According to hollywoodreporter.com, Brendan Fraser recently landed in Venice Sunday to discuss a potential comeback project for him, Darren Aronofsky’s A24 film The Whale. The film is about a 600 pound man who struggles with finding redemption, and has received a positive response at its first Venice press screenings over this past weekend. During the press conference prior to he world premiere on Sunday night, Fraser was asked where his role in The Whale fits in with the various phases of his career. To which he responded, “I looked different in those days, My journey to where I am now has been to explore as many characters as I can. And this [film] presented the biggest challenge to me, and that’s what I wanted. By far and away, I think that Charlie is the most heroic man I’ve ever played. Because his superpower is to see the good in others and bring that out in them. And in that process, he’s on his journey of salvation.” He continued to say that, “I think it’s poetic that the trauma he carries is manifest in the physical weight of his body, I needed to learn to absolutely move in a new way. I developed muscles I did not know that I had. I even felt a sense of vertigo, when at the end of the day all the appliances were removed, just as you would feel stepping off the boat onto the dock here in Venice — that undulating feeling. And I say this because he gave me an appreciation for those whose bodies are similar, because I learned that you need to be an incredibly strong person physically and mentally to inhabit that physical being. And I think that is Charlie, also.”
The Whale was originally adapted from a stage play of the same title by Samuel D. Hunter. The film starts and shows Charlie an online teacher who never uses his webcam due to the fear of his students seeing that he weighs over 600 pounds and is unable to leave his home. The film is ultimately about whether a man who has lost everything can find his way back. Fraser said that he sees this role as being ” a light in an enclosed dark space.”
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