Mark Blumberg failed 11th grade English when he neglected to report on Moby-Dick. The Act of Reading weaves together his journey with Melville’s book as an adult and the interpersonal conflicts that shape his life

What is The Act of Reading? A documentary, sure. A meta-hybrid? Kind of. Does it matter? Not really. None of it significantly orients the viewer. Much like the personal journey one takes in the undertaking of Herman Melville’s 1851 tome Moby-Dick, it’s up to us, the viewers, to navigate our own meaning from within this expansive film.

But first, how might I chart the film’s journey? Mark Blumberg failed his 11th grade English class when he neglected to read and report on Moby-Dick. As an adult, Mark has found his way to the novel, which has had an unexpectedly significant impact on his life. He finds his 11th grade teacher, Janet Werner, and sets out to complete the book report in the form of the very film we are watching, The Act of Reading. Through a series of parallel odysseys, Mark’s journey of discovery traces Melville’s descendents, a Moby-Dick reading marathon, a meta-play based on Melville’s life, a Rhode Island theatre group, interviews with family, an Austin high school English class, a reading expert, an English professor, and a philosophy professor. He even turns the camera on his own marriage, buckling at the seams under the weight of this creative and analytical endeavor. If it seems like a dizzying tangle of narrative paths, it is. But as you’ll learn throughout the film — much like reading Moby-Dick — finding one’s way through life is a singular endeavor, a journey shaped by the paths we choose to take.

Viewers and critics will likely compare the film to the autobiographical documentaries of filmmakers such as Ross McElwee. Sure. Fine. But Blumberg’s film isn’t Sherman’s March. McElwee’s film has the immediacy of a distracted work in progress, bobbling on the current of his desire and anxiety. Blumberg’s film shares the impetus — a meandering hunt for an unknown object, a fundamentally inconsummate desire — but there is a parallel structure animating the film. The strands of exploration stem not from an anxious libido but instead from an analytical mind seeking connection and an understanding of the ineffable, if it’s at all possible. In this sense, Blumberg begins his journey in the form of an encapsulating report but in the end is guided to the understanding that encapsulation might in fact suffocate the possibility of meaning, the essence of which cannot be given but, rather, formed through experience.

We learn early on in the film’s prologue that we can’t take too much for granted. The film opens with a lecture by teacher Vicki Hebert to her high school English class. Her speech functions more like a pep talk for both her students and us, the audience. The students are set to embark upon the 625-page Moby-Dick, just as we, the audience, settle in for an 87-minute documentary. We all know how documentaries work, right? Cold open — we orient ourselves around a person or theme; the theme or thesis is formed for us in some way — BOOM: title of the film. But right off, as Hebert gives her talk, the film cuts to a student’s reaction then back to Hebert, who is suddenly and inexplicably wearing Polynesian, Māori-like face tattoos, speaking to the class without missing a beat. Is this a different day? A different class? What the hell is happening? Now we find ourselves wondering: Is this an absurdist narrative in the form of a documentary? Or, did Hebert apply the face paint in order to inspire and provoke her students? She emphasizes that we are fated; everything has always happened this way; you can’t change it. And, as a call to literary arms, “No matter when we pick up this book, Ishmael is always about to go to sea. And so are we.” BOOM: title of the film.

As we follow Blumberg’s stream of analytical consciousness through the winding paths of inquiry, we land upon some key insights that seem to guide us in new directions. Leading up to the film’s halfway point, we get the sense that Mark deftly charts the path of both his life and the film’s intellectual pursuits; however, for all his lofty intellectual and creative rigor, Blumberg can’t escape the meaningful, interpersonal confrontations that serve to shape the course of his own life. When he takes his wife, Alissa, to Monument Mountain in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, his intention is to visit the very place where Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville had also once picnicked, where Hawthorne encouraged Melville to take his novel in new and great directions. But shortly into the picnic, Alissa reveals that she has taken her last birth control pill. We immediately sense that this is a subject they’ve discussed many times before. 

A bit before this scene, we see Alissa navigating her own journey, speaking to cinematographer Caleb Kuntz about how she’s come to acknowledge that she can’t regret all the lives she won’t have forever. She understands that while having a child does put a wrench in her plans, she needs to let go of those plans, because they are merely opportunities. She sees having a child as a way of letting go of those outdated ambitions. 

