“More sand here!” Maturin cries, wielding blades and saws. As visceral as the floors of the ship as cannonballs and sabres do their work. The final battle is a blast of smoke and oakum: kinetic, thrilling, terrifying. The French ship takes the bait.Īt Crowe’s signal – just three years after he began his other major historic epic role, Gladiator, with a battle in a German forest at dawn – his men unleash hell. Lucky Jack hatches a plan to lure her in, pretending to be a defenceless whaler, appealing to Maturin and Blakeney’s study of camouflage in nature. Then the Acheron heaves back into view, introduced like the shark in Jaws, and the game is afoot once more. That scene is set on the Galápagos, where Maturin is able to briefly indulge his passion: he turns out a proto-Darwin, lovingly yet knowingly shown crating up birds and iguanas. There is cricket in it, while the crew of the Surprise rest and refit, a sight to gladden any British eye lost in Hollywood film. I got about a chapter into the first novel, Master and Commander itself, before deciding I’d rather read Flashman. Arising from which, a confession: I haven’t read O’Brian’s books. I may say, if so, that some should have a word with my mum, a teacher of English literature, a lover of Eliot and Austen who treats O’Brian’s novels as holy writ and loves the film as much as me. Some may say Master and Commander is just too male, and too white, to be called a true classic. There is rum and the lash in Weir’s film. Max Pirkis as Lord Blakeney, midshipman, doomed to lose an arm.įamously, there is just one female face in Master and Commander: a beautiful one, seen off the coast of the Americas, from the ship’s railing and by Lucky Jack, his gaze lingering long enough to establish his, shall we say, leading man credentials. ![]() Robert Pugh as Mr Allen, Master, a skeptic at the captain’s table. The supporting cast was perfectly picked: James D’Arcy as 1st Lt Tom Pullings, Aubrey’s dashingly scarred protege, given his first command. ![]() After the battle, they play violin and cello together, playing their ship into the sunset. Paul Bettany captured Maturin’s duality, a man of science and enlightenment by turns enchanted, exasperated and appalled by his friend. Crowe inhabited Lucky Jack, bluff and belligerent, an old-school Tory but a man of parts too. ![]() Weir filmed that world, above and belowdecks on a (replica) British frigate, the Surprise, playing cat and mouse with a French ship, Acheron, either side of Cape Horn. O’Brian wrote a whole intricate world, a comprehensive picture of 18th- and early 19th-century naval warfare, laced with intrigue and adventure. The series follows Aubrey and his friend, Stephen Maturin, a physician, naturalist and spy, through the Napoleonic wars and up the ranks of the Royal Navy. Patrick O’Brian wrote them and at his death in 2000, there were 20 and one unfinished. It is based on parts of a number of novels, the Aubrey-Maturin series. Master and Commander is a film that goes straight at ’em.Īnd yet it is so much more. Grant was laconic but Lucky Jack boils him down.
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