The story of Captain Ahab’s incessant hunt for the white whale known as Moby Dick is well known all over the world, but no movie adaptation has ever managed to do justice to Herman Melville’s brilliant novel. The book is half a detailed account ofCaptain Ahab’s descent into madnessas told by the sole survivor of his ship’s sinking, and half a meticulous and highly philosophical essay about the magnitude of the Whale in the face of humankind.
Moby Dickwas never popular, though widely famous indeed. Before becoming an all-time classic, the novel was an absolute failure when it first came out due to its unconventional narrative structure. Nowadays, it’s often mistaken for a traditional adventure story, which even gave rise to infamous editions targeted at children, detailing only the sea action sequences and ignoring all of Melville’s existential baggage.
Everyone knows the story ofMoby Dick, but few people see through it. To turnMoby Dickinto a more accessible story, there have been many attempts to adapt it to the big screen, but none of them will ever come close to what the book is.
Related:Best Movies About Being Stranded at Sea
A Look Into Previous Moby Dick Adaptations
Moby Dickhas been adapted to the big screen ever since cinema was born, with a silent film adaptation dating back to 1926. TitledThe Sea Beast, it adds a quirky origin story to Captain Ahab, portraying him as a heroic man corrupted by the wicked actions of his evil brother, a character exclusive to this film. There’s a nice twist, though: while Ahab ends up losing his leg because his brother pulls him to the white whale, the traumatizing incident actually causes him to transfer his hatred from his brother to the whale.
The Sea Beastis the first of many attempts at looking at Ahab with an empathetic eye, even earning him a happy ending as seen in the 1930 adaptationMoby Dick, or going through each stage of his tragic life, as in this loose French adaptation namedCapitaine Achab.It’s possible to divide eachMoby Dickfilm adaptation into three sections: Ahab, Moby Dick, and the sea life.
Those who look for answers in Ahab’s shattered psyche seem determined to ignore how Melville condensed the rage of each and every man in the physical form of this unpredictable captain, reasonably omitting a detailed past, for that would be the history of the human race itself. Adaptations that are centered aroundMoby Dickare either animated movies made for children — inThe Adventures of Moby Dick,a 45-minute-long animation, the white whale is the main character and befriends Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, as he sails on board of Ahab’s ship, — or other cheap attempts to humanize the creature.
As for the sea life approach, one’s left with what’s arguably the bestMoby Dickadaptation to this day, one that at least covers the full story in similar terms: John Huston’sMoby Dick, from 1956. This colored adaptation lacks color in every sense but nails the book’s base story with a memorable set of performances, including the legendary Orson Welles as Father Mapple. It removes key characters and delivers little to none of the book’s distinctive tranquility-before-chaos moments to jump from one explosive moment to the other: thrilling whale hunts, death promises, quarrels, typhoons, and most notoriously, an extended segment devoted to the pursuit of Moby Dick.
It’sMoby Dickfor those who thinkMoby Dickis just an adventure book, though it does have its share of Shakespearean monologs. Still, in the sea life section, it’s worth mentioning Ron Howard’sIn the Heart of the Sea, a thrilling ocean moviethat is at least honest in its forthrightness: it recounts the fateful sinking of a whaling ship in Essex that inspired Melville’s story.
Moby Dickadaptations don’t want to beMoby Dick; most of them simply want to be an account of a madman hunting down a mystical white whale. Alternatively, they might want to be a character study of the nuanced Captain Ahab, whose complex psyche is still studied to his day. Both of these extremes constitute only sections of the novel. In fact, the hunt for Moby Dick itself, the climax of the book if one wants to call it that way, makes up only 20 pages ora roughly 600-page novel. Stuck between well-imagined action at sea and the philosophical constraints of the source material, aMoby Dickmovie adaptation as psychologically rich as Melville’s book is fated to become a myth as great as the magnificent white whale.
Related:These Movies Will Make You Second Guess Ever Getting on a Boat
Why is Moby Dick so Difficult to Adapt to the Big Screen?
Moby Dickis as strange as it is straightforward; though the narrative follows a linear direction, and it’s quite easy to sum up the narrative with a vague “mad man hunts big whale,” it’s the form and style of the book that turns it into the multifaceted masterpiece it is. Melville alternates between different writing styles without disrupting the narrative’s course. It floats from a first-person prose, then switches to an essay format. Next thing you know, the book has now become a play, then switches back to prose style. And so it goes.
Some of the most beautiful monologues ever written can be found here; some of them go on for multiple pages. Characters often get carried away by their thoughts, meandering seemingly endlessly through their dreams and frustrations. Alternatively,Moby Dick’s scholarly language permeates the long segments in which Ishmael seems to become Melville himself, where the author pretty much lectures the reader about the most excruciating details of the whale species. These segments often pay off with a brilliant allegory in the end, which immediately justifies their presence in the book.
One might say thatMoby Dick’s meandering is unnecessary, while, essentially, absolutely nothing in a work of art is necessary. In Melville’s novel, small details such as the spirit spout of an invisible whale or the appearance of a giant squid are equally important as Ahab’s final blow against his nemesis.Moby Dickcan never be reduced toa simple monster hunt movie, though that’s what it’s destined to be on the big screen. They just happen to share the same name.
There’s a recurring discourse that a good adaptation is a faithful adaptation, yet that’s the beauty of Melville’s book right there: one might produce a detailed cinematic account of the Pequod’s journey from Nantucket to Moby Dick’s whereabouts and the message will still differ from the book.Moby Dick, in its essence, will always be a timeless allegory of humankind’s inferiority against nature.
The whale is the physical form of this monster, which is both a natural phenomena and a prelude to decadent economic practices (shortly after the novel was published, oil commerce shifted drastically). Ishmael, just like Ahab, just like humanity itself, knows that Melville’s Whale will remain here long after we’re gone.
