in the heart of the sea
Seaman Chris Hemsworth shows us his harpoon.
Lots of jumping around, lots of swinging on rafts and beams…” That’s what goes down when Chris Hemsworth is on a ship. By contrast, Total Film is trying to put one foot in front of the other without skidding off the deck. We’re on board The (just about) Essex, the 19th-century the centre whaling ship of at In The Heart Of The Sea. vessel, Not the original obviously, which succumbed damage, to major whale as retold in Ron Howard’s No, historical epic. it’s a replica, built in 12 weeks, whose outward weather-beaten authenticity disguises that it’s actually a steel frame housing a hydraulics system allowing ship to be rocked, tipped the and swayed as if battling waves or, indeed, an the abnormally large sea creature.
Right now, The Essex is floating serenely (thank God) in an outdoor water tank, albeit surrounded wave machines (big by waves), thumper machines waves) and water (small cannons. Remove these FX destruction weapons of and the period feel would – not least be perfect because the tank overlooks mock-up a fully roamable of a 19th-century town. Hertfordshire This isn’t Leavesden, – it’s Nantucket, Massachusetts, complete with bank, blacksmiths, barrels. hardware shop and Barrels with a vital role to play – bringing home the sperm-whale oil that ships like The Essex were on a mission to gather; oil that was “lighting the world” at the time, explains Howard, who stresses that far from romanticising whaling, the film depicts it in a “realistic, clear-eyed, industrial” context.
It’s in Nantucket that In The Heart Of The Sea with Essex boys begins, Captain George Pollard Walker), (Benjamin first officer Owen Chase second (Hemsworth), officer Matthew Joy (Cillian Murphy) and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson (Tom Holland) embarking on a voyage in which giant whale attacks are only the start of their woes. Off screen, ITHOTS began with Hemsworth, who brought the project – adapted from author Nathaniel Philbrick’s award-winning 2000 book – to director Howard’s attention. “I thought Chris would be the perfect Owen Chase,” says the director. “I had a fantastic experience directing him on Rush. So I was flattered by the gesture but, more importantly, fascinated by what I thought was the very special kind of entertainment value of this story.”
Perhaps what really lit the fuse for Howard was learning not only that the story’s a true one, but source material for one of the greatest American novels: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. “Up to that point, all I knew was that Melville had been a whaler himself,” says Howard, who’s worked the author into his movie (as played by Ben Whishaw) via a wraparound narrative that features Brendan Gleeson as the older version of Holland’s character. Exploring how The Essex inspired Melville is what sets the movie apart from other survival stories, reckons Howard. “This origin story for is the Moby-Dick.
And from a directorial standpoint, that gives even more importance to the drama, to what the men on The Essex are going through – and I think more twists and turns, which I really appreciate at this stage of my career!” We’re out of the crisp October air now and in the warmth of a soundstage that looks like some sort of 19th-century leisure lagoon. On a greenscreen-backed, swimming pool-sized water tank bobs a small boat packed tight with talent, including Ben Walker, Tom Holland and Paul Anderson ( Peaky Blinders,
Legend). Over at the video village, with long-term producer Brian Grazer at his side, a baseball-capped Howard gives the word and a vigorous bout of imaginary harpooning commences. Howard dashes between monitors and actors, unflustered but laser-focused.
“There’s not a lot of time for dicking around,” says Ben Walker. “We work fast, but we have a good time. Ron’s a very funny, intelligent man – and that’s what you need when you’re dealing with starving young men on a boat!” Even before the food situation gets drastic, tensions rock The Essex, with its volatile combo of underqualified captain (Walker) and overqualified first mate (Hemsworth). “There’s naturally going to be some friction,” says Walker. “And besides, being stuck on a boat for a couple of years, eating hardtack [ ie biscuits] and not bathing? It’s going to fall apart!”
Caught between Walker’s Pollard and Hemsworth’s Chase is Cillian Murphy’s Matthew Joy, who the actor describes as a “conciliator”. Sporting fake sunburn and just about audible over a huffing wind machine, Murphy professes a love of maritime stories (“Master And Commander – wonderful”) that could well be genetic. “I did a bit of sailing as a kid and there’s sailors in my family in Ireland,” he reveals. “So it’s in our blood, that’s for sure.” Meanwhile, Holland – whose breakout was tsunami drama The Impossible – has one word for being back in the water: “Miserable!” he laughs. “No, it’s great. The set’s so incredible you forget you’re at sea. There are times when you want to go home – it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s two in morning – but that’s part of the job, really.”
