering a greater understanding of these majestic creatures in recent decades, the use of AI may have just cracked open the mother lode of all puzzles: thier language. Could this lead to one day the possibility of talking with whales? David Gruber, the founder & president of Project CETI, an interdisciplinary scientific and conservation project aimed at listening to and translating the communication of sperm whales, joins The Excerpt to share this exciting new development.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts:  True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Dana Taylor:

That clicking noise you're hearing, is the sound of sperm whales.

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt, I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, June 6th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. The gentle giants of the ocean have long been a source of fascination for us humans, and while researchers have made huge gains in fostering greater understanding of these majestic creatures in recent decades, the use of AI may have just cracked open the mother load of all puzzles, their language. Might this lead to one day the possibility of talking with whales?

To learn more, I'm joined now by one of the scientists behind this latest development. David Gruber is the founder and president of Project CETI, which stands for Cetacean Translation Initiative, an interdisciplinary scientific and conservation project aimed at listening to and translating the communication of sperm whales. David, thank you so much for joining me.

David Gruber:

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Let's start with the $64,000 question. What are the chances that one day we could communicate directly with sperm whales?

Ooh, that is an interesting question. I guess the idea is that we're more interested in understanding the communication, and of course that opens up the possibility, but we already are communicating with many animals like dogs and cats. So there's a ton of communication that's already happening, it's about really using digital bioacoustics and artificial intelligence to look at it another level.

It's currently being described as the new telescope or microscope. Just how the telescope aided us in being able to look out into the cosmos or the microscope allowed us to see inside of cells, by kind of listening with the help of advanced machine learning, we could hear things that maybe the human ear hadn't heard before.

So, I won't ask you to speak to me in sperm whale terms right now or share something with me that you learned from studying these whales. I do want you to talk to me about this promising development and how it came about. What technologies were involved here?

I'm fortunate and really honored to be the lead of Project CETI, which is the Cetacean Translation Initiative. We're now over 50 scientists coming from about eight different disciplines that have joined together really with the intent of listening to and working to translate the communication system of another animal, and in our case it's sperm whales.

So we came together in 2020, and one of the key things that we're really doing is we're building the work of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, which for 15 years had been working in Dominica with about ... there there's groups of probably around 200 to 400, mainly female sperm whales that live in matrilineal societies. In the course of the last 15 years, they began to kind of see things like dialects that are emerging, almost like accents among the different groups of whales, so that gave us some foundation to build this study.

This study is actually not really using big data, it's using a data set of about 9,000 codas, and almost everybody on the team has not really worked with whales before, and they're coming at it with a new set of lens. So this lens was really coming at it from a natural language processing lens, and they were able to kind of see some of the core building blocks and fundamentals that are going into the sperm whales' communication system.

What is a coda? You said there are about 9,000 of them.

Codas are ... if you listen to whales, they make these stereotypical sounds. In Dominica, the ones that they use is called the 1-1-3, so it's like. That is a coda, and you'll hear them kind of repeat this over and over again. I would try to do it with my mouth, but I don't want to embarrass myself with trying to make whale clicks.

So that is what a coda, and if you're underwater with them, you'll just hear this amazing clicking sounds. But that'll be the one thing that really the human ear will pick out, you'll really notice the 1-1-3, because the Dominican sperm whales are saying that quite often.

And how do codas make up the language?

Well, so now with this paper, they thought there was about 20 different types of these types of codas in the Caribbean, but they're looking at more at the how quickly. So you might just hear, click, click, click, click, click, or it might be, click, click, click, click, click, and taking things of musical elements of tempo and rubato.

Then sometimes, every now and then if you're listening, you'll hear just an extra click at the end, like click, click, click, click, click, click, and that would be an ornament. So in this paper [inaudible 00:05:20] lead with our colleagues from MIT CSAIL, they were able to categorize these into what's known as a sperm whale phonetic alphabet, which opens up the possibility for much more communication than we previously thought.

How has this new language model deepened your understanding of how they communicate?

I think honestly, one of the real concerns, or as we embarked on this project, we're putting so much investment onto one animal onto the sperm whale. There's so many reasons why we're so deeply invested in the sperm whale, and it's an animal of superlatives with the largest brain that we know of, live in these very complicated family structures. One of the worries would be is that, well, what if their communication system is rather boring or there's not much to it? That they're just saying the same things over and over again, and I think what we're starting to see now is there's a lot more complexity.

