Hollywood turns again to Moby Dick
I was gently chided not long ago, by New London historian Sally Ryan, for emphasizing whaling in celebrating the city's distinguished maritime history.
After all, the earlier West Indies trade was probably more formative for New London's strategic deep-water port, she suggested.
So I venture back into a salute to the city's whaling history and culture with some trepidation. Let's say at the outset that New London's service as a whaling hub was one part of its robust history as a major East Coast port.
Still, as Hollywood turns some attention at the close of 2015 to whaling, it is hard not to recall the enormous impact the 19th century pursuit of whale oil had on the region, how it once made New London a rich little city.
Of course, appropriately, a whale sculpture fountain now dominates the New London downtown. And last summer, thanks to the work of Mystic Seaport, we sent the last wooden sailing ship back to sea.
The Seaport is a place where people still gather every year to read Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."
I think, in the end, the Seaport's 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan last summer probably brought less attention around the country to whaling, despite a few star turns on national news, than last weekend's opening of Ron Howard's "In the Heart of the Sea."
I was disappointed with the early reviews of the movie, which had a lackluster opening weekend box office performance.
I could understand, though, the reaction of some critics who complained about a drifting story, slow pace and uneven special effects.
The movie is based on the excellent book by Nathaniel Philbrick, which won the National Book Award in 2000. The book tells the story of the whale ship Essex out of Nantucket, which sank after being stove by a giant white whale, leaving surviving crew members for months at sea in small whaleboats, eventually resorting to cannibalism.
Melville apparently based his novel "Moby Dick" on the story of the Essex, and that's the narrative conceit the movie uses, as we moviegoers learn the story of the Essex as Melville does, interviewing a survivor on a reporting trip to Nantucket years later.
In considering critics' complaints about special effects for "In the Heart of the Sea," I couldn't help but think of some of the hokey scenes of Gregory Peck trying to spear the monstrous whale in the 1956 movie "Moby Dick."
The whale is sometimes hokey, too, in Howard's movie, although I was impressed with the sequence, featured in the trailer, in which the camera looks down at the outline of the giant whale under water as it approaches the Essex for the fatal ramming.
"In the Heart of the Sea" will soon be crushed, like every other big movie this holiday season, by Star Wars mania.
And yet maybe there will still be some residual gain from the movie for the part of eastern Connecticut's tourism economy that tells the story of whaling so well.
Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" brought tourists here.
Tourists still visit Mystic Pizza for nostalgic picture taking, even though Julia Roberts was a young unknown actress when that move was filmed here.
Our submarine culture has fared well in Hollywood over the years, too.
In New Bedford, they still talk about how the 1956 "Moby Dick" helped the city. Gregory Peck was feted there for a grand opening.
I'll bet Sally Ryan would join me in looking forward to the January release of "The Finest Hours," a new movie that celebrates the heroism of the Coast Guard.
After all, New London's rich maritime history includes centuries of Coast Guard tradition here, beginning with one of the first revenue cutters that became today's modern service.
Soon, of course, New London will help better tell that story of Coast Guard heroism than even Hollywood can, with the establishment of the National Coast Guard Museum.
This is the opinion of David Collins.
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: DavidCollinsct
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