In The Heart Of The Sea (2015) - Movie Review

Moby Dick, much like The Great Gatsby and Homer’s Odyssey, is in the great pantheon of books that you must read before anyone takes you seriously as an adult human… apparently. More importantly, it’s also one of the few literary works that helped turn Khan Noonien Singh into an obsessed psychopath; reason enough to avoid it, I reckon. All the same, it’s in that canon with good reason, since the term “white whale” has become ingrained in the human lexicon and Captain Ahab has been made synonymous with any fictional character in the grips of deep obsession. As such, a film about the purported real-life story that inspired that famous tale is going to be worth at least a gander. Then again, in terms of films about the stories behind the myth, the director this time round doesn’t have the best track record. So, before he resumes work on his next Dan Brown adaptation, let’s look into Ron Howard’s latest epic.

The plot: Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) wants inspiration for his next book, so he tracks down the last survivor of the whaling ship Essex: Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson). Over a night of whiskey and tears, Thomas retells the story of his time as a cabin boy (Tom Holland) aboard the ship, captained by George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth). While out at sea, they encounter a sperm whale the likes of which none of them have ever seen before, destroying their ship and leaving with little option in order to survive.

The acting is very strong throughout, even if the accents are a bit suspect at times. Hemsworth depicts both the early cockiness and the later obsessive determination with equal vigour, Walker is wonky but works well when coupled with Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy as the second mate Matthew Joy is a little one-note but a decent voice of reason when it’s needed, Holland shows a lot of promise, which considering this is the new Spider-Man is a very welcome thing to see, and while Whishaw has a pretty minor role, he delivers when paired up with Gleeson. Gleeson himself is easily the strongest part of the entire cast, channelling that sense of repressed memory and sub-dermal despair rather brilliantly, made only better when his wife (Michelle Fairley) joins in the conversation.

The writing is pretty damn shallow which, while unfortunately expected when it comes to Ron Howard, is at least of a higher grade than his usual pedigree. Chase is our main man from Nantucket, which is fitting because he starts out the film as a colossal prick. Between dangling crewmen over the edge of the ship by their ankles and constantly comparing dick sizes with the captain, the guy needs to be taken down a few pegs and how. I’m just thankful that this didn’t go the way of Vacation and actually have them comparing pipe, but it’s rather telling when he’s that overconfident that that is somehow a likely outcome.

Beyond that, we have the stuffy businessmen that Chase and Pollard have to answer to, who are so stock that it isn’t even worth getting into, Pollard himself is so lame that he only just wins out against Chase in terms of dickery, and Joy only has a trait of abstaining from alcohol as his personality, which sucks royal but at least it’s consistent. At about the halfway point, when the whale levels their ship, Chase’s cockiness gives way to that need for resolution, which ends up wiping out his on-screen presence and not replacing it with anything substantial. Then we get into the matter of the whaling itself and… I think they were going for an environmentalism message here but I’m not entirely sure. Really, it only comes up as a bit of a footnote alongside the themes of survival and loss of faith. Said themes are well done but then they’re smacked in the face with the final encounter between Chase and the whale, which is so cheesy that it could have made it into a Captain Planet cartoon.

Between Howard’s knack for visual scale and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle’s experience in more experimental indie fare, it’s not much of a shock that this comes out as beautiful as it does. It does seem that a fetish for mounted ship-side cameras got into the mix somewhere but, combined with the grandiose effects work, it is very effective. There is a neat balance between the vast wide shots and the more claustrophobic and suffocating close-ups, giving proportionate size to the events depicted. To say nothing of the underwater shots, which give a definite sense that these whales are forces to be reckoned with, the white whale in particular. However, as good as the CGI effects are and as well assembled as the live-action shots are, they aren’t integrated together well. When so much effort has clearly been made on both ends, it’s a bit disheartening when they look so disjointed when put side-by-side. There’s also a few moments of “tell, don’t show” that, while understandable considering they involve whale spelunking and cannibalism, definitely hurt the film’s intent of showing how perilous the journey was for the whalers. This might fall under a matter of personal preference, since I’m pretty sure going into any more detail on either of those might have given it a higher rating, but the effect is hindered nonetheless.

All in all, while definitely a grand spectacle with notions of faith and the human will to survive, the writing relies heavily on stereotypes, the depictions of their desperation feel like they’ve been mildly sanitised for a wider audience, and the effects work is only fruitful when it doesn’t feature live-action actors in the same scene. It’s a decent watch for its visuals but its innards aren’t developed enough to entirely recommend it on those terms.