As we begin this kind of further ascent to continue to study them and continue to learn more, we're essentially baby sperm whales at the moment, and we're trying to learn the communication system from the family from the ground up. This paper again was based on about 9,000 codas, as we begin to get nine million or nine billion, we'll really be able to get much more resolution into their communication system.

David, are there categories of messages you've been able to decipher? Are there messages of danger and messages of caring, for example?

That's a really good question. We're not yet into that. That's going to be coming out soon, and we're going to have an in to some of the messages. This paper really didn't get into what they're saying. It more got into the possibilities and the foundation, but you're getting to the idea of the first things that we'll be able to get to would be things that are quite evident. Like for instance, their diving behavior. They're communicating, there's clicks going, and then there might be an event where they're diving where we would be able to see that information because we would have information on the whale. We might have a tag on it that would have the depth on it. We would know which whale was around that. So those would be the first types of events that we'd be able to find. We have another paper coming out.

It's looking at using unsupervised machine translation, and there was two for understanding sperm whale communication. And there was two real takeaways from that, is that the more, well, one, it was that if their communication system is complex, these tools that we're seeing now, these tools, like large language models that you're seeing in ChatGPT, they'll be better at translating if the communication system is more complex. But the other thing would be how much of our world and their world are in common? So those would also be the other parts that would be easier to translate. So as we continue on this journey, parts where our world and their world intersect will be some of the other things that we'll be looking at. And it'll get really interesting when we get to the points of like, where is it where our world and the sperm whale world has almost nothing in common?

Well, this is a revolutionary breakthrough. It's not the first time scientists have studied sperm whale communication. What's the history here?

Even getting to when humans even knew that sperm whales were making sounds is, there's a paper in 1957, so just really thinking of it's not been that long that we even understood that sperm whales were vocalizing. So the fact that we're here in 2024 with this sperm whale phonetic alphabet and really understanding the core foundation, it's actually moved quite quick in a way. And I think what we're really excited about is just the possibilities. We've seen so much in the last few years of how advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence has really transformed humans and how humans are communicating. So it's now beginning to apply some of these new tools that we had to the non-human, which really get me excited.

Do you think this development and understanding will help the conservation movement?

Yeah, we hope so. I mean, we think about that all the time. After almost every meeting, we reflect back on how does this work assist whales, or how is this to the benefit of whales? And unfortunately, in the last year, we lost our key science advisor, Roger Payne and his work in the 1960s showed that whales sing. Along with Roger and Katie Payne, really with their musical background in a similar way that this study is done, by listening to humpback whales through their musical ears, they were able to decipher the whale song, which has now essentially led to this album and a paper in science on songs of the humpback whale. And that essentially became the anthem of the Save the Whales movement, which is considered one of the most successful environmental movements of all time.

It saved several species from extinction, and it stopped large scale Whaling led to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. So really the hope here is that, that was just by knowing that they sing. Imagine if we could really know what they're saying, how would that benefit the whales? Would it lead to additional protections? Would it allow us to understand how our human generated noises are affecting their habitat, and be able to really understand that on a deeper level. So again, we kind of feel like we're building a nice foundation now, which we could build these future studies upon. But the hope is that this is all in the benefit and the service of whales.

It's a truly fascinating development David. What's next for you and your team? Where do you go from here?

Thanks, Dana. Well, we've got a lot of work. Again, we were so fortunate, in last July we witnessed a sperm whale birth, and we've been working on this nonstop, developing new tools to analyze that. There were some new types of codas that we heard during this event. So that is something that's really taking our interest. Yeah, we're beginning the development of tools. How are we listening to the whales? We have a core whale listening station in Dominica. There are tags that go on the whales. Our group there just came up with the Harvard Micro-robotics lab had invented a new type of suction cup that's bio-inspired by sucker fish that delicately stays on the whales. Yeah, there's just so much to do. And in a project like this, there's really not a store that you can go to and buy deciphering sperm whale communication tools. So a lot of these things are, were being custom-made for this project.

Well, it's all incredible. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt, David.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me Dana.

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening, I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.

