This television film is a mix of good intentions and missed opportunities, that results in an acceptable but not brilliant version of Melville's book. Patrick Stewart is fine as Ahab, and gets to deliver some of Melville's best lines wonderfully. Ted Levine is a terrific Starbuck, with a real emotional depth to his performance that is probably the best thing in the movie. The ship looks good, the street scenes and the Spouter Inn, are all well done, and there is a grimy, grungy realism about the look of the clothing and the buildings and everything that makes up the day to day world of Nantucket.The acting generally is good and it's not at all a bad adaptation of a classic.
However, it does miss most of the eerie, overwhelming sense of strangeness and mystery of the book. Moby Dick is simply not as majestic and terrifying as he should be, with the sense of awe he inspires in the superstitious seamen. Ahab's mad rage at the whale should be stronger, as well as his hypnotic hold over his crew. The biggest loss in a film that otherwise gives us more of Melville's characters and incidents than any other film adaptation, is the inexplicable omission of Fedallah's spooky prophecies to Captain Ahab. At least the character is included, and he is shown to have some sort of special relationship to Ahab, which is never fully explained in the novel, either. But the dramatic scenes near the end of the book, with Ahab listening to the fatalistic prophecies of Fedallah, concerning the outcome of the hunt for the White Whale, are excluded, and what could have been a truly inspired adaptation becomes a pretty good version, but not the great work it could have been.
Overall, a good adaptation worth seeing, but the 1956 John Huston version, though not as detailed, captures more of the awesome, wild tone of the original.
However, it does miss most of the eerie, overwhelming sense of strangeness and mystery of the book. Moby Dick is simply not as majestic and terrifying as he should be, with the sense of awe he inspires in the superstitious seamen. Ahab's mad rage at the whale should be stronger, as well as his hypnotic hold over his crew. The biggest loss in a film that otherwise gives us more of Melville's characters and incidents than any other film adaptation, is the inexplicable omission of Fedallah's spooky prophecies to Captain Ahab. At least the character is included, and he is shown to have some sort of special relationship to Ahab, which is never fully explained in the novel, either. But the dramatic scenes near the end of the book, with Ahab listening to the fatalistic prophecies of Fedallah, concerning the outcome of the hunt for the White Whale, are excluded, and what could have been a truly inspired adaptation becomes a pretty good version, but not the great work it could have been.
Overall, a good adaptation worth seeing, but the 1956 John Huston version, though not as detailed, captures more of the awesome, wild tone of the original.