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Reviews
Moby Dick (2011)
Thank you for helping carry Melville ever forward
Let me start by quoting Mad Magazine: Call me Fishmeal.
As a confirmed middlebrow and devoted Melvillephile, I wish to thank everyone involved in this production for a great, worthy and exciting iteration. A welcome addition to the pantheon. Visually enthralling...and good score.
I cant claim to deeply understand Melville -- but i can claim to love him and his work -- in my way. i have been to Arrowhead in Pittsfield MA 2x. I have read a lot of his writing. I love Billy Budd, novella and movie.
And I was delighted to just watch my 3rd or 4th version of the majestic and elusive Moby Dick, which i have read 1.5 times and audio-listened once.
So.....review?
Well because I try not to be doctrinaire, I was fine to "suck up" the sometimes bold liberties taken by the screenwriter, i think mainly in the first hour or so.
i got the chills when the camera first panned on the Nantucket dock. i enjoyed revisiting father mapple's ship-as-church. i loved Elijah, Queequeg, Stubb, Steelkilt, and others. Ahab and Ishmael were very good. Mrs Ahab was good, and Starbuck got better when things started to get really dicey
i'm sorry but Ahab sometimes looks like a HS cheerleader revving up the team and the fans. i would have rather spent 90 seconds looking at puzzled faces of the crew as Ahab went more and more bonkers, than hear lots of the crew's pep-rally-like, anti-moby dick chanting.
I thought of the koolaid distributed by Jim Jones in 1978 at suicidal Jonestown -- when I saw Ahab pass the drinks on the equally suicidal Pequod.
i thought of Billy Budd (Melville), and the idea of the follower willing to die for the leader
I thought of billy (and Terrence Stamp) proclaiming 'god bless capain vere'
I thought of Benito Cereno...and the amazing steps sometimes taken by the enslaved - in pathetic contrast to the steps not taken by members of the fatally cowed crew of the Pequod -- enabled by a pathetic and self-loathing Starbuck
I thought of Jack and Rose when Starbuck last spoke w Pip
--
It has many great visual effects, including moby's jaw-dropping rise from the sea at the end of Part 1, and the shattering moment in Part 2 when the great white whale wreaks its own revenge on one of the lowered boats of Ahab's Pequod. The look on the faces of the other crew members says it all
I remain a middlebrow, but I do know enough to say that Herman Melville has much to teach us about leadership, sacrifice, power, subservience, rebellion, intercultural relations...
And in Moby Dick, we also have a story about humans' unwinnable efforts to conquer nature -- about the emergence of industrial capitalism in the mid 19th c. US --
in any case, as i dip again and again into Melville and Moby Dick, my attention draws more and more.......
....toward the relationship between the crew and ahab (without minimizing other deep and essential plot elements)
melville says: watch this crew get misled to its own death, dear reader - and don't let this happen to you
to all involved in this production, i would again say thank you for helping your viewers lock arms with Herman Melville in the never-ending quest for mutual understanding
Daniel (1983)
Daniel is my favorite movie ever
Daniel, dear fellow movie lovers, is my favorite movie of all time.
I can barely list all the reasons why I love this movie. I have recommended it to many people, and frankly no one has basically reacted to it as enthusiastically as i have.
But guess what, I don't care. This movie resonates with me. Thanks to E.L. Doctorow, Lumet provides us -- specifically -- with a devastating examination of the nature of political martyrdom and its effect on the martyr's family. We look at the critical intersection between family and ideology.
Beyond the scorching power of the plot and the highly ambitious story line, the Daniel cast is superb and they play their roles to tremendous effect, with a couple of minor exceptions. I don't remember how Paul Isaacson was portrayed in Doctorow's novel, but the casting of the powerful and macho Mandy Patinkin as the Pauly character directly modeled on Julius Rosenberg (who at least from his photos appeared to be nebish-y and not projecting any degree of the virility Patinkin offers) was perfect. What a wonderful liberty Lumet took.
First-rate acting also comes from the tortured siblings Timothy Hutton and Amanda Plummer, plus Ed Asner, Lindsay Crouse, Tovah Feldshuh, Ellen Barkin and numerous supporting players.
The target audience for Daniel, perhaps, is the person who (like me) at some time(s) in their life has allowed political action to become more important than ostensible self-interest or family interest. Unless you have personally had this experience, I am guessing you will relate less to this movie.
But please don't let that stop you! This is a martyr movie I am sure many non-martyrs can enjoy.
I can rattle off no less than a half dozen scenes that I consider timeless and priceless. Don't get me started.
OK, I relent. I will say that the Peekskill riot scene is memorable and special. Every time I am on a bus, and it makes a turn or goes through the woods or whatever or whatever, I think of this scene. The scene's intense crucifixion/climax is excruciating to watch.
And the kids' return to the shuttered Bronx apartment -- and attorney Ed Asner explaining to the befuddled aunt that, 'Lady, these people are in trouble!' -- and the Union Square rally -- and the Sing Sing scene -- and omigod the Paul Robeson score -- and and and and...
When Lumet got his special Oscar a yr or so ago i thought, oh good, finally, the world will hear about Daniel, my #1 movie. But I was deflated when it got mentioned maybe not at all or at best in passing. Some newspaper movie critics covering the award, alluded to the 'underrated' Daniel. Sigh ****.
Well, dear friends, lemme just say that 'underrated' is a gross exaggeration. In my mind, I cannot overrate this movie.
Thus -- I exhort all IMDb people to watch this movie, get past the early Patinkin Russian folk dance scene in the apartment, and stay with it! I hope you will begin to appreciate Daniel just half as much as I do.
And thank you, Sidney Lumet.