Hot summer days, steamy heat.
In this endless August, Xiaobian found a divine drama suitable for "cooling off the heat".
In the play, huge waves of ice floes, storms and snow, and long cold nights are coming at you.
And what makes people's backs chill the most is actually the dark humanity that hides the brutal blood under the vast snowy area.
Xiaobian invites everyone to go deep into this vast and extremely cold realm - "North Sea Whale Dream".
The play is based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Ian McGuire.
The plot of the novel is interlocking and moving.
It was named to the New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year and the Guardian's Book of the Year.
It is known as "comparable to "Moby Dick", "Heart of Darkness", and "The Fantasy Drift of the Young Pi". ”
In 2016, BBC Two and AMC TV noticed the potential for a film adaptation of "Whale Dream of the North Sea" and decided to develop it.
After 3 years, Colin Farrell (Sniper Phone Booth, Ask Dust) announced his joining.
Jack O'Connell ("Skin Bag") then joins, and the two protagonists are finalized.
And director Andrew Hagrid also belongs to the film festival director.
His work "HorsePit" has been shortlisted for the Golden Lion and the Golden Bear.
Poetic and delicate, he excels at capturing moments of daily life that have a sense of power.
The whole drama is divided into 3 episodes and 1 hour + 1 episode of 90 minutes, which is the most suitable for such a director to control and play.
Delicate is not pale and dry, and moments of power can also be set in a narrative rhythm.
But before the story begins, we have to talk about the social background of the story.
In Europe and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, whaling was the supporting existence of the whole society.
Whales can survive in extremely cold areas, relying on fat bodies.
Whale fat was used in a wide range of ways at the time, from small baleen to whale bones, and there was almost no waste on whales.
Not only can it be used to make candles for lighting, but it can also be used to craft explosives.
From the 18th century to the early 19th century, humans hunted whales wildly.
Around 1850, whaling became the fifth-largest industry in the United States.
This also caused a sharp decline in whale populations in the mid-to-late 19th century, prompting people to find new fuels.
At the end of the 19th century, whale fat and oil alternated between old and new, and the whaling industry rapidly declined.
Due to overfishing, whale populations have plummeted, and whaling vessels can only find whale tracks by going north deep into Arctic waters.
At the same time, steamships powered by steam engines became popular, and traditional whaling ships were on the verge of obsolescence.
The story of "North Sea Whale Dream" takes place on a whaling ship volunteer ship that sails to the extremely cold and bitter land.
The year was 1859.
The story's male protagonist, Patrick Sumner (Jack O'Connell), is a shipwreck doctor.
Responsible for the physical and mental health of all crew members.
He was a former military doctor who fought in the British colonial war in India.
With a bloodstained past and unforgettable memories,
Not only was he lame on one leg, but he was also addicted to opium tincture.
Fortunately, his uncle left him an inheritance and a farm.
But it will take a year and a half to get the money.
In order to make a living, he chose to go on an adventure with the volunteer number...
However, what he did not expect was that this time going out to sea to hunt whaling was a death journey with no return.
Every nautical mile forward, one step closer to hell...
Each of the people on board was pregnant with a ghost fetus, calculating to use the corpses of others to make a fortune.
Captain Brownley, exquisitely self-interested and calculating.
On the surface, it is advertised to go to sea to hunt whales, but in fact it is ready to create a shipwreck accident,
The more the crew dies, the more he earns.
Because he bought insurance in advance, the crew had an accident, and he made a steady profit.
Harpooner Dex (Colin Farrell), a hot-tempered man.
As long as it was a whaling, he always rushed to poke the whale's heart with a harpoon.
Because that pillar of blood was the source of his orgasm...
His beard was always dirty, and his eyes always shone with a sick glow.
Because of the total debt of drinking, the bartender refused to give him wine.
A passerby kindly invited him to drink, and he drank a cup was not enough, and he wanted another drink.
Passers-by ignored him, and Dex held a grudge.
Kill people in the alleys and get rich, flee back to the ship and go to sea the next day, disappearing.
There is no moral bottom line at all.
Everyone on this ship has secrets.
Fish on deck, conspire under deck, and wait for the right moment.
However, a rape and murder case hastened the timing -
During one visit, the doctor was surprised to find out.
A thin boat boy was assaulted and contracted a venereal disease.
Under layers of interrogation, the boat boy was strangled to death before he could say who did it.
In order to quell the rumors on the ship, the captain pretended to start an investigation and identified the suspect.
But before the investigation could be cleared, the captain died unexpectedly.
The Volunteer sank, and the crew drifted around for a treacherous journey of extreme cold.
What's worse, the murderous murderer was right next to them.
It could kill again at any time...
The surviving crew and the killer live together in the cold ice fields of no one.
Hunger and cold, despair, the loss of civilization, and the rise of barbarism.
The game between the crew and the murderer really begins...
As for the ending of the story? Xiaobian will not have many spoilers here~
This is a very "hardcore" adaptation, and the current Douban rating is 8.5.
There are five episodes in total, and each episode is about an hour.
The plot not only has ups and downs, but also has a very large scale.
Especially the hunting scene at the beginning, it is easy to cause physical discomfort.
Although there are not many violent and bloody scenes, its dissection of human nature is bottomless.....
The whaling ship is a small society that is completely enclosed.
The crew came to the ship with murders or secrets, with little legal constraint.
Because of living on a boat for a long time, life is monotonous and boring, and it is in a closed environment.
The crew is prone to agitation and impulsiveness.
The ship has been drifting on the high seas for a long time, and the farther away it is from civilized society, the more it lacks legal and moral constraints.
Storms and snow, long cold nights are coming, and in this lawless land of good and evil, anything can happen.
What makes people's backs chill the most is that the dark humanity that is covered up in the vast snow is about to be completely released and swallow everything.
"North Sea Whale Dream" has a good look and feel, and it is particularly cool, and it is recommended that everyone catch up.