Exploring What “The Whale” Overlooked Through A New Eye-Opening Documentary

I nstead of attempting to unravel the intricacies of fatphobia or chronicling the extensive history of fatness in the United States, the documentary “Your Fat Friend” adopts a more intimate approach. It spotlights the life and work of Aubrey Gordon, an advocate for body positivity, to call attention to the enduring and socially sanctioned mistreatment of obese individuals. The common retort to the grievances of fat individuals is the unhelpful advice to “love oneself.”

Yet, self-love does not translate into better medical care when fat patients are advised to lose weight rather than being given appropriate medical treatment, or when an employer ignores the capabilities of an employee based on their weight, despite weight discrimination being legal in most U.S. states . In Aubrey Gordon’s words, “you can’t love your way out of oppression.”

A prevalent misconception about discrimination against fat people focuses on the individual’s self-perception, when in reality, external societal biases create an environment often characterized by discrimination and inaccessibility. This documentary juxtaposes “The Whale,” which received praise for its bravery but failed to address the genuine issues faced by the fat community, opting instead for a stigmatizing portrayal. In contrast, “Your Fat Friend” is a candid and empathetic exploration of everyday experiences that afflict millions of fat individuals, demanding recognition of their humanity not as a plea but as an evident truth.

“Your Fat Friend” is available for viewing in select theaters and over on VOD via Jolt .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the documentary “your fat friend” about.

“Your Fat Friend” is a documentary that looks at the life and activism of Aubrey Gordon. It challenges societal mistreatment of fat people and focuses on authentic experience rather than a simplistic message of self-love.

What are some issues the documentary “Your Fat Friend” addresses?

The film addresses societal issues such as fatphobia, weight discrimination in the workplace, and the misunderstandings surrounding the negative emotional state of fat individuals due to societal maltreatment.

How is “Your Fat Friend” different from “The Whale”?

Unlike “The Whale,” which was criticized for dehumanizing its protagonist and misunderstanding the actual challenges faced by fat people, “Your Fat Friend” provides an honest and empathetic narrative that seeks to reflect the genuine day-to-day experiences of the fat community.

Where can I watch “Your Fat Friend”?

The documentary is available in limited theaters and can be viewed on demand through Jolt’s streaming service.

Does the documentary propose any solutions to fatphobia?

While the documentary does not set out to solve the issue of fatphobia directly, it presents the harsh reality of societal cruelty and the call for legitimate understanding and change toward fat individuals.

Center for Literary Publishing

Colorado review, a college of liberal arts center.

Book Reviews

The Roof of the Whale Poems

About the book.

• Author: Juan Calzadilla (translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott)
• Reviewed By: Nicole Yurcaba
• Genre: Poetry
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Published: 2023

Book Review

In Juan Calzadilla’s The Roof of the Whale Poems , translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott, readers encounter an emotional landscape where one walks in a dreamlike state through urban and personal environments and revolutionary forefronts. The poems in this collection are not shy. They address personal discomfort, social displacement, and radical interpretation of Venezuelan modernization. Threading them together, too, is a strange spiritual thread, which makes each of the collection’s poems read like a surrealistic prayer offered to a god who may or may not be listening.

In poems like “hitting the abyss,” readers encounter a forthright speaker who is aware that freedom of speech comes at a high price in a country like Venezuela. Facilitating the emotion in the poem is the speaker’s reliance on run-on sentences that create a frantic tone: “my minutes are written up raised the walls of a luciola thickness / which i admit to not knowing like the violent tissue of chromosomes / the bland abysses being embedded in my body.” Geological references merge with biological ones as the speaker reflects that their body is “made of cosmogonic lava matter and nerve.” Other words like “tumor,” “crater,” “corpuscles,” and “pulsation” establish the speaker’s clinical self-awareness, and the speaker confesses, “i am aware of this equilibrium daily.” Clinching these emotions, however, and creating a deeper sense of paranoia, is the poem’s final line: “to which i am sentenced by an idea on the verge of being shot.” Confusion reigns, and the lack of capitalization of the first-person pronoun “I” communicates a lack of self-worth while simultaneously cementing the poem’s overall emotional and psychological chaos.

