Simple plot, subtle visuals

To sum up Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World as two ships skirmishing around the South Seas is to simplify the book Moby Dick as a hunt for a white whale. Pithy words do not do justice to the tale. Otherwise, this review would suffice to say that it’s impossible to make an interesting film of Patrick O’Brian’s novels about 19th century naval intrigue without the right person helming the craft.

The good news is director Peter Weir has yet to make a bad movie; his latest venture, starring Russell Crowe as the eponymous Capt. Jack Aubrey is an action vehicle that is not so much Gladiator on water as it is Dead Poets Society with yawping cannon fire. The bad news is the postmodern mind, microwave fed with regurgitated pop culture, may flounder in the historical swells surrounding this smoldering time machine. Yet, cinephiles familiar with Weir’s work (Gallipoli, The Mosquito Coast, The Truman Show) will find themselves transported to a world where Charles Darwin has yet to publish his Origin of the Species but a display of brute Darwinian politics frequently settles international disputes.

Weir sets the tone from the start. With the help of lensman and longtime collaborator Russell Boyd, he frames the first five minutes without benefit of soundtrack save for the sloshing of the ocean against the bows of a British ship. In this self-contained space, this floating microcosm, a sense of isolation and of the unknown hangs heavy in the saline air. Throughout this opening sequence, one might find oneself wondering what the hell the sailors are saying. Are they even talking in English? Like a barrel of rum, however, Peter Weir and John Collee’s scripting acquires an intoxicating effect. The language and the plot begin to take on a decipherable rhythm.

It is 1805, and the HMS Surprise is charged by royal decree to intercept the French Privateer, Acheron, and stop Napoleon’s navy from harrying British shipping. Without warning and perhaps with a touch of irony, the Surprise is caught unawares by the selfsame ship it was instructed to sink, burn, or take prize. The rushing firefight ranks as one of the few unflinchingly authentic battles in a film this year. (Weir rightly illustrates that it is only with realism that the eye can be tricked into believing the illusion.)

Just like the Turks in Gallipoli, the enemy is not demonized as the scourge of the evil empire but rather is given his due as an adversary worthy of respect and admiration. Operating behind a nightshade evil of gunsmoke and cloudburst, the antagonist stays way ahead of the game until credits roll.

As it was with Maximus Decimus Brutus in Gladiator, revenge – in this life rather than the next – motivates Capt. Jack Aubrey. That’s all; no extraneous love interest (thank God); just pure, unadulterated payback. Weir’s genius lies in the simplicity of his plot and the subtlety of his visual language. He utilizes the conventions of seafaring cinema to explore how characters cope when cut off in terra incognito.

If Weir is master of plot simple, Crowe is commander of character nuance. Lucky Jack, as admiring crewmembers call him, is a role Crowe can play in his sleep. Perhaps, he is not even acting and is actually being, as admiring students called Prof. Keating in Dead Poets Society, "Oh, Captain, my Captain!" With a penchant for good wine and bad jokes ("To our wives and sweethearts, may they never meet."), Capt. Aubrey is a cross between a bawdy Elizabethan and a rambunctious Renaissance man. In the face of danger and difficulty, he fiddles an unorthodox rendition of Mozart in his cabin. Sadly, the closed-quarters dynamic of the plot prevents his character arc from sailing at full tilt. Though given many opportunities to showboat for an Oscar nod, Crowe veers from making waves. Mixing strength with empathy for the men and boys in his charge, he intimates depths in the still waters of his role with words like, "Simple truth is that not all of us have become the man we once thought we might be."

Though Crowe’s Capt. Aubrey dominates the screen, Paul Bettany’s Stephen Maturin – ship surgeon and agent in the employ of His Majesty’s secret service – provides the perfect counterpoint that makes Lucky Jack’s unflappable swagger look like leadership. A pacifist landlubber by persuasion and naturalist to boot, Maturin questions the wisdom of Aubrey’s actions. (Weir cloaks his own philosophical dialectic as a conversation between the two friends.)

A staunch believer in the if-it-hurts-cut-it-off school of medicine, Maturin justifies the PG-13 rating with ample amputations and crude operations to satisfy discerning gore connoisseurs. Set somewhere in the Galapagos Islands, one of the grisliest scenes in a movie this year involves an unexpected patient and an intrusive surgical tool.

Like Weir’s The Mosquito Coast, Master and Commander traverses themes such as wounded patriotism and a sinking feeling that one’s fearless leader is, perhaps, going stark raving mad.