There are two things to be a little worried about and one thing to be extremely excited about when coming into “The Whale.”The first element of concern is director Darren Aronofsky, who admittedly has made exceptional films like “Requiem for a Dream” and “Pi” and gotten career-defining performances out of his leads in “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” But his last two films, “Noah” and “mother!,” succumbed to all his worst instincts, creating bloated self-indulgent nonsense that was actively painful to sit through.In “The Whale,” also slightly worrying is the use of “fat suits,” which contemporary audiences are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with.
Much of the use of these so-called fat suits has been to create fat-phobic jokes, particularly by turning thin movie stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Courteney Cox into walking punchlines.
Even when the usage itself is fat-phobic, in the case of Sarah Paulson as
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