Capitaine Achab (2007)

Director:

Philippe Ramos

Writers:

Herman Melville (writer)
Philippe Ramos (writer)

Release Date:

13 February 2008 (France)

Genre:

Adventure

Plot:

Cast

Denis Lavant	...	Achab adulte
Jacques Bonnaffé	...	Starbuck
Bernard Blancan	...	Will Adams
Jean-François Stévenin	...	Le père d'Achab
Virgil Leclaire	...	Achab enfant (as Virgile Leclaire)
Philippe Katerine	...	Henry
Dominique Blanc	...	Anna
Carlo Brandt	...	Mulligan
Jean-Christophe Bouvet	...	Le roi d'Angletere
Lou Castel	...	Le docteur Hogganbeck
Jean-Paul Bonnaire	...	Le pasteur
Hande Kodja	...	Louise (as Handé Kodja)
Mona Heftre	...	Rose
Pierre Pellet	...	Jim Larsson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Michael Merikan	...	Church visitor
Guillaume Verdier

Also Known As:

Captain Ahab (International: English title) (festival title)
Kapten Ahab (Sweden)

Country:

Sweden | France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Orust, Västra Götalands län, Sweden

Company:

Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC)

Captain Ahab's back-story

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

An intriguing, but finally unsatisfactory film, that looks at the background of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. In five episodes, we see Ahab through the eyes of five people- his father, his aunt, Mulligan, a preacher who helps him, Anna, his lover, and Starbuck, the Pequod's mate. Each episode is interesting, but they don't hold together as a whole. At the end we don't believe that this accumulation- his father's refusal to take him hunting, his father's death, the religiously inspired cruelty of his aunt and her husband, his encounter with a couple of criminals who've come from Huckleberry Finn, his spiritual division between the sea and religion, his affair with the laundress Anna- explains or shows the monomaniac Ahab of Melville emerges from this history. We are shown nothing of Ahab in his days of glory as the greatest whale-killer in Nantucket, only his young childhood and his life after he loses his leg.

It's a stylised film- the characters speak in Melvillean language- not always reflected in the English subtitles- with some extraordinary shots, a good use of noise and music and a wonderful performance by the child who plays the child Ahab, marred by a little obviousness in ostentatious symbolism, a need to show rather than let us infer, some ignorance or nineteenth century new England- the two priests are portrayed as a French-style Roman Catholic village priest and a humane missionary, rather than as the Father Mapple of Moby Dick or the Calvinists who inspired him- unless Mulligan is the same man with his name changed for some reason.