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Old 09-19-2012, 10:16 PM   #1
Talon87
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Moby Dick

YouTube link to 1956 film starring Gregory Peck
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by Herman Melville, first published in 1851. It is considered to be one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge.

In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and the metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the journey of the main characters, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God are all examined, as the main characters speculate upon their personal beliefs and their places in the universe. The narrator's reflections, along with his descriptions of a sailor's life aboard a whaling ship, are woven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices, such as stage directions, extended soliloquies, and asides. The book portrays destructive obsession and monomania, as well as the assumption of anthropomorphism—projecting human instincts, characteristics and motivations onto animals. Moby Dick is ruthless in attacking the sailors who attempt to hunt and kill him, but it is Ahab who invests Moby Dick's natural instincts with malignant and evil intentions. In fact, it is not the whale but the crippled Ahab who alone possesses this characteristic.

- Wikipedia, "Moby-Dick"
Was discussing this with folks online and figured I'd post this thread so people might give either the novel or the '56 film a look. I watched the film as a young boy and quite enjoyed it. I read the first third of the novel for an English project in the 11th grade and couldn't stand it. Revisiting the movie again tonight though I watched the first ten minutes and was spellbound both by the snippets of the story beginning to be fed to me as well as the humble, mature craft of storytelling Hollywood used to have back in the '50s. I'd really encourage you guys to check this one out if you've nothing better to do. The film's less than two hours long and right there for you to watch on YouTube. You can't beat that!
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Old 09-19-2012, 11:40 PM   #2
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I saw this movie when I was younger, then saw To Kill A Mockingbird, then saw the Moby Dick movie again.

I kept thinking to myself, "say it ain't so Atticus, say it ain't so".

Also, Ahab is the most evil Quaker since Quaker Oats.
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Old 09-20-2012, 01:07 PM   #3
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Watched a lot of this last night; finished it off during lunch today. Thoughts:

It wasn't as good as I remembered it being from childhood but it was surprisingly good in some ways and it was much, much better than the book. Basically, Ray Bradbury (who wrote the screenplay for this, can you believe it!? XD) streamlined the novel and focused on the core relevant bits to the plot (discussed below). The film's thus a visual Cliff's Notes version of the book. And considering the nature of the novel, I appreciated this. That stated, you could appreciate that the two-hour format was a bit suffocating for this tale. Many of the scenes were supremely condensed. I would have had a hard time following them had I not read parts of the Wikipedia article on Moby-Dick before watching the movie. Gregory Peck's acting as Ahab was also not nearly as good as I remembered. When Doppel replied with "Say it ain't so Atticus, say it ain't so," I was confused. I thought Peck was the whole reason this movie was great! Or at least, that was what I remembered from childhood. But watching the film again I can definitely side with Doppel here that Peck's acting in To Kill a Mockingbird was superior to his acting as Ahab. But a lot of it I think wasn't even down to his acting: it was all about casting. Just as one might argue that Jack Nicholson or Bob Hoskins are really good actors but would make for terrible Captain Ahabs, so too do I think Peck wasn't an ideal casting choice. He was far too young for a 58-year old weathered whaling captain. The movie peculiarly lent him some white hair that spread down into his beard by the end of the film but in the opening bits he had a solid head and beard of jet black. Very strange. I also don't think Peck's super-stern sounding voice was the best voice for Ahab. Like, yeah, he should have a voice whose seriousness we can appreciate ... but it shouldn't sound like we're being scolded by our Sunday school teacher. ^^; That tone of voice worked really well for the single father defense attorney Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird but for the obsessed 58-year old whaler from New Bedford I just wasn't feeling it.

Plot discussion:
Spoiler: show
The movie can roughly be divided up into the following chunks:
  • Meet Ishmael, see Ishmael arrive in New Bedford
  • Meet Queequeg
  • Sunday sermon at the New Bedford chapel
  • Sign up for the Pequod; run into Elijah
  • Meet the crew of the Pequod
  • Meet Ahab
  • See how they hunt an ordinary whale. Ishmael the oarsman
  • Ahab's plan for catching Moby Dick (the schools on the map, an interception at the Bikini Islands); establish Starbuck's concern that Ahab is consumed by evil
  • See how they hunt a school of ordinary whales. Ishmael the lookout
  • Captain Boomer & making haste for the Bikini Islands
  • crew going mad with no wind and no whale
  • Queequeg orders coffin built, then goes catatonic
  • Ishmael gets into a knife fight with some fuck who was cutting up Queequeg; Queequeg breaks his catatonic ritual to save Ishmael's life
  • Moby Dick spotted for first time; crew can't do shit
  • at some point I may have missed, a guy fell overboard
  • Captain Gardner
  • Storm tears up the sails; Ahab orders harpoons melted and recast but forged from the blood of the crew
  • Final faceoff with the white whale
  • Super-brief epilogue
It sounds like a lot but it really isn't -- I've pretty much dissected the movie down into its nearly every 3-to-5-minute scene. The more boring scenes (like the crew going mad) seem to last too long while the less boring scenes (like Captain Boomer's and Captain Gardner's, arguably two of the most important scenes in the entire story) feel like they're on fast forward. Particularly Boomer's! Even the Wikipedia article's description of Boomer's interaction with Ahab took longer to read than the corresponding scene in the movie, never mind how long the actual chapter must've been!

