Master and Commander: Patrick O’Brian: Book 1 (Aubrey-Maturin)

Product Information

Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the Admiralty by his erratic voting as a Member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbour, a man with strong Navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is on even worse terms with his wife, Sophie, whose mother has ferreted out a most damaging trove of old personal letters. Some may say Master and Commander is just too male, and too white, to be called a true classic. I may say, if so, that some should have a word with my mum, a teacher of English literature, a lover of Eliot and Austen who treats O’Brian’s novels as holy writ and loves the film as much as me. Arising from which, a confession: I haven’t read O’Brian’s books. I got about a chapter into the first novel, Master and Commander itself, before deciding I’d rather read Flashman. In my defense, I was 16 and an idiot. Rising prices, slow LGU spending seen as threats to PHL growth outlook November 29, 2023 | 12:33 am Along their journey, Maturin climbs the Thousand Steps of the sacred crater of the orangutans; a killer typhoon catches Aubrey and his crew trying to work the Dianeoff a reef; and, in the barbaric court of Pulo Prabang, a classic duel of intelligence agents unfolds: the French envoys, well entrenched in the Sultan’s good graces, against the savage cunning of Stephen Maturin. Master and Commander Books #14: The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)

But this online masculine ideal is rigid and conservative, emphasizing toughness, hypersexuality, aggression, control, and self-sufficiency. So why was this marvel of modern cinema only a modest box office success? And why have there been no sequels, in an age of universes and franchises based on source material of infinitely less literary weight than O’Brian’s, never mind a whole Ridley Scott movie devoted to “ that raggedy arse Napoleon”? (Which I can’t wait to see.) Tasked with ferrying a British ambassador to the Sultan of Kampong, they find themselves on a prolonged voyage aboard a Royal Navy frigate en route to the Malay Peninsula. The Aubrey/Maturin series are classics. They are quite simply the best historical novels ever written. This admiration of the Surprise’s masculine community, where different kinds of men are celebrated, serves as a positive counter model to the angst and toxicity of the manosphere.The sea itself already had a nacreous light that belonged more to the day than the darkness, and this light was reflected in the great convexities of the topsails, giving them the lustre of grey pearls.”

Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields. And a moderate box office success from 2003 has become an unlikely streaming favorite, a poster child for the kind of movies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore, and a beacon of positive masculinity.” A tweet announces the “hot new bachelor party activity” is historic gunnery exercises, with the “boys hooting and hollering as they drink grog firing three broadsides in two minutes.” The portrayals of these two men and their friendship — their abiding love for each other overcoming differences of politics and personality — carry the film. At times, Weir’s film seems to be a pure character study; the Acheron’s chase and capture matter much less than the development of this key male friendship.But it is not necessarily the masculine, nautical adventures that appeal to men so much as the film’s healthy and loving male relationships. They open a window into a world two hundred years gone - the world of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This was a time of blood and thunder, of maritime siege, a war of long, patient endurance against a tenacious and powerful enemy. The performances of the protagonists are gentle, subtle and lifelike. Crowe gives a rugged and charismatic performance as the tradition-loving Aubrey. Bettany as the charmingly lubberly Maturin is the perfect complement to Aubrey, even as he differs from his book counterpart, his role as an intelligence agent being conspicuously absent from the script. Ric Jerrom reads the novel with clarity, feeling, and wit, modifying his voice effectively for the different seamen, whether common or elite, English or foreign, old or young, drunk or sober, pleasant or nasty, and so on. He brings the book vividly to life.

But, appropriate to the film’s rapid meme-ification – the lesser of two weevils for grumpy old guys like me, if it means new generations come to the film – something that spread rapidly on the internet offers some sort of hope. To quote Garth Franklin, editor of DarkHorizons.com: “Needless to say this is not real, but God I wish it were.”

Director Taika Waititi has called it his comfort film as well as his favorite romance movie, saying their relationship is “palpable.”