Old Stories: Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World

Peter Weir's Film about the Old World and the New World during the Napoleonic Wars

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Peter Weir is not a well known name, even among people who love movies, but he’s been one of the most prolific directors of high quality motion pictures for the past 50 years, in the same category, my humble opinion, as Martin Scorsese. Here’s a few of the films he’s directed, and the central tension in each:

The Plumber - A favorite about a screwball working class plumber fixing the pipes for a neurotic academic
Picnic at Hanging Rock - An island of innocence in a sea of evil
Gallipoli - The glory of sport and the glory of war
The Year of Living Dangerously - Freedom and democracy amidst abject poverty
Witness - Urban decadence and Rural tradition
Green Card - Down to earth Frenchman, her head in the clouds American Gal
The Truman Show - Real Life and tube life

The tension in all Weir films derives from a clash of cultures. Master and Commander, from 2003, is Weir’s best film; the storyline itself provides the great clash. It’s 1805, England and France are at war. Post revolutionary France is under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, and England, though it recently lost its colonies in America, is building its empire. There is the Old World with its dogmatic hierarchies depicted by military rank and martial discipline, and the New World depicted by advances in navigation, science, shipbuilding and the discovery of new human populations.

The tension is sometimes subtle, and sometimes abrupt, but ever present, displayed most prominently in the friendship of Lucky Jack Aubrey, the cocky ship’s captain, and Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon and a man of science who wants nothing more than to collect samples of wildlife from the Galapagos Islands (later made famous by Charles Darwin). Aubrey is keen to find and “take a prize” a French war ship. The two ships pursue each other around the southern tip of South America - it is also the Age of Adventure and Discovery, when the world powers ploughed the oceans in search of wealth and power. Extreme risk and easy safety also come into conflict, as you might expect.

Nearly the entire film takes place on the English war ship ‘Surprise’ with just two short stops, one on land where the ship’s crew mingles with local natives, and one on Galapagos. There are several battle scenes to keep you on the edge of your seat. The tension is as tightly packed as the crew below deck, sleeping side by side in their swaying hammocks.

Weir does a masterful job of bringing to life both the old world and the new, setting them into conflict while telling a great story. It’s not the facile good versus evil of so many movies today, but rather a compelling movie about real men nn a small ship on a vast, vast ocean, working, fighting and dreaming of glory and home.

Master and Commander is available on several streaming services and also as a DVD from the library. Highly recommended. There is also an excellent documentary about making the film, below. Master and Commander was adapted from the novels of Patrick O’Brian for those of you who might be looking for summer reading. There are twenty separate novels in the series.