Director Ron Howard gave movie lovers the real story behind Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” in the epic In the Heart of the Sea (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, rated PG-13, $35.99, 122 minutes).
Although a bomb at the box office, the biographical adventure’s beauty and authenticity finds redemption on Blu-ray due to a screen-filling presentation (1.85:1 aspect ratio) and a bountiful catch of extras.
Based on the nonfiction book by Nathaniel Philbrick, the woeful story of the whale hunting ship the Essex and its unfortunate encounter with a mighty creature of the sea offered the struggles of Capt. George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker), first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and a salty crew attempting to survive the harshest of conditions.
A digital transfer highlights the outstanding production design of the period piece that reveals a 19th century Nantucket, detail within the wooden whale ships and panoramic sea landscapes.
It also showcases intricate effects such as the Essex in the midst of a storm, multiple battles with a whale and the crew’s grotesque process of extracting a dead whale’s rich oil products.
And, much as I was hoping for, the extras flood fans of the film with plenty of educational information.
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Viewers get almost an hour’s worth of promotional featurettes, in addition to 16 deleted scenes and four extended scenes, looking at the relationship of Chase and Pollard, the life of a whaler, the book “Moby Dick,” and a deconstruction of some of the too-realistic water effects (both on location, practical and computer-generated).
Interviews with Mr. Philbrick, the screenwriter, key production personnel and all of the actors shed light on the Essex’s ill-fated journey. Mr. Howard even adds a captain’s log of his Twitter posts during the shoot explaining more minutia on the production.
Best of all, the extras include a 28-minute documentary “Lightening Strikes Twice” exploring a sunken Nantucket whale ship from 1823 that was found by archeologists around the shoals of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2008.
Besides explaining the 2.5 years of work involved to identify that vessel as the Two Brothers (guess who the captain was?), this piece delivers a concise overview of the early 19th century whaling industry focused on Nantucket and the Essex.
It features interviews with the principal divers, researchers from the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary (a natural laboratory), historians and the curator of the Nantucket Historical Society (Benjamin Simons). The extra also includes some spectacular underwater footage of the wreck as well as the artifacts discovered and sea creatures that live in the area.
• Joseph Szadkowski can be reached at jszadkowski@washingtontimes.com.
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