Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a 2003 American epic period war-drama film co-written, produced and directed by Peter Weir, set during the Napoleonic Wars. The film's plot and characters are loosely adapted from novels in author Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, which includes 20 completed novels of Jack Aubrey's naval career. The film stars Russell Crowe as Aubrey, captain in the Royal Navy, and Paul Bettany as Dr. Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon. This was the second onscreen collaboration for Crowe and Bettany, who previously co-starred in 2001's A Beautiful Mind.
The film was a personal project of 20th Century Fox executive Tom Rothman, who recruited Weir to direct. Filming took place on the open sea, on replica ships in the water tanks of Baja Studios, and in the Galápagos Islands. The film, which cost US$150 million to make, was a co-production of 20th Century Fox, Miramax Films, Universal Pictures, and Samuel Goldwyn Films, and released on November 14, 2003. The film received critical acclaim and grossed $212 million worldwide.
It garnered Weir the BAFTA Award for Best Direction. At the 76th Academy Awards, the film was nominated in ten categories, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing.
Plot In April 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British frigate HMS Surprise is ambushed by the French privateer Acheron off Brazil, suffering heavy damage. After escaping into a fog bank, Surprises captain Jack Aubrey refuses to return to land and insists on having his ship repaired at sea. Shortly afterwards, Surprise is again ambushed by Acheron, but escapes using a decoy raft. Following Acheron southwards to prevent her from attacking British whalers, Surprise heads for the Galápagos Islands, where Aubrey had promised Surprises surgeon Stephen Maturin several days to explore the islands' unique flora and fauna. However, when she reaches the islands, Surprise rescues survivors from a British whaler burnt by Acheron and Aubrey orders a pursuit of the privateer, upsetting Maturin.
Becalmed for several days, the crew of Surprise becomes restless, and superstition starts taking hold among them. A sailor deliberately bumps into the unpopular midshipman Hollom, whom the crew believe to be a "Jonah", and is flogged; Hollom subsequently commits suicide by jumping overboard. The wind picks up again, and Surprise resumes the chase. The ship's captain of marines accidentally shoots Maturin in the stomach while fowling. As the required operation would be much easier on land, Aubrey orders Surprise to return to the Galápagos, where Maturin performs self-surgery using a mirror. Finally giving up his pursuit of Acheron, Aubrey grants Maturin the chance to explore the Galápagos and gather specimens before they return to Portsmouth. While looking for the flightless cormorant, Maturin discovers Acheron on the other side of the islands. He returns to Surprise and warns Aubrey, who after observing the camouflage ability of Maturin's phasmid specimen orders his ship to be disguised as a whaler.
Acheron falls for the disguise and is ambushed by Surprise, which dismasts the privateer. Aubrey leads a boarding party onto Acheron and captures the ship after fierce hand-to-hand combat. He meets Acherons surgeon, de Vigny, who informs him that the French ship's captain is dead and gives Aubrey his sword. Both ships are repaired by the crew of Surprise, whose first lieutenant Pullings is promoted to captain and ordered to sail Acheron to Valparaíso to parole their French captives. As Acheron sails away, Maturin mentions to Aubrey that according to her ship logs de Vigny died from a fever months ago. Realizing that the surgeon was actually the captain in disguise, Aubrey orders the crew of Surprise to beat to quarters. Maturin is once again denied the chance to explore the Galápagos, but Aubrey wryly notes that since the bird he seeks is flightless, "it's not going anywhere." The duo play Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid as Surprise turns in pursuit of Acheron once more.
Cast
Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin, Surgeon James D'Arcy as First Lieutenant Thomas Pullings Edward Woodall as Second Lieutenant William Mowett Chris Larkin as Captain Howard, Royal Marines Robert Pugh as John Allen, Master Max Benitz as Midshipman/Acting Third Lieutenant Peter Myles Calamy Max Pirkis as Midshipman Lord William Blakeney Lee Ingleby as Midshipman Hollom Richard McCabe as Mr. Higgins, Surgeon's Mate Ian Mercer as Mr. Hollar, Boatswain Tony Dolan as Mr. Lamb, Carpenter David Threlfall as Preserved Killick, Captain's Steward Billy Boyd as Barrett Bonden, Coxswain Bryan Dick as Joseph Nagle, Carpenter's Mate Joseph Morgan as William Warley, Captain of the Mizzentop George Innes as Joe Plaice, Able Seaman Patrick Gallagher as Awkward Davies, Able Seaman John DeSantis as Padeen Colman, Loblolly Boy Mark Lewis Jones as Mr. Hogg, Master of the Whaler Albatross Thierry Segall as French captain of the Acheron, disguised as de Vigny, Surgeon
In trying to find men who looked as though they were from the 19th century, Weir recruited many extras from Poland. Philip French noted that the casting of Crowe, an Australian, as a British naval hero followed a tradition in film (e.g. Errol Flynn as Geoffrey Thorpe in The Sea Hawk, Peter Finch as Lord Nelson in Bequest to the Nation, and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian in The Bounty).