And anyway, he’s getting to hang out with Thor on a daily basis. (“I’m a big Marvel fan,” he says, many months before being crowned the new Spider-Man. “We always have great conversations.”) But when TF meets Chris Hemsworth, he’s looking a bit more fishing rod than thunder god. “I’m getting lean, reducing body fat, trying to get rid of some of the Thor bulk,” Hemsworth explains. He’s on a strict diet now, with a more extreme one to come, as the shoot paddles towards the story’s bleak final act. Cutting a dash in rumpled canvas shirt and waistcoat, he still looks plenty capable of all the leaping and swinging mentioned earlier. But this isn’t a showcase for action heroics, he says. “There’s a reality to this film,” he asserts. “It’s not a swashbuckling, skipping-off-to-sea adventure. It’s much closer to the true events than Moby-Dick – grittier, especially the way Ron’s approaching it.”
But how much grit do you get with greenscreen? Can you really honour the “harsh, brutal” (Hemsworth) truth of life at sea in an oversized bathtub? Putting its budget where its mouth is, the production will take leave of Leavesden shortly after TF’s visit, filming on location in the Canary Islands – with real boats. “We had an epic shoot,” says Hemsworth during a post-Canaries catch-up. “For six hours a day we’d go out to sea and shoot in one direction, then turn round and shoot all the way back for six hours. Twelve hours at sea every day for three months.” And on a 600-calories-a-day diet. “It definitely brought us all closer together,” Hemsworth says of the cast’s collective weight loss. “Look, nothing compares to what the real guys went through, obviously – but we were hungry and miserable most days, and that’s how it was meant to be.”
The location shoot wrapped ahead of schedule, “unheard of an ocean movie,” says Howard. However, it’s taken a while for the finished article to dock in cinemas:
In The Heart Of The Sea’s original release moved from March to December – a date, Howard has said, more in sync with the movie’s “early winter kind of feel”. Audiences can look forward to a “great movie adventure,” he tells TF, but also one that “feels and sounds as cinematically contemporary as possible”. “In the same way I put viewers in the cockpit with the drivers in
Rush, I want to put them in the whaleboats, so you don’t have a feeling of distance. I want emotional involvement.”
But which character (s) to side with isn’t a simple deal, says Hemsworth. “There’s no good guy/bad guy scenario,” he reckons. “Everything’s kind of grey. Everybody starts in one place and finishes somewhere else. It doesn’t matter – you’re rooting for the whale for most of the film, anyway!” The whale. The star of the show – surely? Is it a slow reveal or does he make a big splash? “You’ll have to see,” teases Howard. “He’s presented as a bit of a rogue. But he’s also a protector of sorts. I jokingly thought of him as a
‘You root for the whale for most of the film! He’s along the lines of King Kong, a beast that can kill if pushed too far’
chris hemsworth
high plains drifter; he’s this existential fixture that protects his tribe in town but is not necessarily a part of it. He’s powerful, he’s dangerous – a bit of a monster, but a monster with variation.” As well as Clint Eastwood, there’s another cine-icon both Hemsworth and Howard compare their antagonist to. And it’s not the obvious one. “Our whale’s more along the lines of King Kong,” says Hemsworth, “a beast that can kill boats if pushed too far. That’s the personality, and Ron makes it appealing all the way through.”
Having personality, mind, doesn’t mean they’ve humanised the whale. Free Willy? Forget it. “We were very conscious to avoid that,” says Howard. “Again, we were striving for reality. Our whale is vital, but not mythic. This is a real creature. A creature you’ll find in a National Geographic documentary.” As the CGI creation evolved it began to dictate the course of the film. “As the whale became more real, the tone of the story, the rhythm of it, shifted,” reveals Howard. “There were scenes we had to continually address, re-address and edit. Certain elements, certain ideas, I’d believed in before suddenly weren’t true enough. They were maybe a little movie-ish. The interactions with the whale became incredibly authentic and intense, and required the whole thing to live up to that honesty. That definitely benefitted the movie.” Bottom line? “This is a badass whale!”
It’s 20 years since Howard mounted a real-lifer on this kind of scale – Apollo
13 – and he can see ample parallels: “It’s a group of men, they believe they know what their destiny is, what they’re striving for; and yet everything changes in a disastrous way.” That said, the
Apollo astronauts weren’t reduced to the same means of survival as the dwindling crew of The Essex – something Howard’s film neither shies from nor exploits. “Well, I mean, it’s a PG-13 movie; graphic and intense enough for you to understand the gravity of what they’re going through, but not horror for horror’s sake. It’s as shocking as I need to be, I feel.” Some truly, ahem, meaty themes in play here, then. Or as Hemsworth puts it: “Man versus nature, man versus man, man versus himself… it’s an epic, to say the least.”
In The Heart Of The Sea opens on 26 December.