Moby Dick (1956)
Directed by John Huston
In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service aboard the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.
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What critics compared Moby Dick to
At any rate, the phrase serves as an apt summation of the movie he’s in, a maritime nightmare awash in mythological references, Moby Dick paraphrases, and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” samples.
The Moby Dick parallel is so overt that Pattinson’s character at one point even screams that Dafoe’s must’ve come from that book.
The problem is that there isn’t any restraint in the work they are doing – both have their performances turned all the way to 11. Dafoe, in particular, with his accent and cadence, seems not so much like he’s creating a character from cloth as he is in emulating the kind of character we’ve seen from Treasure Island to Moby Dick – the crusty sea captain, with all the cliches that come with it.
The taciturn Winslow (Pattinson) and sea-salty Wake (Dafoe) don’t have much in common — Wake is like flinty Captain Ahab of “Moby Dick” — but they both have secrets about to be pried loose by the wind and waves.
Tom — hilariously prone to declaiming a mixtape of Shakespeare and outtakes from Moby Dick — sums up his marital history with the refrain, “Thirteen Christmases at sea, little ones at home, she never forgave me.”
The self-seriousness of these struggles is underscored by the fact that Chase and Glass were both real dudes — the Essex ordeal would provide fuel for Moby Dick, while Glass's life inspired the 2002 Michael Punke novel on which The Revenant is based.
Aunque el guión está parcialmente inspirado en el libro de Michael Punke, cuyo personaje principal realmente existió y forma parte del folklore estadounidense, el encuentro entre hombre-bestia y bestia sirve como metáfora de la lucha por lo imposible (similar a la manera en la que Herman Melville lo acentó en el mítico viaje hacia el abismo del navío comandado por el capitán Ahab en contra de la ballena blanca, en Moby Dick; o como lo es el propio quehacer cinematográfico para muchos, un devenir constante de tropiezos y sinsabores superados por la fortaleza y la fe de su director, y por quienes cierran los ojos a la realidad y deciden creer ciegamente en él).
His character is partial to an audiobook of Moby Dick, constantly chasing what he may never get, and nearly every scene with Nolte in it is akin to Mickey Rourkeâ??s turn in The Wrestler, tapping into a sense of shame so potent that the result is heartbreaking more often than not.
He’s obsessed with righting old wrongs, which may be why he is absorbed by Captain Ahab’s pursuit of the elusive monster whale in “Moby Dick”; he listens to the audio version of the novel at every opportunity.
Warrior is narrated by the audiobook that Nolte’s character is constantly listening to, Moby Dick.
In classic narrative style, the patriarch, (Nick Nolte in a solid outing that begins with real promise—drinking coffee and reading John Steinbeck, quoting from Moby Dick no less—before he’s pushed back far beyond the ropes) is nearing his 1000th day of sobriety only to be offered a home-coming gift of scotch from his recently returned son, Tommy.
When “Warrior” begins with Nolte listening to the book-on-tape of “Moby Dick,” it is clear the kind of movie we’re in for.
The movie's script risks drawing its conflicts out too plainly: The brothers' contrasting training regimens (Brendan listens to Beethoven in a pristine gym, while Tommy is out in the muck) get a little too much emphasis, and viewers would understand the weight of Paddy's personal demons even if he weren't always listening to a "Moby Dick" audiobook.
Supposedly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, it also borrows heavily from Moby Dick, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as the Faulkneresque trappings of the Depression era South.
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Maybe it’s somewhere in the pages Justine’s copy of Moby Dick, where she keeps the flute necklace her mother gave her.
The true story also became the inspiration for Moby Dick.
The biography of the rampant egoist is a great theme in American literature and film, from Moby Dick to The Great Gatsby to Citizen Kane.
And then there’s that aforementioned battle-royale finale, which puts an auto shop-class spin on an earlier “Moby Dick” reference.
The most surprising moment in Fast & Furious 6 comes when someone mentions Moby Dick.
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Whether it was searching for gold ("The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"), an obsessive pursuit that leads to destruction ("Moby Dick") or an attempt to rule a lost society ("The Man Who Would Be King"), Huston's movies focused on the quest and how those involved in them responded to the obstacles that presented themselves, not whether they were successful or not.
Stewart was bleakly haunted as Scottie in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and Peck was dark as Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil (1978) and as Ahab in Huston's Moby Dick (1956).