By Last night we mentioned that Peter Cornwell is helming a sci-fi adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Well, the science fictioning fun continues, true believers.
Lynne Ramsay is working on a sci-fi Moby Dick. Ramsay — whose films include Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher, and We Need to Talk About Kevin — said the film would be a loose adaptation of Herman Meville’s novel and that she’s going for something claustrophobic and psychological, a bit like Das Boot.
Moby Dick is actually one of my favorite novels of all time (of all time). While I understand why a lot of people can’t get into it, if you get hooked, this odd duck of a book is full of great poetry and depth. Melville’s language is this gorgeous, undulating thing that reads like the rhythm of the ocean, and his digressions into matters of color, cetology, the state of nature, and the brotherhood of man all burn with an incandescent truth.
And what other book that does all this also features a brief chapter where a man wears the skin of a whale penis as a protective smock? None — no other book. (Well, okay, there’s probably a whale dork scene in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day.)
After the cut, there’s some video of Ramsay discussing Moby-Dick in Space; or, The Star Whale on the BBC’s Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review.
[Via /Film]
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that Ramsay’s film will at least be better than Age of the Dragons, the dragon Moby Dick film with Danny Glover as Ahab.
