A stove boat

Moby Dick

(2010)

Well, geez, how could I not watch this? But I wonder: is it even remotely possible to do the novel justice in 3 hours? Probably not, but before a minute of this attempt passed, I had a pretty good idea it wasn't happening, when Ishmael, a liberal by 1851 standards, but hardly an abolitionist, frees Pip from his master. It seems that the makers of this film were under the impression that the novel has insufficient humanity, so right after the Ishmael-as-abolitionist scene, we get some heartwarming homelife with Ahab's wife (Gillian Anderson) and son. As the Pequod is weighing anchor, Mrs. A beseeches first mate Starbuck (Ethan Hawke), "Take care of him," and Starbuck answers, "I will"--this all inaudible but easily lipreadable, of course.

It's notable that the protagonist of the novel, he whom we call Ishmael, is played by an unknown (to me, at least), Charlie Cox, while the biggest names--William Hurt, Anderson, Hawke, and Eddie Marsan--play Ahab and those closest to him, his mate and his first two mates. Oh, and then there's Donald Sutherland for a minute as Father Mapple and former hobbit Billy Boyd for two minutes as Elijah. The best non-name is Raoul Trujillo, whose Queequeg is the closest we ever get to the spirit of the book.

Not surprisingly, the film is best when it takes its language directly from Melville; sadly, it does so only a dozen or so times, Hell, Ahab doesn't even get to fling his fatal harpoon to his wonderfully defiant last line.

[Next morning] Can't believe I forgot to mention the most inexplicable decision of the filmmakers, to promote the mutinous Lakeman Steelkilt from protagonist of a story Ishmael tells about another whaler to important character in a distracting Pequod subplot (and as a result to make the benign Stubb the Lakeman's malignant antagonist). Perhaps the strategy was to have something happen, because precious little does--the narrative is not quite PETA-friendly, but only one whale is killed--and yet when a barrel starts leaking, it is somehow still an enormous project to find the leak in one whale's worth of barreled spermaceti. Those misguided readers who don't like the novel sometimes complain that the action is too often interrupted by information about sperm whaling. Well, you'll learn little about whaling from this film, but that material isn't excised to the gain of action.