Heart of the Sea


So, I just finished watching In the Heart of the Sea, the hollywood version of the book about the real-life events that ‘inspired’ Moby-Dick.  I have, you might expect, a lot of thoughts about this.

1. First of all, I get that the ‘inspired Moby-Dick’ thing is just dumb marketing, but you can also tell that somebody who actually really likes the book tried to cram some of it into this.

2. I’ve never watched a movie and had such a feeling of sympathy before: somebody really tried HARD to make a good movie, and failed in a big way.

3. But of course they failed! Moby Dick isn’t about the action of the plot, really, so of course it doesn’t make a good movie.

4. The movie is not good, but there’s still something kind of awesome about big-budget visualizations of something you have spent time imagining.

5. Although for my money, the whale scenes in Mamoru Hosoda’s Boy and the Beast are better, and also Moby-Dick inspired.

6. So a nice thing about this is that even though it’s bad, it’s also not Moby-Dick - so I don’t think it will infect my visual imagination. All the fun of seeing HUGE WHALES and BIG SHIPS and HARPOONS AND SHIT, and none of the ‘oh so that’s Queequeg’ bullshit.

7. I guess I enjoyed this bad movie but not because it was bad.

I just finished typing this and then this happened:

The Sea Hates a Coward