We don’t get the indication that Mark has gone through as much inner work as Alissa in exploring these ideas and accepting the sacrifices required to form a family. We get the sense that, for Mark, the thought of starting a family may get in the way of his creative, cinematic pursuits. “Can’t we just be a couple?” he asks her. Receding into himself, Mark calls the making of a child the path of least resistance. He positions his filmic pursuit as a worthier cause, one fraught with conflict, but a defining journey into the heart of darkness and a consummation with his creative idols. Alissa breaks down, calling him out. We cut to a scene from the filmed play Poor Herman between the female Herman, played by Elizabeth Doss — Melville descendent, playwright, and Alissa’s yoga instructor — and Hawthorne, played by Mark. It’s a scene where Lizzie Melville, played by Alissa, watches from the shadows as Melville and Hawthorne immerse themselves in an almost romantic frenzy over the paths of Melville’s literary pursuits. The cut to the play is short, but it deftly grounds us into a multi-layered conflict at the heart of Melville’s writing, Mark’s film, Alissa’s life, and the film itself. It’s a dense, rewarding moment that is handled with ease and care. The scene ends with quiet flourish. As Mark and Alissa make up, kissing in the forest, Alissa points out the missing button on Mark’s jacket. Mark points out that the chipmunks just off the path are mating.

Throughout the film, we periodically visit with Maryanne Wolf, a reading expert at Stanford University. Documentaries love appealing to experts, usually as a way to make key arguments. The Act of Reading is no different, but the appeals by Wolf dovetail beautifully into the practical, inspired approach Hebert takes with her high school class. One particular event tends to occur just after the point of no return in the semester. The class starts reading Moby-Dick, works through the novel, and at some point the wearied students mutiny. Hebert is accustomed to the moment. Grievances are aired, and eventually Hebert has to forcefully take back the class. In order to ground us, and the class, the film appeals to Wolf, who explains that something happens when we read: We drift out of our own consciousness through the act of reading; we develop a capacity to leave ourselves. This carries over to Hebert, who further elucidates that reading is an intimate act, the closest we can get to sharing another mind. When you read Moby-Dick, you’re sharing Melville’s mind. 

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In the final part of the film, many of the swirling threads, like tree branches, begin to bear fruit. Here, in what I feel is The Act of Reading’s most insightful thread, Maryanne Wolf is able to position the anxiety in Socrates’ time, around the transition from an oral to a literary tradition, as a mirror to our current age of transition from a literary culture to a digital one. We see a scene from Plato’s Phaedrus, with John Cleary, a philosophy and English professor, playing Socrates alongside Blumberg, who inhabits Phaedrus, each clothed in robes, encircled by trees. Socrates saw words as living things. Words on the page could not talk back. He tells of Thoth, the Egyptian god who brought words to Thamos, King of Egypt, played by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, a Rhode Island theatre director seen earlier in the film. Socrates argues that Thoth brought only the appearance of truth and not truth itself. Wolf explains that it was considered a recipe for forgetting, not for learning. We share the same concerns today around such delusions of knowledge, as our culture continues its digital transition. What place does Moby-Dick and the experience it provokes have in our transitioning society, especially when high school students liken the experience to over-dipping chicken nuggets in a vat of sauce? 

The film is brought full circle when Janet and Mark visit the old classroom where Mark failed his 11th grade literature course. Janet is open, caring, sweet, and vulnerable with Mark as she discusses her retirement from teaching. She says she liked to think she was becoming a better teacher with each passing year. She was also becoming more knowledgeable about what makes people tick. Mark revisits the moment he tried to turn in a last-minute assignment at the end of the semester. Janet had told him it was “too little too late.” She’s ashamed to hear she’d said this to him 15 years prior. She clarifies that she wasn’t mad with him, just disheartened. She apologizes for phrasing it that way. She tells Mark that there are times in life when it is too late to do something. At some point you just have to say, “That’s it.” This sentiment echoes Alissa’s tearful realizations with Caleb earlier, about letting go of old plans and about how having a child is a way of letting go. It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise where things eventually go next for Mark and Alissa.

The Act of Reading, like Moby-Dick, may be seen as a dense cinematic tome exploring a wide array of disparate paths. But each viewer — like each reader — takes their own journey through the text. While the film is ostensibly about Mark’s journey, it encompasses so much more. Mark may be our Ahab. The subjects may be our Ishmael. But the film rewards deep exploration, an openness to connection and experience, and a willingness to engage. It’s also really funny. I could attempt to tell you tangibly what the film is about, but that would artificially shape your experience, so I’ll leave you to it.

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