Geology becomes imperative to many of Calzadilla’s poems, especially poems like “the magma must return.” Images of volcanoes and lava permeate the poem. They counter the speaker’s moral statements such as “i have killed my angel / i have killed it with a clumsy knife unwashed.” These lines enforce a sense of evil, and this sense of evil becomes more acute as the poem continues and the speaker develops a sense of isolation: “what is invisible has blinded me / in silence i bear my research only / concerned with the flesh that goes alone through a desert.” The line “concerned with the flesh that goes alone through a desert” is an astounding one, potentially an allusion to Saint Anthony, who cast aside worldly comforts to reside as a solitary monk in a desert’s sands. Again, the lack of capitalization of the word “I” establishes a sense of self-doubt, self-ridicule, and a lack of self-worth. As the poem concludes, the speaker develops a transcendental awareness: “i become aware of a return that is nothing more than / a descent of jackknives along my cranium / a playing card hovering above the eye of a guilty one.” Thus, the speaker embraces the idea that a return to nature is imperative to finding and understanding one’s true self.

As readers delve deeper into Calzadilla’s collection, they discover poems like “always jonah.” An intensely personal poem, it opens in a confessional manner: “like jonah full of doubt / i dwelled in the belly of the city.” The speaker relies on words like “somberly,” “banished,” “desperately,” and “incomparable.” The reliance on enjambment and run-on sentences swirls these words and the speaker’s emotions together:

i desperately searched for happiness i did not find it beneath a clumsy sky hearing an order to leave i waited at the ports i imagined incomparable adventures with no reason to.

An inescapable hopelessness also emerges, but the speaker develops resolve while facing seemingly insurmountable circumstances:

the more i opened my eyes the more the world seemed smaller and that’s how i will live beneath a stagnant sky no desires hating the word the feeling the return letters the cacti silence.

Here, form and structure serve the poem’s tone and function. The tapering lines mimic, and ultimately solidify, the speaker’s resolve—making it even more noticeable and even tangible for readers.

“You Take Pavement as the Precise Shape of Your Skin” portrays living as a profession. Brief in form and line structure, Calzadilla displays an admirable adeptness once more for using form to elevate poetic and linguistic function. The poem’s first line creates a sense of unbelonging and strangeness, even emotional displacement: “You live too inside and outside the city.” The speaker defines the “profession of living” as “a profession you carry out in the best way instead.” A dissatisfaction forms in these lines, facilitated by the repetition of the word “profession.” Both the emotional displacement and the dissatisfaction develop more psychological weight because of the speaker’s reliance on the second-person pronoun “you.” The speaker’s deference to using “you” as a direct address causes a momentous shift in the poem. The phrase “the inside and the outside” repeat as the poem concludes, forming a cyclical consciousness, and in the poem’s final two lines, a inevitable futility forms: “so that you cannot in any way fully / achieve it.” Thus, the poem ends with an unsettling realization, one that jars readers, but echoes poems like “always jonah.”

Juan Calzadilla’s The Roof of the Whale Poems is existential, gritty, and brutally realistic. However, the translations—thanks to Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott—are testaments to the linguistic magic which happens during collaboration.  The Roof of the Whale Poems holds and reveals the unexpected, and this dual-language edition of Calzadilla’s poems will both shock and awe readers—in the best ways.

SeaWorld “Bullies Its Employees,” Ex-Trainer Claims Animal Care Is Declining

in SeaWorld

A former SeaWorld Orlando employee has claimed that the park is mistreating both its employees and animals.

Since the release of Blackfish (2013) , negative opinions about SeaWorld’s theme parks have become increasingly common. The documentary – which followed Tilikum, a killer whale involved in three of the four fatal attacks of orcas on humans – puts forward a pretty convincing argument that marine mammals do not belong in tanks.

Related: Is SeaWorld Getting Rid of Its Killer Whales?

SeaWorld Orlando, SeaWorld San Diego, and SeaWorld San Antonio have all made several key changes since the documentary’s release. Its orca breeding program was axed in 2016 , making the current generation the last to live in SeaWorld’s parks. Trainers are also no longer allowed in the water with killer whales, and shows have shifted to educational presentations rather than entertainment.

While there are still those who refuse to visit SeaWorld parks, others have taken these changes in stride and accepted them as significant attempts to improve the care given to its animals.

