Dec

30

Master and Commander

Filed Under Books and Culture 

I saw Master and Commander this past weekend, and although I enjoyed watching it, I must say I was a little disappointed. James Bowman gave it two stars and Terry Teachout sang its praises in National Review [subscription required] but it just left me a little flat.

The battle scenes are quite thrilling and the movie seems to perfectly capture what life must have been like on ship but the plot seemed a thin to me. I just couldn’t get caught up in the drama. I found the relationship between Dr. Maturin and Captain Aubrey tiresome at times and was particularly annoyed with the Doctors time scurrying around the Galapagos Islands like some sort of Darwin precursor.

A partial explanation can be found in the fact that I am not really a visual person but rather an intellectual or verbal person. Notice how Teachout describes his experience:

Two hours and twenty minutes later, I didn’t have any images left in my head. They’d been replaced by the infinitely more vivid ones created by Weir and his resourceful collaborators. The narrow decks and low ceilings of H.M.S. Surprise, the Dantean clamor of a naval battle, the stomach-clutching sight of weevils crawling out of a piece of ship’s biscuit ? all these things look and sound so right in Master and Commander that it becomes impossible to envision them any other way. What’s more, Russell Crowe, who plays Aubrey, is as good as he (or anyone else) could possibly be. From now on, I’ll see him in my mind’s eye whenever I read O’Brian.

For him the movie was about vision. For me movies are usually about either interesting ideas or about plot. For Bowman the visual is the key as well:

But while the film sticks to what it does best, which is its recreation of the naval warfare of two hundred years past, it is well-worth seeing. Visually it is a real treat, and considerable care has obviously been taken to get the period detail right, with special attention to the rough-and-ready nature of surgery at sea in 1805 and the effects of canister and chain-shot on the delicate tracery of woodwork and sail and rigging that made the gorgeous square-rigged vessels of the period go. In fact, the beauty of the ships serves as a kind of visual analogue for that of the community on behalf of which these men are fighting. “This ship is England,” says Aubrey, and it is perhaps easier to believe that civilization can take precedence over the lives of individual soldiers or sailors, and make it fitting and proper for them to risk them on its behalf, when the embodiment of civilization is a triumph of human artistry and ingenuity such as this.

I found the ideas, while recognizable and valuable, were not enough. I enjoyed the acting and the beauty and craftsmanship of the film but felt restless without a compelling plot or idea to pull me forward.

I find this happens to me quite often. I can appreciate the quality of many of the disparate parts of a film but find myself disappointed in the film as a whole. Usually this is because the central theme or idea in a film turns me off (I found Mystic River disgusting for this very reason). In this case I just wasn’t moved by the story. I didn’t feel like I had something at stake. I guess this is probably why I am a book person rather than a movie buff.

Comments

2 Responses to “Master and Commander”

  1. baa on December 30th, 2003 11:45 am

    I had the exact same response as you did. James Bowman certainly is a cipher, isn’t he?

    Spurred by the movie, however, I read the book. It is fabulous, as are the other 6-odd Aubrey/Maturin novels I’ve devoured in the subsequent month. Highly recommended…

  2. mark butterworth on December 30th, 2003 2:27 pm

    That’s funny. I loved the movie, intensely dislike the O’Brien novels. (Novel. I only tried one, and didn’t care for it at all.)

    I have a few quibbles with the film, but not enough to dismiss it.

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