‘Call me Ishmael’ gets a new meaning in a silent version of Moby Dick - Sydney Morning Herald

A screening by Sydney Harbour, with so much nautical history, is a fitting place for a new version of Moby Dick from acclaimed American performance artist and filmmaker Wu Tsang.

The recipient of a MacArthur Fellows "genius grant" in 2018, Tsang has directed a mostly silent adaptation of Herman Melville's classic American novel that will have its Australian premiere, presented by the Art Gallery of NSW, with live accompaniment by Sydney Symphony Orchestra this Friday.

The elusive white whale in Wu Tsang's Moby Dick.Credit:Design Pics Inc / Alamy

"I'm super thrilled, especially being able to show the film so close to the water," Tsang says via Zoom from Zurich. "I've never had the opportunity to do that before and it feels like a really exciting way to connect the film with the environment for the audience."

The film reframes Moby Dick as a queer story, with the famous opening line "Call me Ishmael" what the novel's narrator says as lover Queequeg leaves his bed to dress.

"Melville's telling of the story to me is very queer," Tsang says. "There's this one chapter that's called A Squeeze of the Hand that was the inspiration for the whole project.

"Essentially, it's this scene where the men are on the deck and they're massaging the whale blubber to break it down to be rendered into oil. It's just such an erotic scene, and it's really about the losing of oneself in the physicality of matter and each other.

"That passage was so queer to me."

Wu Tsang's Moby Dick is bold programming by the OpenAir cinema at Mrs Macquarie's Point – an art film screening on January 27, the night after Elvis and the night before Avatar: The Way of Water.

"I wasn't aware that that was the line-up, but that's amazing," Tsang says. "I love having a conversation with cinema language and Moby Dick does work as a feature film format as well as being an art piece."

The film was inspired by a talk given by a friend on a post-colonial interpretation of Moby Dick. Tsang read the novel for the first time, loved it and realised it had "so many layers" that allowed the trans artist to tell a story that suited her interest in marginalised characters.

A new take on "Call me Ishmael" ... Thomas Wodianka in Wu Tsang's Moby Dick.Credit:Screen grab

"What's amazing about the book – and what I really fell in love with – is it's such a universe," she says. "There are actually so many heroes in the story and so many ways to understand the interpretations that Melville created. You can tell the story you want to tell with it. And many, many people have."

The film, which debuted in Zurich and has screened around Europe with live accompaniment, was shot on a sound stage in a digital environment using projected images behind the actors.

Wu Tsang's Moby Dick is performed by Zurich Chamber Orchestra in Zurich.Credit:Diana Pfammatter

"The storytelling is very surreal, because Melville's novel is so surreal," Tsang says. "In a way, there's this perversity to me about doing a silent adaptation of Moby Dick because it's so much about the language – 'how could you take the language away?'.

"But yet, somehow in doing so, you create this gap between the book and the movie which you can fill in for yourself as the viewer."

"Melville's telling of the story to me is very queer": Wu Tsang.Credit:Blommers/Schumm

While the director of the OpenAir cinema, Rob Bryant, has turned down art films in the past, the appeal of Wu Tsang's Moby Dick was teaming up with the gallery during Sydney Modern's opening festivities and the SSO's accompaniment.

"It's always great fun to make our event part of the development of different paths in film," he says. "I felt with this it was going to be such a beautiful experience with the Sydney Symphony and having a film on this subject matter on Sydney Harbour is a great context to watch the film."

Ishmael (Thomas Wodianka) and Queequeg (Tosh Basco) in Wu Tsang's Moby Dick. Credit:Screen grab

Moby Dick screens at OpenAir cinema on January 27.

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Email Garry Maddox at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.

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