Sea Cruise: Stories from the Open Ocean

This course brings together films spanning nine decades, from golden-age classics to contemporary dramas, united by the ocean’s multifaceted nature as a place of adventure, isolation, peril, and a fragile peace
Our scheduled voyage includes the classic naval drama Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). We’ll learn about the relationship between a filmmaker and a wild octopus in the documentary My Octopus Teacher, confront primal fear with Jaws, learn about Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 Antarctica cruise that stranded the crew for almost two years in The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (2000) which includes original film footage, handle psychological suspense with Dead Calm, and consider rich cultural traditions in Whale Rider, the final film in the course.

Course members will select additional films to watch from among: Hitchcock's survival drama Lifeboat (featuring one of Hitchcock's iconic cameos in the titular lifeboat located somewhere on the ocean), the submarine classic Das Boot, the Cold War submarine adventure The Hunt for Red October, the seafaring epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the solitary struggle of All Is Lost, and two quite different films dealing with Somali piracy: the tense modern thriller from Denmark A Hijacking and a more typical Hollywood picture based on the real-life crisis in Captain Phillips.