A Big Fish Story

Rating: 9/10 (10 April 2019)

There's a section in Hemingway's book, Islands in the Stream, where the main character takes the two young sons of one of his friends deep-sea fishing in the Gulf Stream. The older boy hooks a marlin. Hemingway then spends about thirty-five pages describing this battle of wills between the titanic fish and the crew of the boat, describing the angle of the line, the actions of the main character, the younger brother, the skipper, the fatigue of the older brother, and of course the fish. Lots of the passage is reminiscent of The Old Man and the Sea, a book which Jaws is frequently compared to (along with Moby-Dick), but Islands in the Stream is perhaps the better example.
Jaws is all about the shark. It's a movie that can really be divided into two parts. In the first section the shark attacks, there are some bodies, the annoying mayor, and a lot of kerfuffle on Amity Island. I was actually surprised how quickly the movie's passed through it. Then the second section comes, when the characters take to the sea in the Orca, and everything seems to slow down. Like the movie just made a hurried speech and now was taking a deep breath. The second section is where Jaws really cements itself as a classic because, like Islands in the Stream, it's about one thing: catching the fish. Everything from the first act fades into the background; it was all pretext anyway. It's an adventure. I never want to take my eyes off the screen, I just loved every minute of it.