For a brief period at the beginning of the 21st c., it looked as though there might yet be room for men in cinema. Russell Crowe was the most celebrated of the actors who fostered that hope, yet his most impressive achievement was a commercial disaster: Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World. This was back in 2003, before movies had been reduced to Disney or Marvel fantasies for the kids. It was a blow to middlebrow culture, the movie cost some $150 million to make & didn’t even make $100M in America. I don’t recall a clearer example of the audience failing to live up to the promise of the movies. Artists & studios would afterward be less inclined to take chances on worthwhile stories… I was too young at the time to know anything about the problems—was it marketing or some other studio failure, or what happened? This could have been another path for Hollywood, beginning with a series of nautical adventures reminding people of the noble wars fought for freedom, based on the twenty Aubrey-Maturin novels Patrick O’Brian wrote. Instead, it was one more step in the demise of movies for men. After the commercial failure came the Oscars failure, a failure of prestige after one of popularity, a sign that the movie business was as confused as its audience. The movie got ten nominations, but lost eight of them & only won one important award—for cinematography, typically something people don’t care about. Maybe people didn’t care that much for an Australian production…
Nevertheless, Master & Commander is a cult movie, if a blockbuster production can be called a cult movie—everyone who has some love of nobility recognizes that it's touched by greatness. Men love it, which is why it has a high 7.4 rating averaging more than 226,000 votes. On other social media, it’s a source of memes, another sign that it appeals to boys. There’s even talk of more movies being made now, presumably because it is after all a very popular series of twenty novels—a lot of money, if it can be made into a safe investment… But to look at the 2003 Master & Commander is to wonder, can we make something like that again? To begin with, there are no women in the cast of characters, nor any roles for racial quotas.
& how could you gather the talent? Director & writer Peter Weir was at the peak of his ability, after making an amazing movie, The Truman Show. (Much of our social media is in that movie—read my review.) He also made a good movie about The Great War, Gallipoli (1981, starring Mel Gibson), & then there’s his best movie, The Mosquito Coast (1986, starring Harrison Ford). Sentimental people of little judgment prefer another one of his movies, Dead Poets Society (1989). But Master & Commander, which earned him his firth & sixth Oscar nominations, also seems to have ended his career—he only made one more movie afterward… The stars, Russell Crowe & Paul Bettany, the man of war & the man of science, were in their prime, & ready to work for the glory of the British Empire. There was no sign at that point that there wouldn’t be much by way of projects or scripts for them in future. Instead, Master & Commander seemed like it could bring the classy productions of Old Hollywood together with the artistic freedom of New Hollywood. & it did—in fact, director Peter Weir could be compared with one of the greatest Hollywood directors, John Huston!
This is how we got a rare Napoleonic-era war movie, maritime warfare at that. The romance of the seas is another reason the movie seems like a throwback to the ‘30s or ‘40s. The movies hardly ever show the storms & calms, the sailing or the battles, ships exchanging broadsides at close quarters… Master & Commander is, however, as serious as the title sounds. The strict hierarchies & the suffering of life on a ship, twelve-year-olds in battle & surgery before anesthetics are an education in the price paid for noble achievements. So watch the movie—or watch it again if you already know it—& consider the importance of adventure & greatness for freedom.
& remember that Master & Commander made famous the fundamental Tory statement, worth remembering in a time when Tories are a joke:
What better way to celebrate the movie & the novels on which it is based than a podcast with former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson & Berkeley Law Prof. John Yoo, who put the terror into liberals back in the days of the War on Terror!
If you would like to read about the nobility of service & sacrifice for the greater cause—the conservative love of one’s own community—read Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review.
It seems like I hear more and more men talk about this movie all the time. I think among my IRL male friends, all of them like or even love it. But many women love it too. Showed it to my wife, and she thought it was fantastic.
Love this film, own it, always wished there were sequels. Saw it upon release in NYC with an appreciative audience. I didn't even know it had lost money in America. Just about everyone I knew saw it and at least liked it.