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.