Ep. 9 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
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Jul 1, 2022 • 1HR 5M
Ep. 9 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Appears in this episode
Anna Rettberg
Casey Muratori
Molly Movie Club is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth discussions of movies. https://www.mollymovieclub.com
Episode details
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Happy July! We’re excited to start our new series of nautical-themed movies. We begin with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World directed by Peter Weir.
Anna LOVES this movie. Casey thinks it’s pretty good. One thing no one can argue with is that the attention to historical detail in this film is impressive. A love for the time period radiates from Master and Commander, and the commitment to accuracy gives the film a level of immersiveness that’s rarely achieved.
We hope you enjoy this free episode! The schedule for the rest of July is:
July 8 - Das Boot
July 15 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
July 22 - The Big Blue
July 29 - The Hunt for Red October
Ep. 9 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
I am indifferent to sailing, hadn't heard about the source material, am disappointed when the characters don't go through any changes during the story, and I don't get the kicks out of military discipline or strict hierachies.
So I was amazed by how much team Anna enthralling adventure this movie was for me! The movie absolutely drew me in and didn't let go til the end, I would've loved another four hours of it and would watch that in a heartbeat — and I can only scramble for the reasons why.
Perhaps that was a strong no-bullshit beginning that, instead of lengthy introductions, just dove into a strong action, and then the hook was in, and Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany just had to do their best not to mess that up.
The lack of context or history for Aubrey and surgeon, and the rest of the team, worked really great for me. I look at this as a design choice much similar to french Tintin comics where the main character is deliberately crudely drawn, to allow the reader to use him as a placeholder for himself. Say, I felt the pain of that poor guy who went down with a cannonball exactly because his story was short and unencumbered with details, and nothing interfered his comparison with myself in similar situations.
About the modern-day series under the wings of a big studio, the effect would be bad, so bad. We have a great example days — there's a really sweet and fun, and charming pirate masculinity deconstruction by Taika Waititi, "Our Flag Means Death". The series is filmed on a ship set with modern humongous all-encompassing screens in the behind, and the artificiality, the "everything's wrong and fake" feeling, is constant and has to be deliberately silenced — and that's fine-ish in this particular case, but would completely obliterate an accurate adventure like M&C.
I'm going through the movies and podcasts on my own pace and now I'm really eager to listen to your Das Boot podcast — I rewatched the movie yesterday and these days most of the things that Casey disliked about Master and Commander, for me apply to _that_, ha!
I am a sail boat nerd and read this entire series as a teenager a decade and a half ago. If I remember correctly the character growth in the books is perhaps even weaker than the movie. The captain is the gold standard for Naval Officers and the books are action romps where the captain out smarts his opponents while fighting incompetency of others and advancing through the ranks, which I loved as a teen.
One thing to note is that the movie isn't the script of one book but stitches together plot elements from three of the books non sequentially, and I suspect that this movie is one of the few hollywood examples of the movie being better than the books. Also this is where the movie gets its baffling title from, the series has no official title (many people call it the O'Brian series after the author, on wikipedia it's listed under the names of the captain and doctor) and the title of the movie is actually the titles of the 1st (Master and Commander) and 10th (The Far Side of the World) books.
I've got to say that while I agree with Casey that there's little character growth I loved it as a mindless action romp and would watch this over boring super hero movies or the Terror. The point Casey made about the French ship not just turning around and blasting them was a good one (especially since the french had longer range and bigger guns which as far as I'm aware would totally negate a windward advantage). But I think if you compare this to other action movies where all combat is meaningless and nonsensical, or the Terror where the dissapointingly not a metaphor spirit bear has no rules and is invincible until it they need it not to be, I am willing to forgive this movie.
They talk about shooting the ship in the rear because it's a weak point, Casey claims it never happens but it does and is just very poorly communicated. It happens after they shoot the mast down (which is what would have given them the manoeuvrability advantage to get behind them) and before the boarding action. In this scenario apparently the back wasn't armoured but even if that wasn't the case one major advantage of shooting the back is that the cannon ball travels over significantly more of the ship from back to front instead of side to side, and they show some shots of cannon balls travelling down the length of the french ships cannon deck which is how you know that they are shooting from behind. I have a hunch they were hoping to have a longer combat scene that would have made it clearer but as it is it's only decipherable by people horny for boats like me.
I often struggle to watch movies over 2 hours and didn't notice it here so while many things do feel rushed there was something to the pacing that was right for me.
All in all I think that Caseys criticisms are valid but it's good for a historical dumb action movie and is perhaps saved by the fact that it can rank highly in a list of movies with good looking tallships due to the lack of competition.