One of the most confusing scenes in the movie if you don't already know the tale has got to be Queequeg's bit with the coffin. I'm not sure how it went in the original novel but I definitely think this needed to be adapted for a cinema audience. Melville pulls a famous stunt in this scene where he psychs you into thinking that Queequeg wanted the coffin built for himself, having portended his own demise, when in fact he wanted the coffin built for his best friend Ishmael, hence his specifications to the carpenter that it be waterproof and sturdy. That's great and all, but the movie does a poor job of establishing that the coffin was actually finished before Queequeg came out of his catatonic state. You see it being carved (but it's still far from being completed) and then comes the fight with the sadistic fuck who was cutting up Queequeg's chest. Obviously the audience will dismiss the coffin scene as having been purely an ill-conceived way of advancing the plot along just so that we could get this fight scene (which further establishes Ishmael and Queequeg's bromance) because they don't know the end of the story. I did, but I remember that when I first watched this movie as a child my mom was like "Now pay attention! " when the coffin scene came up and was like "That's the coffin that Queequeg asked to have built for him, remember? " when it came up again at the end. And I don't blame my mom for explaining that to a 9-year old boy. It's so easy to miss if you don't know why you're watching it in the first place.

One big change comes in the form of the ending. The character of Fedallah is entirely missing from the '56 film; his manner of death is merged with Ahab's for the film. In the novel, Fedallah disappears with Moby-Dick and when the crew spot the whale again they see Fedallah's corpse tied to the whale beneath a layer of ropes. Ahab later (after giving his epic soliloquy) throws a harpoon at Moby Dick but is pulled into the sea by the harpoon's rope, caught against his neck. And this happens after Moby Dick has already fucked over the other rowboats and the Pequod itself (according to Wikipedia). In the '56 film version, what happens is that Ahab harpoons Moby Dick, is pulled into the sea, climbs up onto the whale, starts stabbing at its fleshy brain madly (while saying his famous speech), then the whale goes underwater ... and when it resurfaces somehow Ahab has been caught up in a bunch of ropes and obviously drowned. The spell over Mr. Stubb is finally broken at this point and he beckons the men to turn back, but now Starbuck of all people eggs them on to finish off the whale, and thus they all ultimately perish. I'm not sure which version of Ahab's death I like better. On the one hand, it does seem a bit more epic to have Ahab riding atop the whale as he tries to stab it to death and is instead dragged underwater and drowned. On the other hand, the rope around the neck thing seems so Hollywood it's surprising they didn't leap at it and it also seems a bit more realistic. It's hard to fathom how a guy could get trapped beneath dozens of ropes when he was previously standing atop the whale's back but it's a lot easier to imagine a harpoon rope being caught around his neck and yanking him off the rowboat and then he, not being able to wrest the rope from around his neck, being dragged underwater where he presumably drowns. If the book does indeed have Ahab be one of the last people to die from the whale's attack (which is what parts of the article seem to suggest), I like that better. It was sort of anticlimactic having Ahab die before three rowboats + the main ship. But if on the other hand the film stayed true to the novel in this regard (which is what other parts of the Wiki article seem to suggest ) then kudos to them for staying loyal to the source material and I guess boo to Melville for arranging things in a somewhat anticlimactic order.

One thing I simultaneously admire about the movie and hold it in contempt for is just how old-fashioned the language is. There are times where it's very hard for me to even tell what's being spoken, much less make intelligible sense of the words. Part of that may just be due to the quiet audio, I dunno, but I think part of it is just how archaic a lot of the English is that the actors use. I assume most of it is lifted straight off the pages of Melville's book but still: it reminds me of a lot of the movies they made back in the '50s. Movies back then didn't treat their audiences like idiots. Movies today (rightly? this is the debate!) assume that moviegoers have short attention spans and weak memories. So if you want somebody to notice something you have to make it big and obvious; and if you want somebody to remember something you have to hit them over the head with it a lot. I think the name "Queequeg" was spoken in this film no more than five times. I think the name "Stubb" was spoken only three or four times. "Tashtego" was probably only mentioned one time by name -- at the beginning of the movie when we met the crew! The '56 film basically assumes its audience is vigilant at all times and has short term memories sharp as razor blades. All you need to do is say the name once, the film assumes, and people will know it for the remainder of the movie. You'd never have that happen today. How many times do they say Rex's name in Toy Story 1? How many times do they say Marcus Brody's name in Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade? I think Chewbacca's name is said more often in Empire Strikes Back than Queequeg's, Stubb's, and Tashtego's names were said combined in the 1956 Moby Dick. And who's right? Which way is the better way? Do we admit that people do have short attention spans and poor memories and have to be bludgeoned over the heads with names? Do we assume people have vocabularies fewer than 5,000 words in size so you have to use really common, basic language that even a child knows? I don't know. I really don't know the answer. 'Cause while it was frustrating feeling like so much of the dialogue was going over my head in this film, it was also refreshing to be treated so maturely and to feel like I was watching a living work of art rather than an entertainment consumable meant to be unwrapped, snacked on, and shat out like so many movies today feel like.

In the end, would I recommend this movie? Is it worth your two hours? No if you're seriously strapped for time but yes if you have time to fuck around playing Pokémon ROM hacks or the like. It lands in that zone. It's not a masterpiece of cinema that you have to see or else you're missing out but it's definitely better than most things most of us tend to waste our time on here. See it once, check it off your checklist, and then forget about it for the next fifteen years.
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