The Eye of His Storm

It takes something larger than a 26-inch aquarium to capture the sheer size and oceanography of Captain Ahab’s demented pursuit of the enormous white sperm whale that took his leg in Herman Melville’s exalted novel “Moby Dick.” Television’s fish tank is much too small. Yet. . . .

Thar she blows!

And some grand TV storytelling this is, featuring quite a nice simulation of the heroic (a personal view) whale in the great deep and all of those lads stepping lively on the decks, along with a strikingly persuasive Ahab by Patrick Stewart.

Stewart is as venomous on the high seas as captain of the Pequod as he was admirable in the heavens as skipper of the Starship Enterprise. A wider screen could not improve upon his seething fanaticism as the tormented, driven, aquatic Javert who is shackled by personal demons and dead inside even before his storied return encounter with Moby Dick.

And where is this two-part “Moby Dick” appearing? Not on HBO, television’s foremost impresario of quality original movies. Nor on Showtime or TNT, two other cable venues for challenging original programs. One of the major broadcast networks? Get serious. Only if Fox could do “The World’s Scariest Sea Monsters.”

You’ll find it, of all places, on cable’s USA Network, whose cozy tradition of B-filmmaking is being jolted by these four hours of “Moby Dick,” by far its most ambitious and successful dramatic production yet.

Only the fairly recent emergence of “Jaws” challenges “Moby Dick” for preeminence in fiction about marine creatures warring with humankind, the differences being that Peter Benchley’s and Steven Spielberg’s prowling great white is a mindless, voracious predator, whereas Melville’s more complex literary star attacks humans--Ahab and his fellow whalers--only in response to being harpooned.

First published in 1851, “Moby Dick” does not transfer easily to any screen, however large. Many more people have heard of Moby Dick, and vaguely associate the name with an exciting whale tale, than know that Melville packed several hundred pages of foreplay into his novel before the emergence of “that accursed whale,” as Ahab bitterly titles him. That pace would test the patience of any audience, especially one anticipating an epic adventure.

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Thus, Hollywood’s skeletal “Moby Dick” of 1930, John Huston’s more fruitfully slenderized “Moby Dick” of 1956, and this fatter version--but still a “Moby Dick” light--on USA. It has Huston’s Ahab, Gregory Peck, showing up fairly early as Father Mapple, the minister and ex-whaler whose fiery sermon, in effect, launches young teacher-turned-seaman Ishmael (Henry Thomas), tattooed Queequeg (New Zealand actor Piripi Waretini), somewhat virtuous first mate Starbuck (Ted Levine) and the rest of the Pequod on their tortuous odyssey under Ahab’s command.

Surviving in the teleplay by Anton Diether and director Franc Roddam is Melville’s basic story of a man who has so personalized his hatred of a whale--deluding himself into a rivalry that defies rationality--that nothing else matters to him. It begins in New Bedford, Mass., with the arrival of Ishmael, who is Melville’s observer, and ends with him floating to safety on a coffin after a devastating encounter at sea brought on by Ahab’s wild mania about slaughtering Moby Dick as payment for losing his leg to him in an earlier hunt. Unlike Starbuck, who wants to kill whales only for profit, Ahab is now whaling for vengeance. Not that it makes much difference to the target.

Eyes narrowed to slits in a hideously scarred face as hard as the whalebone stump replacing his leg, Stewart’s Ahab is totally fixated and resistant to reason. He’s a human harpoon as single-focused as Spielberg’s movie shark, drawing his men into his frenzy first by leading them in a toast, “Death to Moby Dick!,” then later by exhorting them at sea until we hear the fateful command, “Lower the boats!”

Nothing better defines his absolute absorption than a scene at sea in which he listens to another boat captain’s pleas to help him search the ocean for his missing son but refuses because it would divert him from pursuing Moby Dick. “God will not forgive you,” the other mariner shouts back at Ahab, whose expression tells you that he knows full well that his conduct is immoral and that he is damned for it. This self-awareness softens him and makes him more of a tragic figure than he would be otherwise.

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Meanwhile, what a difference 42 years make. The 1956 Pequod’s crew was nearly as white as Moby Dick, the new one as exotically multiracial as Melville’s. And shot in Australia, the new “Moby Dick” substitutes technology for the actual whales that were reportedly harpooned on behalf of the earlier film.

The great masses of white seen periodically emerging from the water, including shots of a sperm whale leaping partially from the sea, are part mechanical, part computer-generated images--devices that work quite effectively.

The sequences only hint at the huge tonnage and 100-foot length of Moby Dick but are enough to contrast the whale’s great majesty with the barbarism of its attackers. As Ishmael remarks after his first hunt, “There’s no savagery of beasts that’s not infinitely outdone by that of man.”

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* Part 1 of “Moby Dick” airs at 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday, followed by Part 2 at 8 and 10 p.m. Monday on cable’s USA. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).