Released: December 11th,
2015
Rated: PG-13
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian
Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson
Directed by: Ron Howard
Written by: Charles Leavitt
Personal Bias Alert: never read Moby-Dick, likes
man-versus-nature themes
5.3 of 10
Walking
through the local movie theater a few months ago, I spotted a poster for In the Heart of the Sea. It’s a great poster, using the massiveness of
the whale to emphasize the futility of men, and then I noticed that it listed
the old March release date. The film was
delayed for nine months, allegedly to position it for an awards season run, but
few people bought that explanation. It
originally would’ve competed with the releases of Cinderella and Run All Night,
while it’s new December slot had it up against zero wide releases. A stinker was suspected, and the long wait
soured many, like me, who were intrigued by this film. Now it’s finally out in the world, and while
it’s not a complete travesty, it does blow a solid premise and a strong cast.
In the Heart of the Sea endeavors to
tell the real-life inspiration for Moby-Dick,
where the crew of the whaling ship Essex
is attacked and stranded by a massive white whale. There’s no one here to call Ishmael, but the
storyteller role remains, taken over by the grizzled and haunted Thomas
(Brendan Gleeson) who was the cabin boy on the ill-fated trip. Novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) drags
the story out of him, and what unravels is a tale of many, but unfortunately incohesive,
sides.
Charles
Leavitt gets the lone screenwriter credit here, but story credits also go to
the writing duo of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Leavitt’s spotty track record includes the
excellent Blood Diamond and the
terrible Seventh Son, while Jaffa and
Silver have collaborated on blockbusters like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World. That’s not a
particularly strong team, and they clearly struggled with the cumbersome,
sprawling nature of this story. There’s
a lot of characters to set up as well as the unfamiliar business of whale
hunting, and then they needed to condense what is a very long story into a manageable
size. They never seem to land on how to
do any of this, as characters are paper-thin but made to have unsatisfying arcs
(á la Jurassic World) and the story
is allowed to plod on far longer than is needed (á la Seventh Son). To add to the
messiness, there’s a part of the film that tries to take on the myriad of
themes that run through the story, but there’s also clearly a pull to make this
into an action film (there’s a moment where Chris Hemsworth jumps at the whale
with a hatchet). This overall disjointedness
nearly ruins what should be an epic tale, one that Melville himself was able to
form into an American classic.
Luckily
for the audience, even when the story struggles there’s always a top-shelf actor
onscreen to make it sort of work. Hemsworth
leads the group, and even though his accent is a bit shaky, his shoulders and
acting ability are more than broad enough to carry the load. He, Benjamin Walker, and Cillian Murphy make
a nice threesome as the ship’s leaders, and they smooth out some of the dark
turns that the film takes. Tom Holland
plays the younger version of Gleeson, and he yet again proves to be a young
actor worth watching. But it’s the
scenes back on land with Gleeson and Whishaw that pop the most, proving yet
again that masterfully played conversations can be more riveting than CGI
spectacles.
And
there is a lot of CGI in this thing, as everything from the whales they are
hunting to the backdrop behind the characters is digitally rendered in a
strangely obvious way. It’s the kind of
film where the real things feel more palpable and set apart from those that
aren’t, and it’s such a pervasive feeling that it’s hard to determine whether
it was intentional or not. Director Ron
Howard would be the man to ask, and whether you find this effect and his
constantly moving camera beautiful or a bit annoying will be dependent on your
personal taste It certainly makes it
impossible to forget that you’re watching a movie, and while it does lead to a
few impressive shots, that doesn’t make up for how jarring it often is.
In the Heart of the Sea had a tough
legacy to live up to, both from the history of its story and from the talent
involved in its production. It’s disappointing
that it is such a long, jumbled mess, but there’s still bright spots peppered
into this long slog. Then again, it’s
kind of fitting that the filmmaker’s attempt to make an epic out of the story
behind Moby-Dick ended up as their
white whale.
Other Notes:
Ø Warning: this film contains unnecessary whale gore.
Ø As
good of a job as Hemsworth did, I still feel that he was miscast. He’s just too lumbering and imposing of a
figure to be in the cramped spaces of a boat.
Ø Is
it possible for Frank Dillane not to feel smarmy?
