Moby Dick

Moby Dick is one of my favorite novels & the 1950's film adaptation is one of my favorite films. There is something about the novel that I can read it again & again & never tire of it, always finding something new. The 1950's film is like that too--I must have seen it a dozen times at least & I could watch it again right now. So when I heard that a new version of Moby Dick would be on cable with Patrick Stewart, an honest-to-goodness decent actor, playing Ahab & Gregory Peck appearing as Father Mapple, I was delighted. TV-movies have a justified reputation for being of poor quality but on the cable networks, you are often able to find a gem mixed in with the mud & this sounded like it could be just such a gem.

Unfortunately, this Moby-Dick is a hideous disappointment. The film goes wrong right from the beginning with a buffoonish, incompetent performance by the guy playing Queequeeg & a sad performance by Gregory Peck. Peck looks nothing like the great actor who could dominate films of all different types from Moby Dick to Pork Chop Hill, to westerns, etc. Instead, he looks like an elderly man reading lines. And the guy playing Queequeeg, despite his pre-release hype, is a poor actor, incapable of the intelligent, dignified performance of Frederick Ledebur in the older film.

There is very little good I can say about this movie. It is quite likely even worse than the old John Barrymore version in which Barrymore, as Ahab, goes out in the Pequod, kills Moby Dick, & returns to New Bedford to get the girl. At least that film had the benefit of a sort of nostalgic old-time Hollywood humor. This film has...well...a shot of Queequeeg's naked buttocks for any who might enjoy it. And not much else.

A vulgar atrocity that is best forgotten.

I've never seen any version of the classic tale besides this one so I can't really compare this version to any of the others. But it doesn't matter. This tv movie is excellent. The special effects are spectacular. There is superb acting from the cast, especially Patrick Stewart. Anyone who has seen Star Trek: First Contact would find it kind of ironic Stewart would be playing Captain Ahab. It's a worthy version of the classic book.

Patrick Stuart wasn't bad as Captain Ahab, but not as good as Gregory Peck. In the scene where Ahab is telling his crew that he will chase the "white whale" virtually around the world, Stuart felt the need to shout. Peck, on the other hand, did it far more intensly by a withering look and more sterness in his voice and didn't shout. A far better performance.

Usually I don't expect much out of movies made for TV. They're seven acts, instead of the traditional three, which makes plotting difficult. They work on miniscule budgets, and usually use actors on their way up or their way down. Not to be compared with theatrical motion pictures - apples and oranges. However, the exception proves the rule.

This is an epic telling of the Melville story. Okay, most of you probably had a bad experience reading the novel. You end up asking why Ahab was prepared to give his life for catching or killing the great albino whale. The answer is that Ahab and the Whale are inexorably bound in life. The whale is Ahab's grab for the eternal brass ring, one that eludes him time and again.

First: Best motion picture score I've ever heard for a TV Movie. Second: This picture is filmed like a theatrical, meant to be projected on a large screen. Third: My dear friend, Patrick Stewart who doesn't know how to give a bad performance. Patrick, like the whale is a force of nature, not to be denied. I've directed Patrick on a number of occasions and there's none of the nonsense you hear about the whims of great actors. Patrick comes to work prepared and when he makes a suggestion you take it very seriously.

I don't care about the other online reviews putting the knock on Melville or his story. What have any of us done recently that will live for more than a century and a half. That my friends is the mark of greatness. It's an elusive butterfly that anybody who gives their life to the creative arts covets and strives to achieve. I give it a ten and defy any reader of this review to tell me why it deserves a scentila less.

TV movies are often flat and rushed. Not this one!

Patrick Stewart is amazing as Ahab. The actor slowly disappears and before our very eyes emerges a true monster -- a man who knows what he is doing and could stop himself, but does not. This is the real horror and tragedy of Ahab. It is also our own horror and tragedy because we all have within us what drives Ahab -- namely, pride and ego.

The FX are grand and the cast is excellent. It is a truly worthy re-make of the enduring classic.