I've never seen a whale do that.

In the Heart of the Sea

(2015)

(SPOILERS) I guess one fortunate side effect of In the Heart of the Sea’s (and, while we’re about it, Ben-Hur’s) box office failure is that there’s precious little chance that Timur Bekmambetov will get the chance to embark on his much wished for Moby Dick remake any time soon. In the Heart of the Sea is a Little Ronnie Howard film, which means it’s about as functional and journeyman an account of the true life tale that inspired Herman Melville’s massive beast of a novel as you could get. Apart from the cinematography, that is.

Anthony Dod Mantel has impressed with his work on a number of movies, not least lending fizz to Danny Boyle flicks that would otherwise be mostly forgettable; T2: Trainspotting is sure to benefit from his stylings. And for the likes of Dredd, and Howard’s last movie Rush, his sensibility was perfectly suited to the material. Here, though, it’s just all wrong. You need a lenser who will get the viewer right in there with the sheer awe and terror of being up close and personal with a pissed-off island of blubber, and the debilitating isolation of being adrift on the open sea, thousands of miles from home. Instead, Mantel conversely ensures we are painfully conscious of how localised and water tank-bound this is; the colours are a discord of garishly overstruck greens, with close-ups and medium shots screaming blue screen fakery, and (admittedly more Howard’s fault than Mantle’s) there’s too frequently a disastrous distancing between the main players and the elements they’re supposedly squaring off against.

Apart that, though.

The story can’t help but being an involving one, even if the approach never escapes the realm of cliché. That may not be so surprising, given that Charles Leavitt’s resume (the likes of K-PAX, Blood Diamond and Warcraft) doesn’t exactly shout literary stature. Adapting Nathaniel Philbrick’s factual book, he frames the tale of the doomed whaling vessel Essex with Melville himself (Ben Whishaw) visiting the only surviving member of the crew, Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson, played by Spider-Man Tom Holland in his younger incarnation; as I make it, Gleeson’s playing a guy in his mid-40s, so the years, booze and nightmares have really taken it out of him). Melville gradually coaxes the story out of Thomas, in accordance with the reluctant-but-needing-to-get-it-off-his-chest rulebook.

And, when we meet the crew, they’re also wholly two-dimensional types; the inexperienced, insecure captain (Benjamin Walker), the experienced, dependable first mate (Chris Hemsworth, adopting a Boston Thor accent, by way of Oz), and even then those with only the single dimension like the second mate (Cillian Murphy), only notable for being the first mate’s Bessie mate, and the rotten cousin of the captain (Frank Dillane).

Embracing the true story should mean In the Heart of the Sea doesn’t necessarily take obvious turns, but it appears the account has been rather embellished, which would certainly explain why it’s replete with Hollywood turns of events (raising the question, why not just do Dick again; no, Timur, that doesn’t mean you). Occasionally there’s ’s a moment that suggests greater depth (it’s as much the first mate’s own desire for “striking” whale oil that leads to the stricken Essex), but apparently the captain and first mate actually got on pretty well. There was no cover up of what transpired for Chris to so righteously rail against. As for the pursuit by the whale, through thick and thin, the stuff Jaws are made of… Well, that in itself is probably why it didn’t happen. At least the eventual landing on a desolate island and subsequent returning to sea is factual (during the course of which, cannibalism becomes their first, second and third course), but by that point you’re half expecting the whale to come walloping up the beach after them..

I tend to be quite down on Howard, mainly because I don’t think he’s even a particularly proficient Hollywood genre-hopper, yet somehow he has been regularly feted for his antiseptic offerings. His flair for comedy in his first few movies has given way to a yearning for dramatic meat (that unaccountably yielded an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind), and only occasionally since the ‘80s has he turned in something above average (Apollo 13, Ransom, Rush). The most damning indictment being his Dan Brown trilogy, which has seen him unstoppably churning out critically-lambasted pictures that even Robert Langdon devotees can’t defend, but which still somehow make money (although, we’ll see how that goes with Inferno).

In the Heart of the Sea is earnestly faux-reverent to the material but in that entirely fake, Hollywood period sense, from the Roque Banos score and on to director of Far and Away’s facility for historical immersion. Howard even gets in anachronistic reverence for marine mammals on the part of Hemsworth as the crew come in for their first kill. Because, you know, whales. You very rarely get any sense of why Howard makes the movies he does – on a whim, or toss of a coin, or call from his agent, presumably – which accounts for why the results are invariably so slipshod, makeshift and forgettable.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

We’re not owners here, Karen. We’re just passing through.

