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 from 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

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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