On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Brian Siano wrote:
> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> >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.
> >
> >
> I have to agree with Hitchens here, but only provisionally. Maturin's
> half the joy in the books, and we just didn't see _him_ in the movie. As
> an adaptation of O'Brian, the loss of Maturin cripples the film.
>
> But the movie is fine in and of itself, and it gives us O'Brian fans a
> chance to wallow in one of his work's greatest joys-- the work required
> to run a ship of the line. And I may be the only person I know to admit
> to liking Russell Crowe, in this role and others. So I enjoyed the movie
> as it was.
>
> (I wonder how he'd do as Flashman? (See
> http://www.briansiano.com/flashman for my own website on those books.) )
>
>