Ship of Fools
Job description: It's a recipe as old as literature, let alone cinema. Assemble a cast of oddly engaging characters, put them on a boat, then let the water-borne adventures begin. For directors, it's a kind of freeze-dried instant film formula. Take one ship of fools ... and add water.
Recently seen in: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's arthouse Invisible Wave. OK, the title is referring to waves of guilt and remorse for hitman chef Kyoji (Tadanobu Asano, right), but there's also plenty of waterborne weirdness as Kyoji boards a cruise ship to Phuket after bedding, then killing his boss' wife in Macau. Cinema-tographer Christopher Doyle does a by-the-numbers impression of his best work as the ship ploughs on interminably and kind-of- bad, almost-funny things keep happening to Kyoji. Think Barton Fink, set adrift, and stripped of the Coen Brothers' wit.
Also recently seen in: Poseidon - a wet remake of The Poseidon Adventure by Wolfgang Petersen. His submarine thriller, Das Boot, was gripping stuff, but Poseidon is so light on plot and character that you end up caring little whether any of the passengers on the capsized cruise-liner make it out or not. His 'contemporary characters' include Richard Dreyfuss as a gay architect, a confused-looking Kurt Russell as an ex-mayor of New York and, instead of portly, old Shelley Winters, the female leads are wet-shirt-friendly Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum and Mia Maestro. Even the big wave looks cheesy.
Most likely to say: 'Water, water, everywhere, and not a plot, to think!'
Classics of the genre: The original The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is a cracker, and has resided in the memory as a kind of 70s disaster film polar opposite to the equally excellent The Towering Inferno. The cast includes Gene Hackman as a pushy priest, Ernest Borgnine as a gruff cop, Stella Stevens as a former prostitute, Roddy McDowall as a waiter, and Winters as a fussbudget wife. We learn enough about the characters to care, before most meet a soggy and often downright nasty doom.
One should probably mention Titanic, and one should definitely mention Stanley Kramer's Ship of Fools (1965), which almost got 'ultimate avatar' status on name alone. This Grand Hotel-on-water featured an eclectic medley of characters on a cruise liner from Mexico to Germany, including Vivien Leigh as a not-so-gay American divorcee, Jose Ferrer as a Jew-baiting German businessman, Simone Signoret as a mysterious countess, Lee Marvin as a Texas baseball player, and European star Oskar Werner as the weltschmertz-drenched ship's doctor who anchors the whole thing.
Ultimate avatar: When it comes to a true ship of fools, led by a madman, plunging inexorably to its doom, there's simply no beating Moby Dick (1956). One of the greatest books ever written, Herman Melville's masterpiece is brought to vivid life by John Huston, with Gregory Peck in fine, fierce form as the monomaniacal monoped Captain Ahab, who will stop at nothing to hunt and kill the White Whale.
Other notable eccentrics aboard include Friedrich Ledebur as cannibal harpooner Queequeg, Seamus Kelly as Flask, Leo Genn as Starbuck, and Harry Andrews as Stubb, along with a cameo by Orson Welles as Father Mapple, who delivers a portentous sermon before the ship puts to sea. Huston captures much of the transcendent mysticism and madness of life on the briny that courses through the book.
Not to be confused with: Waterworld (lots of water and fools, no ships), The Battleship Potemkin (lots of water and ships, no fools).
