The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Wooden Ships and Iron Men

Where, as a saying I heard recently goes, men are men, and sheep are scared. But anyway.

Watched Master and Commander today with Tali and Laurent. It was good times. Probable spoilers ahead, Cap'n! You wonder about massive historical epics, some days - are they going to deliver something of appropriate goodness? Uphold the glory of the profession, and all that? Fortunately, recent ones have - Braveheart did, in it's way, Gladiator did in it's. This one keeps up. Not as well, but it does.

I went in, I guess, expecting an epic. What I got wasn't particularly epic, but once I realized that, I was happy with it. I mean, what I was expecting was along the lines of Trafalgar, and what I got was two ships chasing each other around for a while with tons of little scenes about what it was like to be on a ship and such as that. As I am the sort of person that revels in that sort of thing, I was pleased. In fact, everything looked so cool, and was played so well, that I pretty much ignored the story and just sat there going "Dude! Dude!" for a while. Anybody who revels in such things is likely to be pleased by that if nothing else. I'm sure they had to wipe Marechal's seat, after. ;)

One thing grated, and that slightly - the naturalist and the Galapagos and such. For all I know, this was common on ships of the era. OTOH, the whole setup seemed far too much "let's ape Darwin because we can!" for my taste. Also seemed somewhat overblown and pointless to the story. Maybe. I would have to see it again to tell. A minor point, in any case. And it must be said that the actor playing said naturalist, this man, is a genius. Among other things, he was also the best part of both A Knight's Tale and A Beautiful Mind. Not so much this, but that's only because everything about this was cool.

The mark of a good movie is when I sit there for two hours in awe, not moving at all. I did that for this movie.

Posted by Dwip at November 22, 2003 9:31 PM