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Review excerpt:
Patrick O'Brian's series of twenty books details the friendship of the hearty captain Jack Aubrey and the rationalist ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. Their odd couple camaraderie resembles that of the 18th Century explorer Capt. James Cook and his naturalist Joseph Banks (the subject of a biography by O'Brian), or their futuristic counterparts in Capt. James Kirk and Mr. Spock / Dr. McCoy.
Maturin, a dedicated naturalist, seems on the verge of conceiving the Theory of Natural Selection thirty years before Darwin's enlightening visit to the Galapagos … if only he can get enough time ashore to taxonomize the storied wildlife. But exasperating duty repeatedly drags him off to military, rather than scientific, glory.
After World War I, Churchill wrote, "War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid." "Master and Commander" depicts war at its most fascinating and least repellent, as a few hundred experts dueling in gorgeous machines, with innocent civilians safely away over the blue horizon.
The film conveys how exciting was the freedom enjoyed by sea captains, in an age when land travel was no easier than in Roman times, to be able to take off on one's own discretion for the far side of the world.
Patrick O'Brian's series of twenty books details the friendship of the hearty captain Jack Aubrey and the rationalist ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. Their odd couple camaraderie resembles that of the 18th Century explorer Capt. James Cook and his naturalist Joseph Banks (the subject of a biography by O'Brian), or their futuristic counterparts in Capt. James Kirk and Mr. Spock / Dr. McCoy.
Maturin, a dedicated naturalist, seems on the verge of conceiving the Theory of Natural Selection thirty years before Darwin's enlightening visit to the Galapagos … if only he can get enough time ashore to taxonomize the storied wildlife. But exasperating duty repeatedly drags him off to military, rather than scientific, glory.
After World War I, Churchill wrote, "War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid." "Master and Commander" depicts war at its most fascinating and least repellent, as a few hundred experts dueling in gorgeous machines, with innocent civilians safely away over the blue horizon.
The film conveys how exciting was the freedom enjoyed by sea captains, in an age when land travel was no easier than in Roman times, to be able to take off on one's own discretion for the far side of the world.
Fabulous soundtrack.