Darren Aronofsky has never been a filmmaker devoted to subtlety. Requiem for a Dream is a kinetic fever dream turned waking nightmare. The Fountain is an epic mediation on time and reality with a literal Tree of Life. mother! is a creation fable with a rave. Noah has giant rock monsters. Rock monsters. Even his quietest film until now, 2008’s The Wrestler, has wrestling sequences which are bonkers. Aronofsky is comfortable with the point of the film being right in front of you smacking you in the face. When you embrace that, you can embrace one of the few filmmakers working today whose every effort is designed to bring attention to the biggest things in life and the universe: the purpose of existence; the nature of God; the struggle for identity and meaning.

So, many criticism of his newest film, The Whale, make so much sense in light of who Aronofsky is. The most common complaints that I have seen are that it is too contrived, too stagey, and too overwrought. Too which I reply: of course it is. Have you ever seen a Darren Aronofsky movie? That it is contrived and stagey comes from it being adapted from a stage play. That it is overwrought comes from the movie’s creator. But not everything overwrought is bad. The Whale‘s strength, as the strength of many of Aronofsky’s films, is that he is able to use the overwrought surface to find real emotion underneath.

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