AllMovie

Captain Ahab roams the seas again in this 1998 TV miniseries. Like the 1956 film version, it leaves the main theme of the novel (Ahab's relentless pursuit of the Great Unknown, symbolized by the whale) essentially intact. Patrick Stewart plays a wildly emotional Ahab in this newest version. From start to finish, Stewart's Ahab fulminates with zealotry, whether soliloquizing about the great leviathan that took his leg or exhorting his crew to hunt him down. Scars emboss his face, his eyes burn with revenge, and his Medusa hair strikes out in all directions. He is a man possessed; he means to pierce the whale to its core, until it spouts black blood. Taking his cue from Stewart, Piripi Waretini animates his performance as harpooner Queequeg with good-natured horseplay and war whoops: no stoic savage, he. Stewart's and Waretini's performances contrast sharply with the performances of Gregory Peck (Ahab) and Frederick Ledebur (Queequeg) in director John Huston's 1956 film. In that adaptation, Huston restrains his actors. They are men of stone, unsmiling, their hearts beating to the rhythm of an unfriendly universe. Which version is better, the 1956 or 1998, is arguable. But Huston more skillfully exposes the brooding gloom and reverential fear that arrests the Pequod's crew in its pursuit of the whale. A bright spot in the 1998 version is Henry Thomas' portrayal of Ishmael, the narrator. Thomas plays Ishmael as vulnerable, naïve, and awestruck: a young man who goes to sea for the joy of it. And the whale? Huston's was far more realistic, as well as quite sinister and foreboding. In the 1998 adaptation, Moby Dick rarely shows more than a flapping tail -- and when it does breach the waters, it has "special effect" written all over it.