However, a former SeaWorld trainer has penned an essay for The Orlando Sentinel about their time working at the park to claim that SeaWorld’s quality of care has declined massively in the past decade.

Valerie Greene, who worked as an animal trainer at SeaWorld Orlando from 2005 to 2016, claimed that Dawn Brancheau’s death (which sparked the production of Blackfish ) was a turning point for the park.

“In the aftermath of Dawn’s death, OSHA regulations dictated the types of interactions we could have with the killer whales , including the banning of waterwork,” she said. “The removal of waterwork interactions didn’t just erase intimacy from SeaWorld’s shows; it erased the intimacy in the whales’ lives too.”

Brancheau was famously killed by Tilikum during a Dine With Shamu show . The orca – who had already killed two other humans prior to this point, including a man who climbed into his tank several years earlier – pulled Brancheau into the water by her ponytail and left her with “multiple traumatic injuries and drowning.”

Greene – who was a first responder on the day of Brancheau’s death – added that “Dawn’s death and the ensuing regulatory and public pressure marked the end of the quality of care necessary for killer whales to thrive in captivity.”

As an example, Greene pointed to another incident in June 2022 that she believes would not have happened if SeaWorld gave its animals the care and attention they require.

Related: Trainers Accuse Theme Park of Killing Orca, Updates Given

“Liz [Thomas, an old-time SeaWorld trainer who inspired Greene to join the industry] was injured while picking paint chips out of one of the whale’s mouths,” Greene explained. These paint chips can be deadly if ingested. “SeaWorld’s pools should never have been allowed to deteriorate to the point where paint was chipping off the walls,” she added.

The incident detailed by Greene involved a two-and-a-half-ton killer whale known as Malia. Reports claimed that the trainer involved had broken SeaWorld’s three-foot rule when the whale bit, then “immediately” released her. She was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center and underwent surgery for multiple fractures in her forearm and wrist.

Considering previous incidents at the park, one would assume that SeaWorld would celebrate the fact that this was a near-miss rather than a deadly incident . However, Greene claimed that SeaWorld blamed Thomas and “moved her out of Shamu Stadium — her home of 40 years.”

Thomas subsequently left SeaWorld and “moved on with her life,” according to Greene.

However, she added that “watching this felt like a smack in the face to SeaWorld’s animal trainers. I thought the trainers were important to the SeaWorld brand, but this proved that assumption wrong. SeaWorld cannot claim to be pro-animal welfare when it bullies its own employees.”

What are your thoughts on SeaWorld theme parks? Let us know in the comments!

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Richard Ellis, 86, Dies; Artist Whose Works Included a Museum’s Whale

Once called the “poet laureate” of deep-sea creatures, he melded science with art in paintings, books and a notable life-size installation in New York.

By Michael S. Rosenwald

Richard Ellis, a polymath of marine life whose paintings, books and museum installations — especially the life-size blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History in New York — revealed the beauty and wonders of the ocean, died on May 21 in Norwood, N.J. He was 86.

His daughter, Elizabeth Ellis, said the cause of his death, at an assisted living facility, was cardiac arrest.

Mr. Ellis had no formal training in marine biology, conservation, painting or writing. But in fusing his artistic flair with an encyclopedic knowledge of ocean creatures, he became an invaluable, sui generis figure to conservationists, educators and those curious about sea life.

“Richard was an enthusiast, and he absolutely adored the natural world, especially the sea,” said Ellen V. Futter, the former president of the natural history museum, where Mr. Ellis was a research associate for many years. “He wanted everybody to share his appreciation and joy from the beauty of it, but also to feel the same sense of responsibility to protect it.”

Mr. Ellis spent much of his life traveling to exotic locales, where he bobbed around on boats and went diving in search of giant squid, great white sharks and other fantastical, elusive deep-sea creatures.

“If people understood the life, the importance, the habits of these creatures — whether sharks or whales or manatees — they would acquire a reverence,” Mr. Ellis told The New York Times in 2012. “I do it so people will say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that’ or ‘Isn’t that cool! Look at what octopuses can do!’”

His photorealistic paintings of whales were sold in an art gallery and published in Audubon and National Wildlife magazines and in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His more than a dozen books about marine life — especially his tomes on whales, sharks and tuna — made him, in the view of the best-selling author Simon Winchester , the “poet laureate of the marine world.”

