In the Heart of the Sea

Orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for a March 2015 release before a last-minute pro­mo­tion into prime awards ter­ri­to­ry to fill Warn­er Broth­ers’ fes­tive sea­son Hob­bit-hole, it’s about time Ron Howard final­ly got his Dick out. A year’s worth of adver­tis­ing have insist­ed this isn’t Her­man Melville’s ​‘Moby Dick’, but rather an adap­ta­tion of Nathaniel Philbrick’s his­tor­i­cal best­seller; a telling of the true [*cough*] events that befell The Essex whale­ship in 1820, the very same that would serve as inspi­ra­tion for The Great­est Nov­el In The Eng­lish Language.

Truth may be stranger than fic­tion (espe­cial­ly when you throw a venge­ful, super-sen­tient whale into the equa­tion), but it can also be a lot less inter­est­ing, espe­cial­ly when you throw Ron Howard into the equa­tion. Most bizarre is that it’s a notion with which In the Heart of the Sea would appear to agree. Using Melville (Ben Whishaw) as part of a fram­ing device – he calls on a sur­vivor played Bren­dan Glee­son to recall the tale as research for his next book – the film goes out of its way to tell us that ​‘Moby Dick’ is prob­a­bly a bet­ter sto­ry than the one that will be told here. ​“You may not like what I have to say, but every word will be true,” Glee­son says, as if verac­i­ty should trump enjoy­ment. ​“That’s it, you have your sto­ry!” he tells Melville lat­er, ​“I think I’ll go with my ver­sion,” Melville as much as replies.

So what could have been a Wern­er Her­zog-quot­ing bat­tle of futil­i­ty against the forces of nature, couched in myth but dis­guised in tent­pole block­buster scale, becomes an episod­ic series of CGI-dis­as­ters with lit­tle shape beyond its adher­ence to the ​“facts” of the matter.

Func­tion­al, prac­ti­cal, but win­ning few points for style, Ron Howard has always been the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of a pair of cat­a­logue-ordered khakis; this Box­ing Day release being a gen­er­ous sea­son­al gift for those mourn­ing the lack of a Top Gear Christ­mas Spe­cial. Rolling up his sleeves for some nau­ti­cal hijinks – Whale! Ship­wreck! Can­ni­bal­ism! – Howard shows off the fruits of a study peri­od clear­ly spent with the Har­vard Ethnog­ra­phy Lab’s excel­lent, 2012 sea life doc­u­men­tary, Leviathan. That he’s also been tak­ing aes­thet­ic advice from fel­low mem­ber of the shirt-tucked-into-jeans club, Tom Hoop­er, sad­ly redress­es the balance.

Luck­i­ly cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Antho­ny Dod Man­tle is on hand to stall the sink­ing ship, fit­ting­ly at his best when – quite lit­er­al­ly – shoot­ing a sink­ing ship. Yet there’s only so much Dod-Mantling one can use to dis­tract from an over-depen­dence on such poor SFX work, all the more telling when the prac­ti­cal effects work a charm. The sup­port­ing cast’s work aboard the recon­struct­ed Essex hums with a more con­vinc­ing sense of busi­ness than the fatal­ly mis­cast Chris Hemsworth, a card­board arche­type left to get his am-dram Crim­son Tide on with land­lub­bing supe­ri­or, Ben­jamin Walker.

It doesn’t help that Howard strug­gles to find visu­al coher­ence in his action beats, and the less said about the loss of bot­tle (cut to melt­ing can­dle) when it comes to the can­ni­bal­ism, the bet­ter. What remains is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for an intense, Jaws-like tha­las­so­pho­bic night­mare, squandered.