Out of Africa (1985)
I did not warm to Out of Africa on my initial viewing, which would probably have been a few years after its theatrical release. It was exactly as the publicity warned, said my cynical side; a shallow-yet-bloated, awards-baiting epic romance. This was little more than a well-dressed period chick flick, the allure of which was easily explained by its lovingly photographed exotic vistas and Robert Redford rehearsing a soothing Timotei advert on Meryl Streep’s distressed locks. That it took Best Picture only seemed like confirmation of it as all-surface and no substance. So, on revisiting the film, I was curious to see if my tastes had “matured” or if it deserved that dismissal.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

If you could just tell me what those eyes have seen.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
(SPOILERS) Robert Rodriguez’ film of James Cameron’s at-one-stage-planned film of Yukito Kishiro’s manga Gunnm on the one hand doesn’t feel overly like a Rodriguez film, in that it’s quite polished, so certainly not of the sort he’s been making of late – definitely a plus – but on the other, it doesn’t feel particularly like a Jimbo flick either. What it does well, it mostly does very well – the action, despite being as thoroughly steeped in CGI as Avatar – but many of its other elements, from plotting to character to romance, are patchy or generic at best. Despite that, there’s something likeable about the whole ludicrously expensive enterprise that is Alita: Battle Angel, a willingness to be its own kind of distinctive misfit misfire.

Mountains are old, but they're still green.

Roma (2018)
(SPOILERS) Roma is a critics' darling and a shoe-in for Best Foreign Film Oscar, with the potential to take the big prize to boot, but it left me profoundly indifferent, its elusive majesty remaining determinedly out of reach. Perhaps that's down to generally spurning autobiographical nostalgia fests – complete with 65mm widescreen black and white, so it's quite clear to viewers that the director’s childhood reverie equates to the classics of old – or maybe the elliptical characterisation just didn't grab me, but Alfonso Cuarón's latest amounts to little more than a sliver of substance beneath all that style.

Life is like a box of timelines. You feel me?

Russian Doll Season One
(SPOILERS) It feels like loading the dice to proclaim something necessarily better because it’s female-driven, but that’s the tack The Hollywood Reporter took with its effusive review of Russian Doll, suggesting “although Nadia goes on a similar journey of self-discovery to Bill Murray’s hackneyed reporter in Groundhog Day, the fact that the show was created, written by and stars women means that it offers up a different, less exploitative and far more thoughtful angle” (than the predominately male-centric entries in the sub-genre). Which rather sounds like Rosie Knight changing the facts to fit her argument. And ironic, given star Natasha Lyonne has gone out of her way to stress the show’s inclusive message. Russian Dollis good, but the suggestion that “unlike its predecessors (it) provides a thoughtfulness, authenticity and honesty which makes it inevitable end (sic) all the more powerful” is cobblers.

We’re looking for a bug no one’s seen before. Some kind of smart bug.

Starship Troopers (1997)
(SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi trio of Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers are frequently claimed to be unrivalled in their genre, but it’s really only the first of them that entirely attains that rarefied level. Discussion and praise of Starship Troopers is generally prefaced by noting that great swathes of people – including critics and cast members – were too stupid to realise it was a satire. This is a bit of a Fight Club one, certainly for anyone from the UK (Verhoeven commented “The English got it though. I remember coming out of Heathrow and seeing the posters, which were great. They were just stupid lines about war from the movie. I thought, ‘Finally someone knows how to promote this.’”) who needed no kind of steer to recognise what the director was doing. And what he does, he does splendidly, even if, at times, I’m not sure he entirely sustains a 129-minute movie, since, while both camp and OTT, Starship Troopers is simultaneously required t…

Even after a stake was driven through its heart, there’s still interest.

Prediction 2019 Oscars
Shockingly, as in I’m usually much further behind, I’ve missed out on only one of this year’s Best Picture nominees– Vice isn’t yet my vice, it seems – in what is being suggested, with some justification, as a difficult year to call. That might make for must-see appeal, if anyone actually cared about the movies jostling for pole position. If it were between Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody (if they were even sufficiently up to snuff to deserve a nod in the first place), there might be a strange fascination, but Joe Public don’t care about Roma, underlined by it being on Netflix and stillconspicuously avoided by subscribers (if it were otherwise, they’d be crowing about viewing figures; it’s no Bird Box, that’s for sure).

You use a scalpel. I prefer a hammer.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
(SPOILERS) The latest instalment of the impossibly consistent in quality Mission: Impossible franchise has been hailed as the best yet, and with but a single dud among the sextet that’s a considerable accolade. I’m not sure it's entirely deserved – there’s a particular repeated thematic blunder designed to add some weight in a "hero's validation" sense that not only falls flat, but also actively detracts from the whole – but as a piece of action filmmaking, returning director Christopher McQuarrie has done it again. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an incredible accomplishment, the best of its ilk this side of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog