In many ways, this unbelievable story about a vengeful whale attacking a vessel designed to kill it belongs in the hands of a director like Ron Howard, who is a master at always finding the right tone for a story rather than imposing the same style in every movie he makes. I might even argue that if you didn't know you were watching a Ron Howard movie, you might never figure it out until the end credit begin to roll. I certainly don't mean to imply that Howard has no distinguishing characteristics as a director. Quite the opposite: his finest trait is that he doesn't smear his fingerprints across every film he makes, he lets the subject matter dictate every aspect of his movies, and he usually gets it right.
With IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, Howard tells the tale simply and quietly for most of the running time, because he knows every so often, there will be an explosion of violence either aimed at whales or caused by a rather large one. The film opens with a squirrelly young man named Herman Melville (a nice turn by Ben Whishaw) seeking out the last living survivor of the notorious Whaleship Essex, which in the winter of 1820 met an unlikely fate. The always-reliable Brendan Gleeson plays the former crewman, Thomas Nickerson, who was only a boy when the ship left New England, and after a bit of poking from his wife (Michelle Fairly), he breaks his long silence about the incident to Melville. Their conversation (which Howard cut back to every so often during the course of the film) feels more like a unburdening confession than simply storytelling, and Melville eats it up as he scribbles down notes with the desperation of a writer who senses he's about to be inspired to write something remarkable.
If you were to subscribe human traits to a whale (or any animal), it might be said that the massive white whale at the heart of this story was taking its revenge on the Essex for killing so many of its smaller brethren by smashing the ship to pieces in a series of calculated attacks. The screenplay by Charles Leavitt (based on the book by Nathaniel Philbrick) does a great job explaining the importance of the whale oil industry in the world and how powerful and ruthless the leaders of that industry could be (at this point in history, there were only rumors of oil found beneath the ground as well).
Before the whales even come into the pictures, another fiery battle is under way, between the newly appointed captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) and his first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), who had been promised the job of captain until nepotism intervened, allowing Pollard to take over. Needless to say, their leadership styles clash almost immediately, and Pollard makes a series of novice mistakes early on that prove to the crew just how green he is. Watching Hemsworth scale the masts of the Essex in a flash makes him seem like a period superhero. But when they come under attack by the whale, the two put aside their differences and attempt to save as many crew members as possible.
Left only with the far smaller boats used to row out to whales to hunt them, the surviving crew members continue to be attacked by the white whale in a relentless and exhausting pattern of abuse. Among the crew members are Cillian Murphy's Matthew Joy and the young Thomas, played by Tom Holland (soon to become our latest Spider-Man). The survivors do eventually find land on a small, empty island with very few resources, so they must set out again in hopes of being discovered. Some of the revelations Nickerson makes to Melville about what the crew had to do to survive probably wouldn't be fit for a PG-13 film, but Howard finds a gruesome-free manner to get the point across; needless to say, it's about the worst thing you can think of, but after months at sea, there was little choice.
As typically beefy and bulky as Hemsworth is at the start of IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, he manages to push his performance away from larger than life and gives us Chase as a man possessed with his own type of revenge against the white whale. His eyes of full of rage and obsession, even if his body is a fraction of its former self due to starvation and fatigue. The film is a physically exhausting experience.
The final minutes of IN THE HEART OF THE SEA are a bit of a letdown, but compared to what comes before it, that's hardly surprising, nor does it destroy what is so good about the rest of the movie. The captures of the life of a whaler quite convincingly—the months of boredom when no whales are found, leading to desperation, and the sudden burst of frenzied activity when the creatures are spotted. Howard turns this singularly inexplicable incident into its own kind of fable, some that bear a striking resemblance to “Moby Dick,” and some that are uniquely emotionally devastating in a way only this specific story could be.
