The Act of Reading

Take a good idea. Have the first 10 minutes be excellent.

Then, delve into family self-created angst, re-creations that serve no purpose but indulgent drivel, make it all about the producer, have editing done by someone with software and no ability to edit, and extended periods of goofy plays where Melville is a woman, and street gangs unable to conquer English and acting.

All-in-all, a high-school over-wrought class play pretending to be intellectual, but coming across like country-club elitists where appearance is more important that substance.

Good literature takes one out of themselves. Bad documentaries focus on navel-gazing. This is navel-gazing tripe.

Such promise, but ultimately so disappointing.

This documentary makes VERY strong choices, and I loved them. Anyone who enjoys genuinely new movie experiences or Moby Dick will enjoy this film. It's a highly cerebral journey, and I found it very thought-provoking. Expect something that is not only about Moby Dick but directly inspired by it. The subject matter (generally speaking Moby Dick, Herman Melville, reading/teaching literature, and the personal life of the documentary filmmaker Mark Blumberg) is kept light - instead of deep dives the film dances with the subjects and weaves them together like a trippy love song. Highly recommended!

Recommended for lit nerds and fans of art documentaries. The naturalistic cinematography helped it kick up a lot of feelings about the books that changed my life, the "white whales" of my personal reading history, and high school English class (natch). I was left with a lot of reflective appreciation for my literary journey... and hopefully you will feel the same way too. My pick for standout subjects featured in this documentary: Peter Whittemore, the great-great-grandson of Herman Melville, who possesses a zen-like perspective on both his family's legacy and the meaning of life; and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, a theatre-director with a hell-or-high-water determination to stage his modern twist on the nautical epic.