HISTORY & FILM For the World Is Hell: The North Water
There’s something inherently fascinating about those white, icy spaces at the earth’s poles – an environment at once beautiful and lethal. It’s easy to be captivated by these places, while at the same time not deluding oneself into thinking one would have the fortitude to survive them. It’s safer to go the vicarious route, simply reading about or watching films set in such locales. I’ve previously shared, in this very column, a randomly sparked but apparently enduring interest in the 19th-century whaling industry. Thus, when I stumbled across a trailer for The North Water, which combines both of these things – whaling and the Arctic – my excitement was intense. (Absurdly so, perhaps.) The North Water is a limited series (a one-n-done, no commitment required) which, as far as I can tell, is only available on the American side of the pond through AMC+, a subscription streaming service; the BBC aired it in the UK. The 2021 series is based on a 2016 book of the same name by Ian McGuire. I missed the advent of this intriguing novel – it was longlisted for the Man Booker, made a number of “best books of the year” lists, and critics were effusive (“brilliant” seems to have been the Adjective of the Day). I always prefer to go book before film, for a few different reasons – it only seems fair to privilege the literary source material, but it also offers insight into the motivations and implications of that material’s adaptation for the screen – what was lost, what is gained in the film version. However, given that this column had a deadline and my library’s copy of the novel was checked out, I put a recall request in and resigned myself to screen before book this go round. The North Water, the series, was written and directed by British filmmaker Andrew Haigh, a choice that might initially seem incongruous. Haigh is known for intimate films that focus on a single protagonist, and he uses that lead character’s perspective to tell the story. He’s been quoted as saying that “Blocking is everything…I love how people exist within space and how they manage the space around them.”1 The way he places characters in relation to each other within the scenes of The North Water reflects this, and often provides
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COLUMNS | Issue 100, May 2022
as much in the way of illumination as the dialogue (perhaps more; between the thick accents and growled enunciation, it’s tempting to turn on subtitles). While The North Water does have a primary protagonist, the work deviates from Haigh’s pattern in that it is not always from that protagonist’s perspective that the story advances, and this is really a tale with two major character foci and a large scope, completely divergent from Haigh’s typical subject matter. In the port of Hull in 1859, Irishman Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell) boards the Volunteer, taking a post as ship’s surgeon. His background is murky; through expository flashbacks, the viewer learns that Sumner has been cashiered out of his post as an army surgeon in India, where something more traumatic even than the “usual” horrors of war happened to him. The justifications he gives for a man of his education and abilities signing on to a whaleship are all convenient lies that fool no one. Sumner certainly doesn't snow the ship’s captain, Brownlee (Stephen Graham), who informs the surgeon that whalemen are “refugees from civilization," sensing that this is precisely what appeals to Sumner. Brownlee has a hidden agenda, and Sumner seeks a reckless escape, both in signing on to a whaler when he has little knowledge of the sea, and in the bottles of laudanum he keeps locked in his medicine chest. Meanwhile, harpooner Henry Drax (Colin Farrell) has also joined the ship’s complement. Before we ever see him aboard, we’re treated to a clear estimation of his character: the series opens as Drax finishes up with a prostitute in the dim streets of Hull, then heads directly for the nearest pub. After unsuccessfully trying to trade his knife and boots for a drink, another patron spots him a round to forestall the inevitable confrontation about to occur between Drax and the publican. When this benefactor refuses to buy him a second drink, Drax waits outside, stalks him through the streets until he happens upon a convenient location, then brains him with a brick in a dark alleyway before robbing him. One has the impression the robbery was just an afterthought, not the motive. While Sumner is the main protagonist and an engaging one, he's surrounded by an exemplary ensemble cast in the person of Stewart as Brownlee, First Mate Cavendish (Sam Spruell), kindly hands before the mast Otto (Roland Møller) and Jones (Kieran Urquhart), amongst others. Yet it is Drax who is foil and counterpoint to Sumner’s tormented soul (the series’ opening card is the Schopenhauer quote “For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.”). Sumner is a bit of a Hamlet – thinking, thinking, self-medicating and thinking some more, focused inward on past wounds he continues to prod. Drax, by contrast, exudes amoral, casual menace. He goes about his whaling tasks with efficient brutality. At 5 feet 10 inches, Farrell is far from hulking, yet with a little extra weight (half of which may be beard) and some significant acting chops, he seems hulking in this production. Whether it’s clubbing helpless seals or exulting in the rain of blood from a whale’s last spouting as he drives his killing lance through its heart, Drax personifies savagery. His character is all the more frightening because his motivations are so mundane. So often in fiction, the antagonist is some kind of mastermind or, at the very least, intentionally evil. A great deal of our jurisprudence is based upon this concept of intent – regardless of what the result actually was, what did one mean for the outcome of one’s actions to be? It’s why statutes favor lesser sentences for unintentional manslaughter than for premeditated murder. The end result is the same: one human being is dead due to the actions of another. But without conscious intent, the offense is considered lesser. With
