Chris Hemsworth – STREAMING MOVIE NIGHT

2015 Warner Brothers Pictures

Rated: PG-13

Length: 2 hr 1min

Action ~ Adventure ~ Drama ~ True Story

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson.

“Since we have discovered that whale oil can light our cities, it has pushed man to venture deeper into the deep blue unknown. We know not it’s depths nor the creatures that live there.”

From the 17th to the early 20th century The Whaling Industry was a well organized worldwide business. Up to 80% of a whale’s weight is made up of oil, which was perfect for oil lamps and heat. It was also used for lubrication in machinery and making soaps. Whaling ships outfitted exclusively to hunt and harvest whales were plentiful, and being a Whaler was seen as an admirable occupation. They would head out to sea for a couple of years until their hold was filled with barrels of whale oil.

When the whaling ship would get close to a pod of Whales they would lower three smaller boats laden with men and harpoons with long ropes attached. They would maneuver the boats right up to the whales and then harpoon them. As the whale took off the men followed in the boat, being towed by the harpoon imbedded in the whale. They would ride it out until the whale bled out and died, then they would tow it back to the ship. There they would harvest it by cutting sections of the whale and boiling it down to oil, then storing it in barrels in the hold.

In 1820 in Nantucket Massachusetts, a whaling company outfitted The ESSEX for a whaling expedition. Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) is brought on due to his family’s deep ties to the whaling industry although he has little experience as a Captain or a whaler. Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) is hired on as First Mate and, having a rich history of being a whaler and a seaman, he and Captain Pollard clash from the start. The ESSEX has little luck in the first three months of their journey and at a stop in Ecuador a Spanish Captain tells them of a sweet spot 2000 miles to the west. He also warns them about a vengeful huge white sperm whale that destroyed his ship and killed six of his men.

The ESSEX and her crew head for the spot in the Pacific and find the spot full of whales. They also find the huge white scarred sperm whale the Spanish Captain had warned them about. What happened to the ESSEX and her crew after encountering the massive white whale became a worldwide story after what remained of the crew returned. Thirty years later it was this story that Herman Melville wanted, felt compelled, to write his next novel MOBY DICK about. As the movie opens we see Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) travelling to the home of Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), who was a 14 year old cabin boy on the ESSEX‘s doomed journey thirty years earlier, to get his firsthand account of the tragedy.

As Thomas Nickerson recounts the true tale of The ESSEX and the encounter with The Great White Whale, we watch it unfold on the big screen. It is a fantastic True Story told in 3-d directed by Ron Howard, beautifully filmed in The Canary Islands of Spain. The movie is based on the 2000 book by Nathaniel Philbrick titled In The Heart Of The Sea. I have seen this several times since it was first released, and I just watched it again on Netflix. I think it is a classic. Obviously a classic tale but I think Ron Howard did a great job at bringing the story to life. The lengths that Ron and the cast went to for realism was above and beyond, to the point of having the crew go on a strict diet to mimic the starving crew of the ESSEX.