Ray Bradbury wrote an incredible screenplay for this work. Instead of trying to capture Herman Melville's actual brilliant leviathan sprawl (and who COULD succeed at this?)-- a novel jammed with fantastic,bigger than life characters, many events of great symbolic significance, not to mention barrels of whaling information-- he carves out the tale of Ahab and his obsession with the white whale. Bradbury makes great impact with Ahab's symbolic sacraments and rituals, showing a man who spits in the face of his own and his crew's doom, binding his men to his will with any means necessary. It's hard to believe, but Ray Bradbury takes this glorious wild child of a book and makes it work. The music by Phillip Sainton and the cinematography are great, too, but nothing would have saved this movie from a bad screenplay.
