In the Heart of the Sea Review
In the Heart of the Sea Review
In 1851, Moby Dick , the sixth novel by a reasonably successful writer named Herman Melville , hit bookstores . He was a man from a wealthy but ruined family, who in his youth had been a whaler and decided to change his job when he realized the interest aroused by the stories he told of the adventures he lived.
Moby Dick was met with a mixed reception , with positive but not enthusiastic reviews, something that was reflected in rather modest sales. It would take a few years for it to be rediscovered and hailed as “ an epic worthy of Homer ”, in the words of the prestigious Nathaniel Hawthorne , to whom the author had dedicated it because they were friends.
By then, Melville had already died with the bitterness that the novel that gave him the most headaches, the one that consumed him physically and psychologically, had passed without pain or glory... He never imagined that later it would be considered not only his best book but also a masterpiece of world literature .
Whaling was a flourishing business that began on a large scale at the end of the 17th century but exploded in the 19th century, when the Second Industrial Revolution began to demand spermaceti (a kind of waxy substance that sperm whales have on their heads) for hunting. lubrication of machinery, as well as grease for use as oil in household lamps, in soap making and even butter making.
Beards were also used for corsets and umbrellas, meat for restaurants, and bones, while vomit or ambergris , which was sporadically found in their stomachs, fetched extremely high prices —it still does— for its use as a fixative for perfumes.
Thanks to this growing economic niche, several towns on the Atlantic coast of the USA prospered, such as New Bedford or Nantucket ; from the port of the latter sails in the novel the Pequod , the ship of Captain Ahab . It was also the starting point of the Essex , a three-masted, eighty-foot long whaling ship commanded by Captain George Pollard Jr.
In 1820 this ship starred in the unusual incident that inspired Melville for Moby Dick: the ship was attacked and sunk by a huge albino sperm whale , leaving the survivors in three boats adrift for three months and forcing them to practice cannibalism to survive, for which they chose by lot who was sacrificed.
The event was so impressive in its time that Edgar Allan Poe himself took advantage of it in 1838 for the first half of his unique and strange novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym , focusing on the lurid episode of the castaways. Melville preferred that of the sperm whale, from which it took not only the appearance but also the name, since it was known as Mocha Dick (Mocha is a Chilean island in whose waters it had been sighted for the first time in 1810); in fact, before Moby Dick , in 1839, the explorer and journalist Jeremiah N. Reynolds had already published an article on the same subject in The Knickerbocker magazine entitled Mocha Dick or the White Whale of the Pacific.
The literary potential of the event is so evident that since then more books have been coming out. One of them is In the heart of sea. The tragedy of the whaleship Essex , with which writer Nathaniel Philbrick won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2000 and which was adapted for the screen fifteen years later by screenwriter Charles Levitt , keeping the same title.
Initially it was going to be the Miramax production company that was in charge, with Barry Levinson in the direction, but in the end it was the independent Intermedia that took on the project, hiring Ron Howard . Some time ago it was almost a guarantee of success to have Howard, a professional capable of combining commerciality with a certain quality; just take a brief look at his resume, which includes, among other films , Splash, Cocoon, Willow, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind —with which he won the Oscar for best director— and Cinderella Man .
As the basis for his novel, Philbrick used an account that had been written by Thomas Nickerson , who had personally experienced this adventure when he was a cabin boy on the Essex. His testimony remained unknown until it was discovered in 1960, although it took twenty years to confirm its authenticity.
Therefore, Nickerson was going to be the narrator: first, when already old and tortured by the experience, he agrees to tell it to Melville (at that age he is played by the well-known Irish actor Brendan Gleeson , the Alastor Moody of the Harry Potter saga ); then, going back in time to his adolescence to enter fully into the events (there, the role is carried out by Tom Holland , Spiderman in the latest Marvel movies).
Owen Chase , the first officer, was to be given command of the Essex because, despite being only twenty-one years old, he had sailed before and very efficiently. However, the owners decided to give the captaincy to George Pollard, with little experience, because he was the son of an illustrious local family opposite Chase, not born in Nantucket.
Chase's dexterity versus the captain's hesitation in dealing with problems (a sail that won't unfold, weathering the storm, or treating the greenhorns properly) lead to a classic clash of personalities —the modesty and professionalism versus the arrogance of Chase. class and arrogance—which will mean that both must reach the pact of putting up with each other until the end of the trip (“they were like a bad marriage,” says Nickerson), although by then the tragic circumstances will end up bringing them closer than they ever imagined, until the about to give rise to a small final surprise.
Subsequently, Chase embarked several more times as a whaler, but then spent eight years in an insane asylum , the result of nightmares and ravings he suffered about practiced cannibalism (he hid food in the attic). He had earlier written down his recollection of the events in Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Essex Whaling Ship . His son gave it to Melville, who actually did not meet with him but with Pollard.
Pollard also went back to sea in a whaler and suffered another shipwreck , after which he never received a command again and worked the rest of his life as a night watchman. The role of Chase was assigned to Chris Hemsworth , who was living a rising career thanks to his portrayal of Thor in the aforementioned Marvel saga.
Several names were considered for Pollard —including Henry Cavill and Benedict Cumberbatch— until Benjamin Walker was chosen , an actor who had made most of his career in Broadway theaters and whose most prominent roles in his brief time on the films were a supporting role in Flags of Our Fathers and the leading role in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter .
Apart from the studio scenes, shot in England, the exterior locations of En el corazón del mar were located in the Canary Islands , specifically in Lanzarote and La Gomera. In fact, the Spanish participation in the film also extends to Jordi Mollá , in the role of the Hispanic captain whose hand was torn off by the sperm whale and who tells Pollard where to find large pods of whales in Chilean waters, and to Roque Baños , a musician Murciano in charge of composing the soundtrack on the recommendation of Hans Zimmer when he declined the offer.
The film was a commercial failure and barely recovered ninety-four of the hundred million invested. It is possible that the competition to be released at the same time as Star Wars had to do with it. The Force Awakens , but the truth is that it also had against it that its argument was considered old-fashioned —more typical of the fifties—, some traps in the script (Nickerson describes situations in which he was not present, such as family moments of the protagonist, for example) and that its director, perhaps trying not to fall into morbidity, wasted the dramatic potential of the ordeal of the castaways.
Even so, there is no lack of interesting moments and images: the sinking of the ship metaphorized in the ink of the logbook, run by the water; the blood of a recently hunted whale showering its captors as if it were an atavistic baptism — “the fireplace is on!”, exclaim the sailors in their particular slang; the sperm whale's eye fixed on his enemy , Chase; or the lapidary phrase that justifies the concealment of the facts by the shipowners to avoid the suspicion of the insurers (“as in all businesses, the probability of success has to be greater than the risk assumed”).
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.