[lbo-talk] Master and Commander/Love, Actually

[C. G. Estabrook]

As a devoted fan of the late Patrick O'Brian -- Jane Austen at sea (and I
mean the ambiguity) -- I regret to say that the one person who's got the
movie right, from the reviews I've seen, is the Lost Leader ("Just for a
handful of silver he left us..."), Christopher Hitchens, in his Slate
review (and this after he wrote an obtuse review of O'Brian's roman-fleuve
in the NYRB):

"Unlike Forester, O'Brian set himself not just to show broadsides and
cutlass work and flogging and the centrality of sea power, but to
re-create all of the ambiguities and contradictions of England's long war
against revolutionary and Napoleonic France ... The summa of O'Brian's
genius was the invention of Dr. Stephen Maturin. He is the ship's gifted
surgeon, but he is also a scientist, an espionage agent for the Admiralty,
a man of part Irish and part Catalan birth -- and a revolutionary. He
joins the British side, having earlier fought against it, because of his
hatred for Bonaparte's betrayal of the principles of 1789 -- principles
that are perfectly obscure to bluff Capt. Jack Aubrey. Any cinematic
adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing
this figure.

"On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole
project. As played by the admittedly handsome and intriguing Paul Bettany,
Maturin is no more than a good doctor with finer feelings and a passion
for natural history. At one point he is made to say in an English accent
that he is Irish -- but that's the only hint we get. In the books, for
example, he quarrels badly with Aubrey about Lord Nelson's support for
slavery. But here a superficial buddy movie is born out of one of the
subtlest and richest and most paradoxical male relationships since Holmes
and Watson..."

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> ***** FILM REVIEW; Master Of the Sea (And the French) By A. O. SCOTT
> 
> 
> ...The Napoleonic wars that followed the French Revolution gave birth,
> among other things, to British conservatism, and ''Master and
> Commander,'' making no concessions to modern, egalitarian
> sensibilities, is among the most thoroughly and proudly conservative
> movies ever made. It imagines the Surprise as a coherent society in
> which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty
> and his place. I would not have been surprised to see Edmund Burke's
> name in the credits. . . .
> 
> Published: 11 - 14 - 2003 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column
> 6 , Page 1
> 
> <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E6D81438F937A25752C1A9659C8B63> 
> *****