If you’re looking for a greasy celluloid turkey in your week off from classes, “The Cat in the Hat” looks to be your tryptophan of choice. If you’re looking for a Thanksgiving movie that’s both yummy going down and filling after the fact, then look no further than “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.”
Based on characters created by Patrick O’Brien in a series of universally acclaimed maritime novels, the film follows beloved naval captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey and his exploits aboard the sturdy British vessel HMS Surprise. It’s the era of the Napoleonic Wars, and Jack’s latest adversary is a wily French captain commanding a sleek, superior warship called the Acheron. Aubrey and crew must deter the Acheron, sink it or capture it as a prize for England.
A rousing seafaring adventure with a brain, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” is a deeply satisfying, richly detailed film that’s only noticeable flaw is a clunky and needlessly overlong title.
Steady-handed director Peter Weir (“The Truman Show,” “Dead Poets Society”) offers audiences a rare action epic that is as thoughtful as it is exciting. Weir’s approach is uncluttered, mature; his unsentimental approach to the story may at first seem impersonal, even cold, but the director is just taking his time to intricately set up the conflicts and setting.
Weir’s films are more experiential than plot-driven, and his latest is less a swashbuckling bonanza than a think piece, a character study painted on a refreshingly broad canvas. Aubrey’s worth is not merely presented to the audience in the opening reel; it is established through his words and actions over the course of the film’s expansive 140-minute running time.
It’s a lot to take in in one sitting, full of episodes by turns stirring, chilling and elegiac, but Weir’s pacing is never too mannered or pragmatic to sustain the film’s extended length. He merely allows scenes to breathe and unfold naturally, logically, with a keen sense of both the reality of the situation and the humanity of the characters involved.
The result is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind film-going experience, a journey as sensory as it is literal into waters as murky as life, death, valor and ultimately the friendship between two men of strong wills and differing outlooks.
The men are Aubrey and the ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, a would-be naturalist and every bit Jack’s intellectual equal. They are expertly played by Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, respectively. The two (previously onscreen together in 2001’s Best Picture winner “A Beautiful Mind”) have a great chemistry, easy-going and familiar in lighter moments and crackling with volatility when their contrasting opinions lead to verbal sparring. As magical as they are as a pair, the two are almost as good apart.
Crowe towers over everything else onscreen, a larger-than-life presence full of wit, steel and integrity. He makes it easy to see why so many men would willingly trust “Lucky” Jack with their lives. As brilliant a leading man as Crowe is, Bettany is even better in support, imbuing Maturin with dignity and droll humor at all the right moments. A cynic and a realist when it comes to warfare, the doctor is all wide-eyed wonder when a side trip to the Galapagos Islands gives him the opportunity to observe the local wildlife.
The island vistas and rolling seascapes are captured breathtakingly by cinematographer Russell Boyd, who also has a great knack for conveying the cramped conditions aboard the Surprise.
Close-ups of faces and objects reveal cracks, wrinkles, scars, rust and sweat, a richness of detail that lends a palpable “you-are-there” quality to the whole film. One can almost feel the splinters and smell the cannon smoke as the ship sails into battle.
Speaking of battle, the film’s action scenes are impeccably rendered, a seamless blend of real effects and CGI. And Weir never lets the reality of the moment escape the audience’s attention. Attacks are launched based on actual naval strategy and are executed with reverence for both the exhilaration and the danger of the task at hand. It’s entertaining, to be sure, but the fact that it’s realistic makes it something more, something better, something infinitely longer-lasting in the memory.
Though the film was capsized in its opening weekend by the Will Ferrell vehicle “Elf,” one hopes that this great motion picture will find its audience in a competitive holiday market. Perhaps the same masses that flocked to this summer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” will discover this heavier-in-tone high seas adventure and latch onto it as well.
Oscar buzz certainly won’t hurt either, but whether “Master and Commander” sinks or swims at the box office, it’s still worth your time to check it out. A grand cinema accomplishment in all respects and for all involved, this is one of the year’s best.