"Call me Ishmael."
If you recognize those famous opening words from Herman Melville's ponderous masterpiece Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, congratulations. You have a toehold on your American literature required reading list.
A commercial failure during Melville's lifetime, Moby-Dick has since taken a revered place in film, television, radio, the stage, music, comics and graphic novels.
My first encounter with the tale was the 1956 John Huston film Moby Dick starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. I was just a kid, so it had a huge impact on me, especially the scene toward the end with the dead Ahab entangled in the ropes around the whale's back.
Even if they haven't read the 1851 original, most Americans should be familiar with the tale of Ishmael, the Pequod, its revenged-minded, one-legged Ahab and the giant white sperm whale he obsessively hunts.
What many may not know is that Melville was inspired by a true story of whale vs. whaling ship. That tale is the basis for Animal Planet's two-hour film The Whale: Revenge From the Deep airing at 8 p.m. Wednesday. The film features, and is narrated by, Martin Sheen.
The film recounts the real-life 1820 sinking of the Nantucket whaling ship The Essex. The Animal Planet tagline: "The primeval struggle between man and whale always tilted in favor of humanity, until the whale had its revenge."
Out of 20 crewmen aboard the 87-foot Essex, only eight survived the ordeal.
The film reminds us that "once millions of whales swam free and unthreatened in peaceful waters. But in recent centuries, humanity has placed a price tag on these majestic animals, sought after for their oil and blubber. This mortal quest for wealth left many species of whale on the verge of extinction.
"The Whale: Revenge From the Deep travels back to the early 19th century, to a time when some of the sea's most epic and bloody battles were waged against the mighty whale, and young men dreamed of returning home on a ship full of whale oil and telling valiant tales of victory.
"But one voyage ended differently when a whale refused to meet its demise and sought to claim the ultimate and most brutal revenge."
A mutton-chopped Sheen plays old Thomas Nickerson, who reminisces about his doomed maiden voyage as a cabin boy on board The Essex. With dreams of matching his grandfather's bravery, Nickerson recounts days and nights battling brutal storms, crippling waves, the scorching sun and cruel hunger.
After a sperm whale rams the ship and The Essex sinks in the south Pacific, the men are forced into a three-month struggle for survival where desperation and starvation led to cannibalism.
"The hunters turn their slaughter upon each other," Animal Planet says, "and only then do they feel the full weight of one whale's revenge."
In an Animal Planet interview, Sheen says, "Paul Watson (environmental activist of Animal Planet's Whale Wars) is a great friend of mine and one of my heroes. It is gratifying that I get to do a project like [this]. It's a voice from the past telling us whaling is not a good idea and reminding us that we've depleted tremendous whale populations to a fraction of what they once were."
Adds Rick Holzman, general manager and executive vice president of programming for Animal Planet, "For years, Animal Planet has been following the whales' modern-day fight for survival through Whale Wars. This movie takes viewers back to a time when man's greed decimated this once-plentiful species, creating the present-day necessity for conservation. Antiquated whaling traditions caused massive devastation, not only for those aboard The Essex but for the whales species that suffered in our seas."
Environmental moralizing aside, the film is a gripping adventure tale.
Charles Furness (24: Live Another Day) portrays young Tom Nickerson, and John Boyega (Star Wars Episode VII) plays Steward William Bond.
The film also features Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood, The Street) as First Mate Owen Chase; Adam Rayner (The Hunted) as Captain George Pollard; Paul Kaye (Game of Thrones, Stella) as Second Mate Matthew Joy; David Gyasi (Cloud Atlas, War Horse) as sailor Richard Peterson; and Jolyon Coy (The Hollow Crown) as boatsteerer Benjamin Lawrence.
The film is a production of BBC History along with Animal Planet and was inspired by Chase and Pollard's real-life accounts of the ship's sinking. These memoirs are the same ones that inspired Melville as well as the 2000 nonfiction book In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick.
The movie, which features some nail-biting cinematography, was filmed on location in Malta and England, home to special-effects water tanks that are among the largest in the world.
Style on 11/23/2014