Ahoy vey!

Whales are only heroes in Ron Howard’s waterlogged film based on ‘true’ story of Moby-Dick

A scene from Ron Howard's new film In the Heart of the Sea.
A scene from Ron Howard's new film In the Heart of the Sea.

In the Heart of the Sea is a big movie. A great big movie. A great big gray and roaring movie touched here and there with fire. It is a clumsy behemoth, inspiring a kind of dull awe at all the resources mounted for its realization. A certain kind of moviegoer, the kind who obsesses over the details of computer-assisted fakery, is likely to be very impressed. They can make anything out of ones and zeros nowadays, and if you are nerdy (or unlucky) enough to find yourself in an auditorium where a stereoscopic version of the movie is playing, you might feel pummeled and pulled downed, drowned in the murky 3-D images spilling off the screen. Some people like that, I'm told.

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First Mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth, right) goes after the largest animals on Earth in Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea, which purports to be the true story that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

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Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture

Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) is a mighty sailin’ man in Ron Howard’s salty saga In the Heart of the Sea.

On the other hand, if you're another kind of moviegoer, you might snicker at the accents that arrive and depart from the mouths of actors you used to take somewhat seriously. Sure, Chris Hemsworth is best known as Thor, but he was very good in Rush, and that movie was directed by the director of this one, the amiable Ron Howard, so there was hope. And Cillian Murphy always seemed better than the material he was given. But finally they broke him.

In the Heart of the Sea

78 Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Holland, Benjamin Walker, Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy

Director: Ron Howard

Rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of action and peril, brief startling violence, and thematic material

Running time: 121 minutes

That's not to say that In the Heart of the Sea is completely awful or unwatchable, just that it's an ordeal. It would be hyperbole to compare the experience of sitting through the movie with enduring the true-life incident -- the tragic final voyage of the whaling ship Essex, attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the South Pacific in 1820. Of the 28 men who sailed on the voyage, eight survived, and two -- first mate Owen Chase (Hemsworth) and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson (played as a 15-year-old by Tom Holland and as an older man by Brendan Gleeson) -- ended up writing accounts of the voyage. Chase's book was published as Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex and would inspire one-time sailing man Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.

Nickerson's account was never published, and in fact was lost for almost 80 years. It was finally published in 1984, 100 years after Nickerson's death. Nathaniel Philbrick made use of Nickerson's material when he wrote the award-winning book the movie is based on. The movie is being billed as the real story behind Moby-Dick, which seems sort of weird. Because, you know, Moby-Dick. It's the Great American Novel, and even if you haven't read it, you've got the gist, right? White whales, obsession, revenge, helpless before an uncaring God, yadda yadda. Wouldn't the true story behind it be more worthy of a 30-minute History Channel program with cheesy re-enactments than a $6 billion film? (Note: This is a made-up figure. I have no idea what the movie cost to make.) I mean, why not just remake Moby-Dick with the huge budget?

Well, maybe that's because Moby-Dick doesn't include what I'm going to coyly call the "Nickerson material" to avoid spoilers. (And to amuse myself, but mainly to avoid spoilers.) And the Nickerson material is pretty lurid and sensational, even if you can probably already guess what it's about.

As a framing device, the movie employs a fictional interview of the older Nickerson by Melville (Ben Whishaw, period perfect as ever). So the film suggests that Melville may have known all about the secret of the Essex, and decided to keep it out of his novel to spare the sensibilities of his readers and the reputations of the survivors. Sure.

OK, so what Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt might have been after was a ripping yarn about brave men at sea that didn't gloss over the implications of being stranded in the middle of the ocean for three months. Perhaps a Tarantino-esque take on Moby-Dick? If so, they never quite get there -- instead they ended up with a leviathan that feels like the longest national park introductory video in history.

Basically, the owners of the Essex brought in Captain George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker), the snobby scion of a wealthy Nantucket sailing family, and installed him at the helm of the Essex over the more-deserving -- but lower-class -- Chase. This produces some friction, and in the early stages of the voyage Pollard proves to be something of a buffoon. (Though, in real life, Melville -- who only met the captain after the publication of Moby-Dick -- called him "the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming, even humble -- that I ever encountered.")

After lots of snapping ropes and whipping sails and other things flying about in the foreground, we find ourselves in the South Seas, where we finally encounter the only characters worth rooting for -- the whales, who seem to be under the protection of one huge alabaster demon, who happens to be the most honorable creature in the movie.

Aside from one overly lovely, Turner-esque scene of a ship burning at night, the film feels curiously colorless, though the CGI whales are spectacular. (The digital townscapes of Nantucket, not so much.)

That said, In the Heart of the Sea is more frustrating than anything else -- the rivalry between Pollard and Chase never gels, none of the human characters acquire more than a couple of shorthand traits, a potentially interesting lesson in the way whales were captured and stripped becomes bogged down with expository sailors telling each other things they already ought to know. There's an attempt to connect the wanton slaughter of the whaling industry with the modern-day petroleum industry, but Howard doesn't trust you enough to be subtle.

Near the end of the movie, a character expresses amazement that they've found oil in the ground! Whale ahoy!

MovieStyle on 12/11/2015

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