They made it pretty clear in the trailers that this ISN'T the story of Moby Dick. This is the story of the story that inspired that story. So... there's that. Anyone staying away from the film because you feel like it's going to be a boring and arduous story of Ahab and his metaphorical/all too real white whale... it's not. What it is, though, is a story that we've never heard, but we've seen a few times before. It's like a combination of last year's Unbroken, The Perfect Storm, Apollo 13, and Jaws. Which, if you were to pitch that to me alone I'd be in. And while In the Heart of the Sea isn't a perfect film, it's a gorgeously shot, well-acted, beautifully crafted film that almost succeeds in its journey. It just falls a tad short.
Beginning the film I thought it was going to be mostly like The Perfect Storm. A bunch of fishermen on a large boat set sails to go and collect 2,000 barrels of drum oil. Along for the ride is newly appointed Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) who is only helming the ship due to some serous nepotism. His first mate, Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and childhood friend Matthew (Cillian Murphy) run the ship and are the real sea dogs. Everything the Cappy does is wrong, but our hero Owen is always there to save the day. Things go well for the crew. They spot whales early, capturing one that fills nearly 50 barrels alone. With this kind of luck, they'll be home inside a year. Then, things go to shit. There's no whales. There's no oil. There's nothing. So, they stop somewhere in South America where they're told that near the equator there's whales, but it's so far out from land that it's too dangerous to travel. Our steadfast Captain, and a first mate itching to get home to his wife, decide it's worth the risk. So, they embark. (Still sounding like The Perfect Storm, no?) They do find whales where they thought, but they also encounter a mammoth beast of a whale, bigger than any in history, twice the size of their boat who seems to have a personal vendetta against the crew. It tears through their ship like tissue paper, leaving half of the crew dead and the other half stranded in three lifeboats 900 miles away from civilization. That's when the story becomes a survival story. How do our heroes survive? Amid this... the pesky whale returns a few more times to mess some more stuff up.
Everything in the first two-thirds of the movie is fantastic. Writer Charles Leavett created some remarkable characters that we actually cared about and some terrifically weasely ones we hoped would get swallowed alive. The dynamic and relationships between the two groups is fun to watch. There's also the acting which is top notch if you're able to get over the strange British/Bostonian hybrid accents a lot of the cast have. But, the winner of this film is Ron Howard. The cinematography and direction is some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. It's what Gravity did for space or what Avatar did for weird blue-people-having-orgies-world. The film could've gone silent without a single line of dialogue uttered and I would've had the same amazing time. It's Oscar worthy (though with the lack of box office revenue, and somewhat poor reviews I imagine it will be overlooked). What Howard has been able to do is take a difficultly shot film and turn it into art. There's CGI storms that feel real. There's a CGI whale that looks real and instills true terror into your heart. There's a bluish-green hue throughout the film that makes it feel fresh and real and like nothing you've ever seen before. And it's perfect.
Where the film begins to falter is after the ship has been destroyed. There's a good half hour or more of life boats and starvation that slows a quickly paced film down to a halt. And where the survival sequences of Apollo 13 were similar, the pace remained the same because they were in imminent danger. They weren't slowly starving to death over a period of days. It's amazing to see what the survivors actually went through and how they actually had to survive, but it's jarring to a film that has kept a constant pace for its entirety. It also feels like half of it could've been cut out and re-capped to us. I mean, the entire set up for the film is that Herman Melville (Ben Wishaw) has come to hear the true story told by its last living survivor (Brendan Gleeson). So, a lot of it could've just been recapped quickly, much like the ending is once the select few survivors actually make it back.
Though it does slow down towards the last third of the film, it's still a great watch. Even if it's just for the beauty of the art design and camera work. Old timey ship movies like this and like Master and Commander will never have a place among the hearts of movie goers. There just aren't enough people interested in them to allow them to make their money back. This is a shame because both films are good in their own right, but In the Heart of the Sea feels like a piece of art that must be watched and shared. Ron Howard certainly has an eye for direction, but had the ending of this film been a bit more cleaned up, it could've been his magnum opus. Whether you're a fan of this type of film, or you're just a fan of watching Chris Hemsworth (the superior Hemsworth if we're being honest), this is one you should absolutely see on the big screen.
B
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