2004 Oscar Dialogue: Master and Commander

Martin Scribbs | I Keep Confusing This with Boat Trip

The question on the table: Is Master and Commander worthy of the Oscar for Best Picture of 2003?

Master and Commander celebrates such martial virtues as patriotism, loyalty and devotion to duty. It is an apology for authority, a rousing practicum on the necessity of obedience. No thoughtful person could be wholly unsympathetic to these designs.

But the sorrows of 2003, America's worst war year in over a decade, bear more than a passing resemblance to the events of M&C. All wars bear a family likeness. As Chris Hedges noted in his brilliant "War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning," war requires all from it participants, consumes all, exposes all and excuses all. Men leave their families, go into wild places and kill strangers on sight. And once you get into the thicket, questions of justice in warfare are laughably remote.

In 2003, what our psychic diet needed most wasn't blood and bombast. No, it needed films to reawaken our respect for life and love of peace. Tranquility, humility, penance and other human possibilities not found on CNN abounded in fare as varied as Lost in Translation, Thirteen, The Station Agent, Finding Nemo and In America. Dozens of great movies did in 2003 what Master and Commander did not: nourish our inner lives.

So why is M&C up for an Oscar? Was it the many ahem manly sea shanties? The Alan Colmes-ian conviction that Paul Bettany brought to the role of the semi-pacifistic ship doctor Maturin? The cinematic floggings? The gruesome and prolonged auto-surgery, perhaps?

No, the real appeal lay in its facile treatment of battle. On the high seas, there are no innocents caught in the crossfire. No lengthy occupation and rebuilding. The opponents are obvious cads and bullies. Master and Commander, unfortunately, is a fantasy about conflict that viewers used to escape from thinking about the messy belligerence in which their nation had become engaged.

To close: a comparison of 2003's two Captian Jacks. In a rare moment of genuine emotion, Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean tells Elizabeth, "Wherever we want to go, we'll go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That's what a ship needs. But what a ship is, what the Black Pearl really is, is freedom." By contrast, Jack Aubrey, a pinched, humorless, constipated man, sees only the prospect of homeland defense, telling his men, "England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England."

After the imperial excesses of 2003, which man do you want to sail with?

Stephen Himes | The Red Herring of False Analogies

I'm sorry Master and Commander didn't exactly nourish your inner life. I too thought of the war on terror when poor Nemo followed the "big butt" that drug him away from the reef he had previously called home. Personally, I thought of little Nemo as a John Walker Lindh figure, whose tragic home life had stifled his adventuring spirit, drawn tragically toward the big butt of radical Islam, only to be saved by his father, although not without tragedies. Can we open our hearts to Lindh and hope that he recieves the same fate as his doppleganger Nemo, and be returned — scarred perhaps, like with Nemo's wounded fin — to the father that loves him? We must thanks the fine folks at Pixar for such a rousing and complex argument in these morally muddy times.

But instead of further pursuing the red herring of false analogies, let's just look at what Master and Commander actually is. I found Master and Commander to be a literate essay on the complex relationship between the imperialist mind and the new morality of the modern man. Lucky Jack is a man of the Romantic Period, of the old God-and-Country ways; he might be Coleridge's Ancient Mariner as a younger man. Where the mariner represented the Christian soul, Jack Aubrey is a more secular being, a disciple of the imperial code. In Coleridge's poem, the albatross is a vehicle of guilt and penance — but here, the albatross is Dr. Maturin. Why? The brilliant sequence in which the good doctor is shot (like the albatross in poem; indeed, it happens while the doctor is chasing a bird) points us to the answer. His desire to learn rather than conquer, to understand rather than fight, intrigues Captain Jack — but how do two such different men connect in such intimate ways?

Master and Commander takes place at the dawn of the modern age, when knowledge both destroyed (look to the "modern" design of the French ship) and increased understanding of the natural world. Aubrey's empathy for Maturin's desires — his admiration for the doctor's adventuresome spirit — deepens the friendship. Maturin pursued the modern age (like his quest for the flightless bird) with the same spirit Aubrey pursued the marauding French ship. That's where the two mesh, both as characters and allegories. Maturin's yearning for learning, facilitated by his desire for adventure, doesn't displace man's desire to conquer — but repositions the question: man's desire to conquer what? The coming Age of Reason is the albatross hung about Jack Aubrey and his "centuries of privilege," an albatross that will also be the vehicle to heal all those old wounds. Is there heroism in Aubrey's Ahabian quest for the Acheron? Maybe not, but according to the imperial code, there is. But Maturin tries to reason him out of it. That's the essential, and relevant, conflict. The ship is England — it's not purely heroic, but its two major figures are the flip sides of the coin of man's desires at the dawn of the modern age.

Superstition and nationalism did not die with the modern age. Reason has not, and will not, ever completely displace man's belief in the unknown, be it in religion or superstition. Nor will reason ever displace nationalism or man's conflicts with his fellow man. But reason can be a guiding light as long as it's not benign to the truths of man's natural struggles between belief and understanding, between fight and flight. That's the essense of Master and Commander's friendship. The old and new are inextricably linked. Capt. Sparrow might be an attractive romantic, but this big ship we're already riding on isn't purely about freedom. It's about something more complex than that. That's what Master and Commander is about, and that's why it's a great and relevant film.

Martin Scribbs | Gladiator, British Naval Officer, John Nash … Is There Any Village Person Russell Crowe Can't Play?

