The film is ostensibly about naval warfare in the time of Napoleon, about the clashing of nations via cannoned wooden vessels of war. But the film spends far more time on the moments in-between, and on a clash of a different sort. This is the rivalry of the ‘do-er’, the ‘man-of-action’ and of the ‘thinker’, the ‘man-of-contemplation’.
We spend the length of the film aboard the HMS Surprise, beneath its flapping sails, between its creaking boards, but also amongst its crew. The ship is captained by Jack Aubrey (Russel Crowe), a man of duty, but also of risk, a man of movement, continuing ever forward. This is contrasted by the ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), the man of stillness. Their great conflict comes after the Surprise’s repeated defeat to the French Privateer Acheron. Aubrey of course wants to continue on in pursuit, wants to risk, to gamble to move. But Maturin pleads caution, he suggests that Aubrey has already gone beyond his duty and is now acting entirely on pride and ego. This is something that Aubrey does himself admit, “I exceeded my orders long ago”, and after Maturin is severely wounded, Aubrey relents and stops. And the stop gives the chance for Maturin to engage in his hobby, collecting and observing the flora and fauna of the Galapagos.
In this moment we see not a contrast, but an alliance, the alliance of Science and Empire. The film is set before Darwin was even born, but already via the Empire the scientific method is being deployed, bringing order and categorisation to the ‘far side of the world’. In the film Maturin’s hobby, his naturalism, is treated as a bit of a sideshow, a sort of quirk allowed to educated men and officers. This is still a time of superstition, and of knowledge through intuition, and experience. But it is through Maturin’s observations, his bringing aboard of the expertly camouflaged Phasmid, that Aubrey gets his great idea, and the means to bring down the Acheron. Science utilises the desires of the Empire, land all over the world, overseas power and total control, to attain what it wants, to cast its eyes over more and more of the unseen wilderness, whilst the Empire utilises science, in this case the adoption of a tactic found in nature.
In the film there is plenty of looking, of seeing, viewing, observing. The film opens with Midshipman Hollom staring through a spyglass, he catches a glimpse of the Acheron through the fog, but is uncertain about what he has seen; he does not have the sight. Aubrey too stares and stares, magnifying glasses upon maps, sextants upon the horizon, and a spyglass at the Acheron, whereupon he finds the Captain of the Acheron looking straight back at him. There is this notion of ‘vision’ throughout, of seeing clearly. When describing the great Captain Nelson, Aubrey refers to him as a man of ‘singular vision’; when losing to the Acheron Aubrey heads for the fog, intending to dim the vision of his adversary. In the worldview of Maturin of course sight is primary too, to cast an eye over the world, to discern the truth of it, in other words, to see is to know. Aubrey has a similar view, but where Maturin just wants to observe, to define and discover, Aubrey wants to do. It is with sight that Aubrey then brings about action. Everytime he sees the Acheron he wants to pursue, to engage, to fight, knowing that they are outgunned and outran. Of course, it is Maturin that sees the Acheron for the final time, whilst searching for the flightless cormorant, and then Aubrey has to restrain his instinct to pursue, and instead lie-in-wait. And subsequently his sight fails him, after boarding the Acheron, taking it over, he comes face to face with the enemy Captain, and yet fails to see through his performance as the Ship’s doctor. Only later does he realise the deceit and once again springs immediately to action. Aubrey restrained his will and it gave him victory, but it briefly lost him his sight, the symbiosis of sight and will is what is at the core of the man of action, a man like ‘Lucky’ Jack Aubrey.
It would go amiss of course to not mention director Peter Weir by name. He has crafted in this film an incredibly rich and detailed environment, that contains within it the bubbling cauldron of early nineteenth-century thought, of a world about to be made global, an Empire about to cover all corners, and a system of through that would attempt to create a universal theory of everything. It is through Weir’s own script, in collaboration with John Collee, and through his direction that the richness of the world is fully realised. This is also a film that deals in Weir’s pet theme, the person, or people, being where they ought not to be. This goes back to the Victorian schoolgirls, in their heavy clothing, under the sun of the Australian Outback in Picnic at Hanging Rock, the antipodean boys who find themselves on the rugged Ottoman coast in Gallopoli, or the cynical, urbanite cop in Witness who ends up in pastoral Amish country. Weir has clear fascination with the alien, but often time the alien who does not know that they are that. This is the category that this film falls in to. They believe that the seas are theirs to travel, with their maps and navigational tools they attempt to impose order upon the oceans. But they are reminded that they are in a hostile environment, to which they do not belong, first during the storm as they sail around the southern tip of South America, what is now known as Drake’s Passage, and then the even more dangerous windless sea on the other side. For all their civilisation, they still require the wind. And when this fails, when they fail to impose themselves upon the ocean, the rational scientism of Maturin is nowhere to be found, and instead the irrational superstitions of the crew take over, at the expense of the ill-fitting Hollom.
The film was drowned out at the box office by the seemingly similar, but altogether completely different, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which of course features a more famous Captain Jack. But Weir has here made a grounded, intelligent and detailed film, more interested in its characters than its action, but when its action does come it is suitably blood-soaked. One cannot help but watch this and feel a pang of sadness that movies like this are so rarely made these days, with craft, dedication, patience and trust in the audience. It is now too easy to slip into the defensive tone of post-irony, a style that seems to be truly endemic. But it is a tone that could not capture this world, this world of Romantic patriotism and a genuine belief in duty in the name of country. I saw this film recently at the BFI IMAX at Waterloo, which was a treat, and was the prompt for this brief excavation of the film. The auditorium was completely full, even on a Sunday morning. I will not veer off into a rant aimed at the usual villains of modern film commentary, for it will dampen the marvelousness of this work. But in the twenty-three years since the release of Master & Commander: Far Side of the World, the film has only got better.
CineLiterate 