Capitaine Achab (2008) - film review

1840.  Who could imagine that this young boy reading the Bible in a hunting lodge in the middle of a forest would one day become the captain of a whaling vessel?  Yet, this same boy would grow up to become a formidable sea captain who would one day meet his match in the great white whale Moby Dick...

In his most ambitious and arguably most substantial film to date director Philippe Ramos throws caution to the wind and attempts to shed some light on Capitain Achab, the ill-fated hero of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick.   Rather than slavishly adapt Melville’s book, Ramos plots a more hazardous course and instead invents a back story for Achab, concentrating on his childhood and the period between losing his leg and his fateful confrontation with the great white whale.  The most significant part of Achab’s life - the period where he acquired his reputation as a legendary whale hunter - is dealt with in a few terse sentences.  If only Ramos had shown similar restraint over the part of Achab’s life-story that we already know about (his meeting with Moby Dick) the film would probably have stood up much better.  Far from feeling sympathy for Achab as he is lured helplessly to his cut-price death (on a piece of tow rope), it is a struggle not to burst out laughing.

The film’s tragically laughable tragic denouement aside, Capitaine Achab is an arresting piece of cinema that goes someway to elucidating the mystery of Melville’s most enigmatic creation.  Admittedly, the first few chapters of the story owe far more to Mark Twain than Herman Melville, but the art design, choice of locations and cinematographic style achieve an authentic reconstruction of the setting and the era in which Achab existed, whilst the characters are convincingly portrayed by a well-selected cast.  The picturesque location sequences and score bring a striking lyricism which is more effective in telling the story than the seemingly interminable (and slightly grating) voiceover narration.  With its austere design and stark visual poetry, the film does have a distinctly Melville-esque feel to it.

Of the five chapters into which the film is divided (each dealing with a signifcant character in Achab’s life), the most memorable is the one in which Achab (skilfully played by Denis Lavant) is nursed back to health by his lover-to-be, Anna (Dominique Blanc), after losing his leg.  There is a genuinely tragic poignancy to Anna’s inability to cure Achab of his fatal affinity for the sea, and it is probably fair to say this is the only part of the film which gets anywhere near to unravelling Achab’s complex psychology.  If only the film had stopped with the heartbreaking scene where Anna is deserted by the man she has come to love...  Not only would we have been spared the embarrassing final segment (which tells us nothing we didn’t already know) but we would have been more encouraged to revisit Melville’s great novel and pick up the story where  Ramos left off.  As it is, the sorry sight of Achab being dragged screaming into a mediocre piece of CGI is not one that serves the cause of American literature particularly well.

© James Travers 2010

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