Plot
The film starts off with a scene from the novel Moby Dick , with a whaler on a stormy sea in the 19th century, chasing "the white whale". It turns out that the scene comes from the imagination of Dot, while she is sitting with the book. She goes out to play with Nelson the dolphin in his pool, and he teaches her how to stay underwater for long periods of time and to communicate underwater, as well as the history and evolution of sea creatures.
While they play together, Nelson hears the wail of a beached whale named Tonga from the local coast, and jumps out of his pool, over the cliff beside, and dives into the ocean on the other side, to check what is going on, with Dot coming along. Dot walks up on land to talk with Tonga, but becomes upset as two boys, Alex and Owen, stand and throw sand on the whale. The boys say that they only want to push the whale back to the sea. Together, they try to push Tonga back to the water, but fail. They decide to gather as many kids as possible, in order to help the whale as much as they can.
While Alex and Owen start to gather help, Dot sits beside Tonga, trying to converse. Tonga explains that her family has been killed by whalers, and she is the only survivor, but has lost the will to live. Dot explains that she and others want to help Tonga, and tries to by having Tonga placed in the same pool as Nelson to let her recover. Dot then realizes that they do not have a transport facility for a whale. Meanwhile, a crooked fishmonger becomes interested in Tonga as a possible "fish" source.
As Dot wonders what she should do, Nelson tells her about Moby Dick the sperm whale (whom he explains actually existed, and is not just a fictional figure), and suggests Dot ask him if he could convince Tonga to return to the sea. Nelson believes that Tonga would obey Moby Dick, as he is a very wise old whale with great influence in the sea. Dot accepts, and they starts their journey to Antarctica, where Moby Dick sometimes sleeps. After a long adventure, Dot and Nelson reach Antarctica and meet the aged and wrinkly whale, but Moby Dick will not ask Tonga to return to the sea. He believes that if Tonga wishes to die, they should let her do so, instead of returning her to the sea and perhaps end up as another victim to whalers. However, due to the kindness of the town's children, Tonga has renewed her desire to stay alive.
Dot returns from the sea and makes up a new plan with Alex and Owen in order to save Tonga, and let her share the pool with Nelson. They start to phone different transportation companies, to see if they could help them to move a whale, but with poor results. As they finally find a company which can help them (in return for a big sum of money), they face the problem of lacking payment. They start a campaign to fund raise, in order to save the whale.
However, the fishmonger decides to steal the collected gain. He succeeds, but is stopped thanks to the boss of the transport company. The following day, Tonga moves to her new home. In a short epilogue, it is explained that Tonga's health improved so much, that she eventually returned to the sea.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Thomas Gibson Nickerson was an American sailor and author. In 1819, when he was fourteen years old, Nickerson served as cabin boy on the whaleship Essex. On this voyage, the ship was sunk by a whale, and the crew spent three months at sea before the survivors were rescued. In 1876 he wrote The Loss of the Ship "Essex", an account of the ordeal and of his subsequent experiences at sea. The manuscript was lost until 1960, and was first published in 1984.
Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.
Paul Spong is a New Zealand-born Canadian cetologist and neuroscientist. He has been researching orcas in British Columbia since 1967, and is credited with increasing public awareness of whaling, through his involvement with Greenpeace.
Down to the Sea in Ships is a 1922 American silent romantic drama film about a 19th-century Massachusetts whaling family. Directed by Elmer Clifton, the film stars William Walcott, Marguerite Courtot, and Clara Bow. The film's title comes from Psalm 107, verses 23–24.
Owen Chase was first mate of the whaler Essex, which sank in the Pacific Ocean on November 20, 1820, after being rammed by a sperm whale. Soon after his return to Nantucket, Chase wrote an account of the shipwreck and the attempts of the crew to reach land in small boats. The book, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, was published in 1821 and would inspire Herman Melville to write Moby-Dick.
Moby Dick is a 1956 American color adventure film directed and produced by John Huston, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ray Bradbury. A film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the film stars Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Leo Genn and follows the exploits of Captain Ahab in pursuing and killing a gigantic sperm whale with whom he has a personal vendetta.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick about the loss of the whaler Essex in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The book was published by Viking Press on May 8, 2000, and won the 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction. It was adapted into a film of the same name, which was released in December 2015.
Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville that describes the voyage of the whaleship Pequod, led by Captain Ahab, who leads his crew on a hunt for the whale Moby Dick. There have been a number of adaptations of Moby-Dick in various media.
The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore, Dolores Costello and George O'Hara. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926 becoming Warner Brothers' highest grossing film. The Sea Beast is the first adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel. The film was so successful that in 1930 Warner Bros redid it in English and German, under the title Moby Dick, with Joan Bennett taking the role of Ahab's love because Dolores Costello was pregnant at the time.
Moby Dick is a 1930 American pre-Code film from Warner Bros., directed by Lloyd Bacon, and starring John Barrymore, Joan Bennett and Walter Lang. The film is a sound remake of the 1926 silent movie, The Sea Beast, which also starred Barrymore. It is the first film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick that includes a soundtrack.
Samson & Sally is a 1984 Danish-Swedish animated fantasy drama film, directed by Jannik Hastrup and based on the novel The Song of the Whales by Danish author Bent Haller.
Moby Dick is a 2010 American science fiction thriller film that is an adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. The film is an Asylum production, and stars Barry Bostwick as Captain Ahab. It also stars Renee O'Connor, Michael B. Teh, and Adam Grimes and is directed by Trey Stokes.
Moby Dick is a 1998 American television miniseries directed by Franc Roddam, written by Roddam, Anton Diether, and Benedict Fitzgerald, and executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on Herman Melville's 1851 novel of the same name. It was filmed in Australia in 1997 and first released in the United States in 1998. The miniseries consisted of two episodes, each running two hours with commercials on March 15 and 16 of 1998 on the USA Network. This is Gregory Peck's final on-screen role.
The Whale is a British television film that was first broadcast on BBC One on 22 December 2013. Terry Cafolla wrote the film about the Essex incident in 1820, which also formed the basis of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. The Whale was also broadcast on Animal Planet in the United States during the summer of 2014.
Dot and Keeto is a 1986 Australian animated film.
Moby Dick is a fictional white sperm whale and the primary antagonist in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Melville based the whale on an albino whale of that period, Mocha Dick.
George Pollard Jr. was the captain of the whalers Essex and Two Brothers, both of which sank. Pollard's life, including his encounter with the sperm whale that sank Essex, served as inspiration for Captain Ahab, the whale-obsessed character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
Gam is a nautical term to describe one whaling ship paying a social visit to another at sea. The term was first used to describe a school of whales, and whalemen may have taken its meaning from that source.
