30 for 30: 2003 — "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"
"Though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England."
What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2003. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
Two big-budget, grand-scale films about ships came out in 2003. Both were adaptations culled from a vast wealth of source material, both featured captains named Jack, both had lengthy subtitles and both movies were about finding and commandeering another ship. Both films positioned themselves as the first part of a long and storied franchise. Only one of them would go on to receive that distinction.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” came out in the summer of 2003 to a big Disney marketing campaign and a lot of word-of-mouth that hey, the movie about the Disneyland ride was good, actually. Audiences responded extremely well to Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow and his search for his beloved Black Pearl, and the “Pirates” franchise went on to gross nearly $1.5 billion and spawn four more movies.
On the other end of the spectrum, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” was released in the late fall of 2003. Starring Russell Crowe as Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, commander of the HMS Surprise, and Paul Bettany as ship surgeon and Crowe’s confidante Dr. Stephen Maturin, the film was an adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels of the same name. Aubrey, Maturin and his crew in the British Navy are tasked with capturing the French ship Acheron in the Galapagos Islands during the Napoleonic Wars.
Theoretically, the film, which was a mashup of the first and tenth books in the series, had a stronger foundation for franchise glory. Crowe was coming off of a three-year Best Actor nomination run. Director Peter Weir’s American career included “Dead Poets Society” and “The Truman Show,” showcasing versatility in genre films that were also hits. And there were 18 more “Master and Commander” novels to choose from for future adaptations.
The film was critically acclaimed and was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning in the Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing categories but losing the rest to “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” (2003 was a pretty stacked year in terms of blockbuster entertainment.) It barely made a profit, probably because audiences were already high on “Pirates” and because, while this is a war movie, there are only really three battle scenes in all of “Master and Commander”; the rest of the movie is a character study about what it’s really like to be out on a ship in wartime. No more “Master and Commander” movies were made.
That’s a shame, really, because this movie blends large-scale action with intimate character development and studies in leadership. Weir’s film is more of a hangout movie punctuated with grand, short, sustained spurts of violence and is more concerned with how these men carry out their duties than it is with throwing in beguiling plot twists. One big scene hinges on how Aubrey will respond to why the crew is scapegoating a sailor for their bad luck, and another is all about how he has to teach a young lieutenant how to command his men.
But it’s the friendship between Aubrey and Maturin that makes this movie sing, as Maturin is the only member of the ship to outright question some of Aubrey’s motives. He provides a rational, scientific contrast to Aubrey’s superstition and military bravado, and it’s the coexistence of those two tendencies that really makes this worth watching.
And if “ROTK” hadn’t come out the same year, it probably would have won for production design and costume design, too — this thing looks real, and another joy of this movie is seeing how historically accurate it is, including a scene where Maturin ends up having to perform surgery on himself.
While I love “Pirates” and have re-watched that movie a lot, it’s “Master and Commander” that I come back to more often than not. Give it a watch and thank me later.
Up next: I talk about a movie that I should have watched at a younger age, but probably wouldn’t have appreciated at the time: it’s 2004’s “Saved!”
Letter of Recommendation
This essay about “Master and Commander” gets at more of what I like about this film.
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