Throughout his life, Mr. Ellis was never far from a major body of water. Growing up on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, he swam nearly every day in the Atlantic Ocean, weather permitting. The blue water, and what lurked below, frequently washed up in his daydreams.

“I would be sitting in class, learning about the Revolutionary War — except I was drawing swordfish,” he told a weekly newspaper on Long Island in 2015. “I didn’t think this was going to mark the beginning of my career, but it did.”

In 1969, the American Museum of Natural History hired Mr. Ellis as an exhibition designer and assigned him to help build a life-size blue whale to hang from the ceiling in the Hall of Ocean Life.

“I thought, ‘OK, how hard can it be?’” Mr. Ellis told The Times. “There must be all kinds of pictures.”

There were not. Mr. Ellis had to rely on drawings and photos of dead animals, an experience that convinced him that the only way to accurately depict oceanic wonders was to swim among them — even if they harbored a desire to eat him.

In the 1980s, wearing scuba gear and protected by a steel cage, he was one of the first ocean explorers to swim with great white sharks. He told The Times that he recalled “breathing extraordinarily fast because I’m sure the sharks are going to break through the cage and kill me.”

After that fear subsided, Mr. Ellis became filled with wonder.

“You don’t belong here, but it does,” he said. “And then you understand how beautiful it really is, and you spend the rest of your time staring at this animal or photographing it and thinking to yourself, ‘I am very privileged to be able to see this creature in its natural habitat.’”

Richard Ellis was born on April 2, 1938, in the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens. His father, Robert, was a lawyer and also worked at the United Transformer Corporation. His mother, Sylvia (Levy) Ellis, was also a lawyer but did not practice.

He spent most of his childhood swimming in the ocean.

“I had always been fascinated by the ocean and what lived in it,” he told The Times. “But most of the time, what lived in it was me.”

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 with a degree in American civilization, he joined the Army. He was stationed in Honolulu and, in his off hours, surfed and swam in the Pacific Ocean.

Mr. Ellis maintained an affiliation with the American Museum of Natural History for much of his life, but he made his living painting, writing and illustrating books. His output was prodigious.

“The Book of Whales” (1980) tells the complex history of nearly every species of whale, accompanied by his illustrations.

In “Monsters of the Sea” (1994), the author and naturalist Janet Lembke wrote in a review in The Times, Mr. Ellis aimed his “insatiable curiosity” at “legend-hallowed behemoths: the leviathan, the polyp, the man-eating elasmobranch (otherwise known as the shark), all manner of sea serpents (including Nessie, the Loch Ness monster) and some great, stranded lumps of flesh called ‘blobs’ and ‘globsters’ for want of more precise names.”

“Tuna: A Love Story” (2008) tells the story of how a fish capable of swimming 55 miles per hour became an overfished commodity.

“To biologists,” Mr. Ellis wrote, “the tuna is the epitome of hydrodynamic excellence; it is fast, powerful, streamlined, and equipped with specializations that enable it to perform its duties better than any other fish in the ocean.”

To humans, it is tuna salad and sushi.

“What I do is I paint the things I admire,” Mr. Ellis said on the NPR program “Talk of the Nation” in 2008. “Other people shoot them, some people fish for them. I paint them.”

Mr. Ellis married Anna Kneeland in 1963. They divorced in 1981.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by Stephanie W. Guest, his companion since 1989; a son, Timo; Ms. Guest’s children, Victoria, Vanessa, Fred and Andrew Guest; six grandchildren; and his brother, David. He lived on the West Side of Manhattan for many years.

Mr. Ellis appeared on the CNN program “Larry King Live” in 2001 after a shark bit an 8-year-old boy in Pensacola Beach, Fla.

“They are dangerous when hungry, right?” Mr. King asked him.

Not exactly.

“They’ve been around for roughly 300 million years,” Mr. Ellis said. “And if something moved in the water, it was edible to a shark.”

It’s not the fault of sharks that people started swimming in their water.

“If it moves in the water and you’re a shark,” Mr. Ellis said, “you can eat it.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this obituary, using information from Mr. Ellis’s daughter, misidentified the woman Mr. Ellis painted swimming with a whale shark. She is the philanthropist Sydney Shuman, not the diver and photographer Valerie Taylor.

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