Cast: Jack O’ Connell, Colin Farrell, Sam Spruell, Stephen Graham, Tom Courtney, Peter Mullan, Roland Møller, Philip Hill-Pearson, Gerry Lynch, Kieran Urquhart, Simon Rubaudo, Greg Dennis, Magnus Constable, Guillaume Cotre-Roux, Andrés Glattfelber, Martin Rasmussen, Kristoffer Ronning, Lars Ronning, Jack Wren, Stephen McMillan, Nive Nielsen, Rishi Kuppa, Paul Brennen, Kris Hitchen, Mark Rowley, Ipeelie Ootoova, Keenan Carpenter, Lee Knight, Tony Pitts, Eliza Butterworth, Natar Ungalaaq, Jerry Laisa, Bryony Miller, Chicho Tche, David Prosho, Benjámin Takács-Abaffy, Jonathan Aris, Jamie Maclachlan.
Depending on where you were born and how your imagination was able to take shape, images of the frozen expanse surrounding the Artic and Antarctic poles were ones that were able to send a chill down the spine. The sense of loneliness, of isolation, the inherent dangers that were captured in natural history and adventure books, somehow made even more eerie and precarious if framed in black and white, all combining to make the landscape one in which both enticed and deterred the soul in equal measure.
The North Water is a place in which holds the sense of the forbidden, an expanse of water and uneven, rocky crags in which the human mind is tested, and the body is taken to its absolute limit; a place in which endurance is a prize only worth having if those you have undertaken the journey alongside are trustworthy, are as eager to survive as you.
Adapted by Andrew Haigh from Ian McGuire’s novel, The North Water is an entity, a breathing sea of fear in a time when those who made the sea their home, their love, their fortune, it becomes a cold lover full of skulduggery, of intrigue, and the place where quite likely they will meet their final and bitter end.
Mass whaling now is quite rightly seen as objectionable, but to condemn those who almost 200 years ago undertook the journey from towns such as Hull, from the Shetlands, and all over the northern hemisphere, is to then condemn the writers who brought the tales home for the public to read; by convicting in absentia the captain who understood the significance of the time he lived in, we may as well sentence and denounce Herman Melville for his portrayal of Captain Ahab and the crew of the Pequod.
Where both Andrew Haigh and Ian McGuire differ from their literary predecessors is in the objective of the catch they have in mind, for in The North Water, the sense of slaughter is highlighted, but it is to the inner confinement of the mind when faced with the cold, with death and murder, that the framing of the story takes hold. It is also a tale of insurance, of dealing with the hand you have been dealt and the urge to redress a former place of high status.
To this end the relationship between ship’s doctor Patrick Sumner and ship’s mate Henry Drax, both portrayed with honesty and endeavour by Jack O’ Connell and the superb Colin Farrell, is to be congratulated, as is the entire crew who drove themselves to extremes as they took dedication to filming to an entirely new level by taking the opportunity to sail as far north as any production company has gone in which to capture quality drama.
Whilst the ending may have felt rushed, it does not detract from just how immense the actual body of the five episodes are when seen in context of the subject matter, the dichotomy of surrendering yourself to the elements and the creatures of the deep; and in all those waters that run silent, that run cold, are the souls of our ancestors who saw the end of the world as an adventure.
Ian D. Hall