Andare, Partire, Tornare ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Master and Commander: A Commentary The Bemo and I went to see _Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World_ on Friday. I read the first three books of the Patrick O'Brien series that the movie is based on, and enjoyed them a great deal, but I'm not an afficionado of the books like many are. In fact, there's really a whole group of rabid POB'ers out there that rival the Lord of the Ring-ites, which is interesting in that both camps have just been faced with movies and now have to deal with that in their respective fandoms. It seems like the POB fans have, like the LOTRingers, gotten a terrific movie that they can embrace. They certainly seemed fairly thrilled with it, which makes me happy as well, because I liked the movie a great deal and I would feel a little guilty about loving a movie that desecrated a book, even if I wasn't a fan of the books. (Call it sympathy pains, I suppose. See _Starship Troopers_ as an example. Yeeough.) Anyway, I loved the movie. It's less an action flick than it is a stunningly faithful depiction of Navy life in 1805. There is action (plenty of it, in two heartstopping battles that bracket the movie) but there is also gorgeous dialogue that you have to (*Gasp!*) pay attention to, because the speech patterns and vocabulary and accents are accurate, which means that they're frequently hard to make out among the noises of shipboard life. The movie doesn't hand you anything, but if you put in a little work, it rewards you with sly jokes and elegant turns of phrase that would not be out of place in an Austen novel. Crowe as Aubrey is definitely the center of the movie, as he is the focus around which the entire universe of the ship wheels. But he's not focused on to the exclusion of the rest of the crew, because the whole movie is about their relationship with their captain, and their relationships with each other, from the thirteen year old midshipman who has the right to command men five times his age, to the older officer who finds himself loathed by the crew as an attractor of ill luck, to Dr. Maturin, Aubrey's good friend and the only one on the ship who doesn't exactly bow to the hierarchy that regulates shipboard life. I can see how a lot of people would find the movie dull, or at least slow in spots. It was like catnip for me, and I need to see it again...and it's definitely going to be a DVD purchase, although seeing it at home on the small screen will be a much lesser experience. In other, non-movie news, I really loathe _Murder at the Gardner_ by Jane Langton. I mean, really, really loathe. If anybody reading this is a fan of hers, I'll gladly mail you this book and the other one (set in Venice) just to get it off my shelves. Grrrr. 12:51 a.m. - 2003-11-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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