Movie review: In The Heart of the Sea, or Call Me Later, Ishmael

By Jay Stone

Call me Ishmael. Might as well. Things couldn’t get much worse.

The famous opening line of Moby-Dick — a title rendered without the hyphen by filmmakers whose hunt for the great white whale of authenticity is not as rigorous as it might be — is part of the subtext that haunts In The Heart of the Sea. This is a nautical adventure that starts as a ripping yarn and slowly turns into a benighted tale of dark survival: Jaws meets Lifeboat, with an assist from Herman Melville.

It’s based on a nonfiction book by Nathan Philbrick that tells the story from which Melville drew his inspiration. It’s set in 1850, at the heart of an oil boom, the kind when they killed whales and boiled down the blubber for the wherewithal to light the lamps that keep the streets illuminated to protect the decency of the folks in New England whaling towns. This is actually all mentioned in passing: director Ron Howard is a great one for crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s of his real-life films (Rush, Apollo 13), although that doesn’t always extend to the occasional missing hyphen.

The story is told in flashback. Meville himself (Ben Whisaw) is in Nantucket to visit old sea dog Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) to get his version of a famous whaling tragedy 30 years earlier. Tom narrates the tale of the time when he was a young crewmember of the doomed Essex, which is off in search of blubber and glory.

The hero of the piece is Owen Chase, a seasoned first mate played by Chris Hemsworth with the same broad-shouldered athleticism that energizes all his he-man roles (Thor, race car driver James Hunt). He’s forever clambering up masts or heaving harpoons un computer-assisted whale hunts that don’t quite look real enough, despite copious amounts of water. His New England accent, however, is pretty good.

The villain appears to be George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), the highborn captain of the Essex who got the post because of family connections. He’s the Capt. Bligh figure, a tyrant who’s jealous of the popularity of his underling, and he lords his social position over Owen, who is much worthier. In whaling, as in the rest of life, it’s who you know.

“The men are talking,” someone says to Capt. Pollard at one stage, further reassurance that we’re in a maritime adventure. “That’s what men do,” the captain replies, a cue that this particular drama is as much about the form as it is about the tale at hand.

The first part of the film rests on the details of 19^th Century sea life, from brass telescopes to the erotic scrimshaw that crewmembers fashion in rare minutes when they’re not hoisting the jib or crawling right into a dead whale’s carcass to extract the last drop of fat. Howard scales down the epic themes of the story with a lot of 3D-friendly camera placements: we’re often under water, or behind ropes, to spy on the clash between the muscular mate and his privileged captain.

The second half of In The Heart of the Sea introduces the real bad guy, an imposing 100-foot-long grey whale (they call it “white,” but that’s probably just nautical jargon) with a mean streak. As the Essex sails further into the Pacific looking for its prey, this monster rises out of the sea, splashing its tail and taking a run at the ship. It wears the occasional harpoon like a hatpin: this is one malevolent monster, a CGI creation that nonetheless lacks the menace of previous sea monsters — the Jaws shark is the main point of comparison here — that made up for their low-budget appearance with more accomplished direction. You’re impressed by the whale, but you’re never really afraid of it; indeed, the entire movie seems more dutiful than inspired.

Things eventually go terribly wrong for the Essex, as it did for the Pequod in the novel that Melville fashioned out of this material, and the second half of The Heart of the Sea is a story of listless drifting that darkens into the terrible things men do in order to survive.

The framing story, in which Tom Nickerson reveals the long-held secret of his whaling trip, is meant to be the emotional core of the film, but that mostly keeps us a step removed from Owen’s journey. It’s not about him: it’s about how Herman Melville did a lot of expensive research to get his book right. Still, the details of sea life and the exciting splashing about in whaleboats keep you engaged. For a sequel, watch for the story of how Nantucket became the real-life inspiration for a lot of naughty limericks.

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