As a fan of O'Brian the movie represents the best opportunity to experience the books in a audio/visual medium. The movie is art, as far as I understand art. The special effects are not the main character, the character's are.
As much as I want to love it, Master and Commander falls far short of the source material. I look at the movie as a pilot to the book series, or an introduction which should have been followed up with several more movies, or
a serious production of 30 or 40 television episodes. As a stand alone attempt to interpret the O'Brian characters, the movie does the best it can.
The areas the film falls short, in my estimation, are these:
1. The style of speech
2. The relationship between Aubrey and Maturin
3. The brutality of the Royal Navy
4. The usual overemphasis of early 19th century warfare
1. Part of the charm of O'Brian is the formality of language, missing from the movie. Movie Aubrey misuses nautical terms, and modern speech creeps in with many words and phrases not in use in 1805. The movie does not show the divide between Captain and Seamen; Seamen did not address Captains, unless addressed first.
2. Maturin was not an anarchist, and was never accused of such in the books, as he is in the movie. Without reading the books first, the relationship in the movie is difficult to fathom. At this point in the books, their friendship is mature, and they understand each other well. Their major conflict was over a woman, but that was long over. Maturin long ago accepted the limits on his desire to explore. I understand the problem of trying to compress their relationship within the timeframe allowed, but to misinterpret the relationship shows a lack of understanding.
3. The Royal Navy of 1805 was brutal, and savage by today's standards, none of which was shown. Men were beaten often, and any Seaman could be "started", meaning struck with canes, ropes, or sticks, by any Mate. A daily grog ration was needed to keep the men docile, and the main reason for Marines on board was to enforce discipline. Large percentages of Navy ships were crewed by pressed men who had never been to sea, and by the criminal class. Very few were voluntary, and those that were voluntary only volunteered to get the bounty paid to them by the Navy. Navy seamen were underpaid, had to serve for the entire war, and could be pressed from ship to ship. There are documented accounts of Navy seamen never setting foot on shore for 2 years or more.
4. The usual action movie over estimates the effectiveness of weaponry, and this one does, too. As a matter of fact, Navy crews were six times more likely to die from non-combat causes than from combat. Combat deaths, especially amongst the officers, were no cause for alarm, since death by combat meant greater glory than death by accident, disease, or starvation. In 1805, pistols were almost completely worthless in combat, flintlocks on the great guns misfired on occasion, accurate gunnery was the exception, not the rule, and the rate of fire was vastly over rated.
And the other problems like the idea of a privateer engaging a man-of-war, Maturin being portrayed as capable on ship(he took part in boarding, he was always in the surgery during battles).
I am grateful for Weir and Crowe's attempts to bring this book series to life. I only hope it inspires future attempts to tell the tale in chronological, linguistic, and faithful adherence to the literature of Patrick O'Brian.
reply
share