![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThe two radiograms turned out to be the extent of today's action at the Execute Package, and when I called Natalie upon the conclusion of my shift, we agreed to meet at the Outback Restaurant at the intersection of I-45 and Beltway 8 for dinner, to be followed by the 6:15 pm showing of Master and Commander.
Dinner was very nice, and we made the movie with some minutes to spare.
The movie itself was engaging. I have to assume that much of what I perceived as out-of-the-ordinary was really an effort to hew to the historically accurate (which I seem to recall was one of Patrick O'Brian's long suits). My recent reading of Patricia Cornwall's book on "Saucy Jack" emphasizes the lack of septic praxis in the late 1800s, which makes it easy to imagine what the standard operating procedure might have been among doctors around 1805, which was the era of the movie - or maybe this is well and truly beyond my imagining, as I seem to recall descriptions of battlefield medicine from the Civil War era that are nothing if not physically painful to read.
And yet, in some ways, the story told in the film seemed anachronistic (i.e., out of place, out of time) given the modern stress on the outré. There wasn't a twisted individual in sight, nor were there any gratuitous sexual overtones. What I found particularly heartening was the utter lack of whining in the story. The movie stressed "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," without making a big deal, necessarily, of it being men doing it (whatever "it" actually was). Then again, aside from some momentary glimpses of females in some of the boats that met the HMS Surprise early in the film, women played no role in the film at all.
At all times, I felt the tension in the film was "just right," except for the weak, albeit effective, resolution of the problem with the young officer who could not command the respect of the enlisted (or impressed) men. I found the ocean cinematography to be breathtaking (or perhaps I was simply sitting too close to the screen), and the character played by Russell Crowe - Captain Jack Aubrey - seemed overall to strike the proper balance between hero and mud-on-feet-everyman.
Somewhere - probably in some of the blurb associated with this film or the series of books upon which it is based - I learned that the ship's doctor is also a member of H.M. Secret Service. No evidence of this became apparent during the 139 minutes of the film, which attests either to the high level of training back in the "old days" of the Secret Service (which might correspond to the "Old Corps" for gyrenes) or simply cinematographic expediency. Regardless, I found the film very engaging, and one I think I could watch several times more.
Cheers...
Dinner was very nice, and we made the movie with some minutes to spare.
The movie itself was engaging. I have to assume that much of what I perceived as out-of-the-ordinary was really an effort to hew to the historically accurate (which I seem to recall was one of Patrick O'Brian's long suits). My recent reading of Patricia Cornwall's book on "Saucy Jack" emphasizes the lack of septic praxis in the late 1800s, which makes it easy to imagine what the standard operating procedure might have been among doctors around 1805, which was the era of the movie - or maybe this is well and truly beyond my imagining, as I seem to recall descriptions of battlefield medicine from the Civil War era that are nothing if not physically painful to read.
And yet, in some ways, the story told in the film seemed anachronistic (i.e., out of place, out of time) given the modern stress on the outré. There wasn't a twisted individual in sight, nor were there any gratuitous sexual overtones. What I found particularly heartening was the utter lack of whining in the story. The movie stressed "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," without making a big deal, necessarily, of it being men doing it (whatever "it" actually was). Then again, aside from some momentary glimpses of females in some of the boats that met the HMS Surprise early in the film, women played no role in the film at all.
At all times, I felt the tension in the film was "just right," except for the weak, albeit effective, resolution of the problem with the young officer who could not command the respect of the enlisted (or impressed) men. I found the ocean cinematography to be breathtaking (or perhaps I was simply sitting too close to the screen), and the character played by Russell Crowe - Captain Jack Aubrey - seemed overall to strike the proper balance between hero and mud-on-feet-everyman.
Somewhere - probably in some of the blurb associated with this film or the series of books upon which it is based - I learned that the ship's doctor is also a member of H.M. Secret Service. No evidence of this became apparent during the 139 minutes of the film, which attests either to the high level of training back in the "old days" of the Secret Service (which might correspond to the "Old Corps" for gyrenes) or simply cinematographic expediency. Regardless, I found the film very engaging, and one I think I could watch several times more.
Cheers...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-29 11:37 pm (UTC)Other books in the series go into the practice of medicine at the time in much greater detail. Many of Steven's remedies were just plain wrong, but typical of the time. If you get into the series, there are two books by Dean King that were written to go with the series and give much more detail about geography, medicine, food, etc: "A Sea Of Words", a lexicon, and "Harbors and High Seas", an atlas and geographical guide. I bought them right away.
The plot (while a bit compressed - ie, more action in one movie than was usual in one book) was a much better rendering of O'Brian's work than I expected. The flavor was there, and given how much has to be cut away to make a movie plot, it wasn't bad at all. In the books, Steven is shown to be a total lubber, so his ignorance served as a way to talk about sailing, rigging, and the like. I missed that in the movie. But then, in a book you can linger over interesting details that just make a movie too long.