Describing the "great, democratic vision" of Moby Dick as an epic "picture of working class life in America," the high school English teacher also describes the sweeping scope of Frederick Wiseman's work to date. Serenely composed of the illuminating routines and intimate minutiae of various cultures and institutions within the coastal New England town, the distinctly reflexive film evokes several of his previous films while recalling the placement of itself within his growing mosaic. Numerous scenes of social service intakes point to his catalogue's nuts-and-bolts sociological aspect as they retrace familiar themes: the individual dependent on greater systems and the human wilderness lurking beneath the statistics. Meanwhile, the quaint particulars of Maine's hunting, logging, and fishing cultures surface both within and apart from more ubiquitous American spaces of home, factory, church, office, classroom, courtroom, and laundromat. The residents' persistence, patience and faith is on par with Wiseman and his ongoing, extraordinary chronicle—one in which the tragic hero may simply be "a commercial fisherman from Nantucket." – BG