Let's not abandon "the red herring of false analogies" too hastily! That plucky li'l herring was the star of Finding Nemo's outtakes, and I have high hopes for his future career as a Pixar spinoff. He'll be bigger, perhaps, than even the "sea urchin of sweeping generalizations" or "the red, red rooster of cum hoc, ergo propter hoc."

I'd agree that if there were something great about Master and Commander, an ingredient to elevate it from swashbuckling time filler to Best Picture territory, it would be the loving relationship between the captain and the doctor. I'd also agree that the film worked doggedly to present a contrast and then a reconciliation between the mindsets of these men. Indeed, little Midshipman Blakeney's sole reason for being, aside from oozing unction from his digitally created stump, seems to be that he may suggest the synthesis between the role of captain and that of scientist: "Well sir, perhaps I can combine them to be a sort of fighting naturalist, like you." (I believe Maturin's reply, and I paraphrase, went, "Why, Pip, you've captured our Zeitgeist in a bottle! If this weren't a PG-13 rendition of British naval life, I'd kiss you smack on the mouth!")

Director Peter Weir did everything but sound the clanging gong of foreshadowing when he introduced the idea of natural camouflage to Aubrey. Do you think that Aubrey will adapt that very idea for his military ends? Well, to anyone who didn't see that plot twist coming creakily down the pike, I very much envy your ability to be continually surprised at the movies.

The relationship between Aubrey and Maturin doesn't need to be explained by reference to any of the various ages of history. Their relationship, that between power and knowledge, has endured unchanged from time immemorial. Power orders, forbids and co-opts, because it can. Knowledge serves, because it must. If power deigns to become a little more knowledgeable, it is only so that it may become yet more powerful. Master and Commander illustrates this discouraging dynamic in a historically accurate context, but the dynamic itself is beyond the periodicities of history.

It's not that progress is impossible, that we are no better, or more humane, than we were during the Napoleanic Wars. But all of our progress in those regards took place on dry land, among persons at liberty to speak freely. Once we get into the boat, once we embark on a militaristic venture flying under the flag of a chartering nation, the captain of that boat is surely right to demand obedience and service, the building blocks of shipboard order. He is right to be a despot, for all of his men need him to be firmly in control. And bully for him if he can import a few vestiges of civility onto the ship, and so make his ship a bit more England. My concern, and I think the fatal flaw of Master and Commander, is that what the film really recommends is making England a bit more like the ship.

In Master and Commander, Weir's vision of the Surprise as a floating city is quite remarkable in its construction. It also expands the Surprise into that good ol' metaphor of humans' place in the universe — one you would probably (and with some justification) declare a ship of fools. Still, Weir's dramatic rendering of spectacle (the storms, the battles, the foggy visions) recall the spiritual sea voyages of yesteryear. Weir's direction isn't the equivalent of Coleridge's versification of seaborn spiritual conflict, but it's good enough to warrant a Best Director nomination.

Martin Scribbs | Oscar's Got Some Sea Legs

Look at Master and Commander's 10 Oscar nominations:

But both you and I found the heart of the film to lie in the difficult friendship between the captain and doctor; neither Russell Crowe as Aubrey nor Paul Bettany as Maturin got an Oscar nod. Moreover, the film found no purchase in the adapted screenplay category. While any aspect of a film can appeal to the mind or to the gut, acting and writing comprise the most traditionally cerebral of the minor categories. The players and the play are more critical to presenting ideas that all the cinema and stagecraft surrounding them. We've discussed M&C's arguments, explicit and implied, those regarding virtue, modernity, change and just governance. For all its successes in the categories of sight and sound, Master and Commander got shafted in the idea categories.

So, in considering Best Picture and Directing, which are categories cumulative of everything that can possibly go into a movie, it's worth asking whether technical mastery can form the complete basis for a win. The answer is it can, and has. Titanic, which both won those same two Oscars for James Cameron, wasn't even nominated for its screenplay or its actors, and won neither actress award. Titanic was, however, graced with a boatload of nominations, including one in each of the 10 categories where M&C has now been short-listed.

If Master and Commander goes on to win the biggest of all showbiz awards, my heart will go on. But when elevating a film to be an emblem for all that was right about film in 2003, the year of shock and awe, I'd much prefer the still, deep waters of Lost in Translation. If Seabiscuit wins, you take the rowboat; the Jacks (Sparrow, Aubrey, Dawson) and I would rather go down with the ship.

Stephen Himes | If You Were Paul Bettany, Would You Get Out of Bed …

… ever? I wouldn't, unless my wife Jennifer Connelly needed some help in the kitchen, or asked me to regrout the tiles. Whatever my wife Jennifer Connelly would want, she would get. Tuesday must have been a lousy morning to be Bettany — get out of bed with my wife Jennifer Connelly, make some coffee for my wife Jennifer Connelly, ask my wife Jennifer Connelly to turn on the TV, only to find out that my wife Jennifer Connelly and I were both snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

I like your comparison to Titanic, but I don't think Master and Commander has near the appeal of that movie. It has as much appeal to the female crowd as do my hockey pads after a week in the trunk of my car. There's no romance here, unless you count the camaraderie of the two leads. It's not the best movie of the year, and though the academy decided to bestow its accolades elsewhere, those two performances were still strong. So, if Paul were the Alan Colmes of the Surprise, that makes Russell Sean Hannity, right? That makes a lotta sense on a certain level, doesn't it?

E-mail Martin Scribbs at bluerb@yahoo.com.

E-mail Stephen Himes at stephenhimes@hotmail.com.

— graphic by D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)