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Master and
Commander: The Far Side of the World
Release Date: November 14,
2003
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Peter Weir
Screenwriter: Peter Weir, John Collee
Starring: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Billy Boyd, James D'Arcy, Lee
Ingleby, George Innes, Mark Lewis Jones, Chris Larkin, Richard McCabe, Robert
Pugh, David Threlfall
Genre: Action
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense battle sequences, related images and brief
language)
Official Website: MasterandCommandermovie.com
Plot Summary: Based on the
best-selling novels of Patrick O'Brian, the film stars Russell Crowe as
"Lucky" Jack Aubrey, who pits his crew of the H.M.S. Surprise against
a much better armed and ruthless privateer, in a chase that takes him all the
way to the far side of the world. Rising newcomer Paul Bettany ("A
Beautiful Mind") plays the ship's surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin.
Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2004
- Words escape me ... ecstasy
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a
rare example of its kind, a seafaring epic that has not seen the light of cinema
for years. Battleships raging war on the high seas is hardly heard of at the
movies recently, that’s if you discount World War II submarine films like Below
and U-571, and cold war drama K-19: Widowmaker. Director Peter
Weir’s film is a pearl of great price.
The scope of filming the cat and mouse tussle between a
British vessel, the HMS Surprise, and the superior made French Acheron during
the end of the Napoleonic wars is ambitious and awe-inspiring, and is
beautifully handled in a sumptuously well-made recreation of that sea-based
struggle based on the narrative outline of tenth book by Patrick O’Brian about
the British navy during those wars.
The logistics of filming scenes while on large boats with
hefty storms raging could be nightmarish for the crew, and probably was, but the
effect is a professional document combining an exquisite look with effective and
bloody battle sequences.
This is more than just a retelling of a war on the seas,
however. Layered with intellectual and cerebral touches, the centrepiece of the
cast is Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), a fascinating
portrait of a man obsessed with the pursuit of the French ship, a man seemingly
adrift with the help of God without having deserved it.
We see in him the war in the soul of a man that cannot be
stopped and the blinding pride in country that denies the possibility that he is
acting out of personal pride. He says he fights for passion of nation, but is
challenged by his good friend and ship’s doctor, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany,
from A Beautiful Mind) over his ego – he’s trying to out manoeuvre
and out tactic the French captain of the boat that almost sunk his ship at the
expense of human life, and the threat of the HMS Surprise. The result is
sometimes amusing, but the pretence has an underlying seriousness. Crowe brings
this well-written character alive superbly well in one of the more strong
characterisations of the last year.
We know that the doctor, Stephen Maturin, is a naturalist,
but the deepest we know of him is that he is philosophically an idealist, acting
as a kind of conscience to Aubrey’s inflated confidence in various in-depth
conversations, where their differing philosophies conflict. Bettany is
deliberate and forced in style, but he doesn’t work as a character on a deeper
level, the only revelation we have of him is towards the end when he is found
compromised, which reveals more about the influence of Aubrey. In spite of the
idealism of Maturin the film climaxes with an inevitable and realistic shatter,
the result is magnificent and moving.
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