Production Source material
The film is drawn from the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, but matches the events in no one novel. The author drew from real events in the Napoleonic Wars, as he describes in the introduction to the first novel, Master and Commander. Various opinions have been offered with regard to which Royal Navy captain most closely matches the fictional character of Aubrey; David Cordingly, writing for The Daily Telegraph, suggested Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, a view with which the Royal Navy Museum concurs, at least with regard to the inspiration for the captain's character in the first novel, Master and Commander.
While no specific British naval officer is a complete match for Aubrey, the exploits of two naval captains are said to have inspired events in the novels, the forementioned Captain Lord Thomas Cochrane, and Captain William Wolseley. Cochrane used the ruse of placing a light on a floating barrel at night to avoid capture. Wolseley, aboard HMS Papillon, disguised a ship under his command as a commercial boat; on discovering information that a rogue ship was on the other side of a small island, he sailed around the island and captured the Spanish ship, on April 15, 1805.
The film combines elements from three different novels by O'Brian, but its principal source is his tenth novel, The Far Side of the World. The film, however, takes place in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars rather than during the War of 1812; University of St. Francis historian Cathy Schultz claimed that the "filmmakers thought American audiences might not want to see Americans as the villains", leading them to "switc[h] the events to 1805", an assertion strongly disputed by 20th Century Fox chief executive Tom Rothman, who initiated the film's development. Rothman also denied claims that France had been used as the villain due to its objection to the Iraq War. He argued that the setting had been changed in order to avoid lengthy historical exposition on why the United States and the United Kingdom were fighting. Rothman also omitted scenes portraying homosexuality, violent impressment and corporal punishments of sailors, and severe hardships of life at sea in order to obtain a PG-13 rating. With regard to further differences between source novel and film, the fictional opponent was changed from USS Norfolk to the U.S.-built French privateer frigate Acheron. As well, the film excludes scenes from the books that took place in ports, and, besides Brazilian women in a single scene, the novels' female characters were not adapted.
The episode in which Aubrey deceives the enemy by means of a raft bearing lanterns is taken from Master and Commander, while the episode in which Maturin directs surgery on himself, while gritting his teeth in pain, to remove a bullet is taken from HMS Surprise.)
Development 20th Century Fox executive Tom Rothman had wished to adapt O'Brian's novels since first reading them, recognizing the potential for a film franchise. He originally began developing the film at The Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1993. However, the film was later acquired by Touchstone Pictures with John McTiernan hired as director. When Rothman became the CEO of Fox, he re-acquired the rights in 1998 and recruited director Peter Weir to helm the project.
Filming
Great efforts were made to reproduce the authentic look and feel of life aboard an early nineteenth-century man-of-war. In addition to 2,000 hats and 1,900 pairs of shoes, some 400 pounds of hair were used on actors.
However, only ten days of the filming took place at sea aboard Rose (a reproduction of the 18th-century post ship HMS Rose). Other scenes were shot on a full-scale replica mounted on gimbals in a nearly 20-million-gallon tank at Baja Studios in Mexico, built for the filming of Titanic (1997).
There was a third HMS Surprise which was a scale model built by Weta Workshop. A storm sequence was enhanced using digitally composited footage of waves shot on board a modern replica of Cook's Endeavour rounding Cape Horn. All of the actors were given a thorough grounding in the naval life of the period in order to make their performances as authentic as possible. The ship's boats used in the film were Russian Naval six- and four-oared yawls supplied by Central Coast Charters and Boat Base Monterey. Their faithful 18th-century appearance complemented the historical accuracy of the rebuilt Rose, whose own boat, the Thorn, could be used only in the Brazilian scene.
Master and Commander was the first non-documentary film to shoot on location in the Galápagos. Filming took place from June to November 2002.
Sound Sound designer Richard King earned Master and Commander an Oscar for its sound effects by going to great lengths to record realistic sounds, particularly for the battle scenes and the storm scenes. King and director Peter Weir began by spending months reading the Patrick O'Brian novels in search of descriptions of the sounds that would have been heard on board the ship—for example, the "screeching bellow" of cannon fire and the "deep howl" of a cannonball passing overhead.
King worked with the film's Lead Historical Consultant Gordon Laco, who located collectors in Michigan who owned a 24-pounder and a 12-pounder cannon. King, Laco, and two assistants went to a National Guard base in Michigan and recorded the sounds of the cannon firing. They placed microphones near the cannon to get the "crack" of the cannon fire, and also about downrange to record the "shrieking" of the chain shot as it passed overhead. They also recorded the sounds of bar shot and grape shot passing overhead, and later mixed the sounds of all three types of shot for the battle scenes.
For the sounds of the shot hitting the ships, they set up wooden targets at the artillery range and blasted them with the cannon, but found the sonic results underwhelming. Instead, they returned to Los Angeles and there recorded sounds of wooden barrels being destroyed. King sometimes added the "crack" of a rifle shot to punctuate the sound of a cannonball hitting a ship's hull.