We present/Leviathan/ (2012)
+ shorts
Leviathan: Moby-Dick illustration
'With the fish-eye cameras strapped to their heads, the film-makers and
crew recorded the raging midnight seas from
which are hauled the fish and scallops that will end up on china plates
and linen tablecloths in smart restaurants. Remorselessly,
they expose every aspect of this visceral business – often conducted in
the dark, out of sight of land, on trips lasting up to 18 days.
It is a weird otherworld, filled with bug-eyed fish slathering over the
decks, clanking rusty chains and hooded figures like medieval
torturers, all perpetually doused by the rising Atlantic.
Shrieking gulls plunge up from the dawn-slashed sky in vertiginous,
inverted scenes as the cameras tumble upside-down.
Starfish float beneath the surface like coral-coloured confetti. On
deck, scarred, tattooed men eviscerate fish dragged up
from the depths. In one shocking sequence, a skate dangles from a chain
as its wings, the only edible parts, are excised –
a scene not far from the notorious trade in definned sharks. Meanwhile,
an indeterminate heavy-metal track grinds out
from a radio, sounding more like the knell of an aquatic apocalypse.
These saturated, sublime images bear little comparison to any other
film; rather, they evoke the work of artists such as
Winslow Homer <http://www.winslow-homer.com/> and JMW Turner
<http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jmw-turner>. In fact, by
attaching 21st-century cameras to themselves and the crew of the Athena,
the directors were re-enacting Turner's legendary feat, when he had his
body lashed to the mast of a Harwich boat for
four hours to experience a storm at sea face-to-face and thus render it
in oil. [...]
Like Moby-Dick, Leviathan reflects an industrial reality more than a
maritime romance. Just as Ahab's ship was crewed
from around the world, so New Bedford's whaling ships brought Azoreans
and Portuguese, black Cape Verdeans and others
to its port; amazingly, 64% of the population of the eastern seaboard of
Massachusetts have Azorean or Portuguese blood.
But as whaling declined, fishing took over – an equally deadly
occupation, suffering the highest fatalities of any industry in the US.'
