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There was definitely a period in late high school/early college for me where I considered Peter Weir’s 2003 historical epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World one of my favourite movies. It brought history to life for me in a way almost no movie before or since has done, and did so while being exciting and dramatic and a really charming -even through the gritty accuracy- portrayal of life aboard a British naval frigate at the turn of the nineteenth century. As I watched more and more movies, expanding my cinematic palette and tastes it lost that particular space of reverence, but not any of the appeal; and watching it again I’m still immensely thrilled by it, and in ways I couldn’t articulate or appreciate back then. This was a big-budget period movie about sailing the high seas that came out the same year as the first Pirates of the Caribbean and did about the opposite of everything that made that movie popular -and it has probably aged a lot better as a result.
Certainly for its painstaking period detail, but also in its attention to how story and characters are informed by the political and economic context of their larger world, without really drawing such a thing in overly conspicuous terms. By couching it in the realism with which the movie approaches its world, Master and Commander can comment organically on the strict class distinctions and politics that govern life aboard the HMS Surprise -which as Captain Aubrey states outright by the end, is a microcosm of England.
This movie is quietly one of the best at illustrating and critiquing Britain’s rigid class system of then and now -the ways both subtle and overt that it manifests and defines the lives of every man on that ship, effecting their worldview, relationships, and psychologies. It showcases how this structure can be subverted and challenged, though critically never overthrown. After all the Surprise functions well with it, triumphs even.
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Master and Commander can be read as a pro-British imperialist text, as the source novels by Patrick O’Brian certainly were with their celebration of naval tradition and sentimentality towards the British world around the height of its Empire. The movie’s reflection of this is clear in the status quo it draws, complete with inequities, that are nevertheless reinforced by movie’s end. The objections and radical politics of the symbolically modern Dr. Maturin fall by the wayside, at least for now, as every man knows his place and the one individual who attempted to cross that bridge has died. There is nothing at all wrong with the system, questioning it can be tolerated but not taken seriously, any real challenge of dissent or insubordination must be met with harshly, and the ship and society will run the better for it; Rule Britannia and God Save the King!
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And yet this work of British patriotism, of imperial validity, is fascinating in how it is brought to life by several non-British entities. It is the product of 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Miramax Films, and Samuel Goldwyn Films -all American companies. The movie was greenlit by Fox executive Tom Rothman, also an American and an avowed fan of the books, who saw it as a personal passion project to bring them to the big screen. To helm the film he tapped not someone like James Ivory, Anthony Minghella, Kenneth Branagh or any other seasoned British director of period dramas, but the acclaimed Australian filmmaker Peter Weir, whose previous movie was the decidedly un-British, un-period, un-epic The Truman Show. Weir wrote the screenplay with the Scottish John Collee, brought aboard his old cinematographer Russell Boyd from his early Australian films (incidentally one of the few recipients of an Oscar for this film over the mammoth wave that was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) and editor Lee Smith. And cast in the leading role of the heroic English Captain Jack Aubrey, the single strongest avatar of British imperial fortitude, was Russell Crowe -also an Aussie- hot off of major U.S. hits Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind.
So it is fair to see Master and Commander, for all of its pro-British pomp and fervour, as an external interpretation of that socio-cultural world and its class system; and perhaps is the reason why there’s any critique of it present in the movie at all. Where one might expect a movie of this kind to centre Captain “Lucky Jack” as the main point-of-view figure for the audience, it is rather the more grounded, less prestigious characters around him with whom the audience is meant to identify -specifically Dr. Maturin, Midshipman Lord Blakeney and Midshipman Hollom- all admittedly of a certain station above the general lesser seamen but closer to them in character and interest than the insulated officers.
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Lord Blakeney (Max Pirkis) may be the poshest of them, but he is also a kid and that lack of maturity separates him from the others in the officer class, with the exception of surrogate older brother Peter Calamy (Max Benitz). He is often down among the labourers and the sailors –it is through his eyes that a lot of their experience is communicated, and it’s suggestive that this exposure in concert with the loss of his arm early on is what hardens him, resulting in this ten year-old leading a charge in the climax when the French storm Surprise. Blakeney is our point of reference for some of the grandiosity, the danger, and the conditions aboard the ship, but he also walks that line where the class divide is successfully and has his ear in both worlds. However, as a noble’s son he must always come back to his privilege.
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Meanwhile, Midshipman Hollom (Lee Ingleby) would seemingly rather rid himself of his privilege altogether –as someone who identifies with the crew more than the officers but who is resented by them, mocked and humiliated for his apparent cowardice. Hollom should never have been in the navy, is palpably uninterested in advancement, and his point-of-view is that of a man deeply uncomfortable in his rank and station, and whose presence makes the divides all the more clear. In his relationship to the crew the movie emphasizes the rigidity of this system, that even those most harmed and suppressed by it still live by it and reject deviations like Hollom, who doesn’t seem to know his place like the other officers. It’s at the root of their manifested harshness, they can abide being inferior to certain men -but not a man like this, perceptibly weak and dull, unintelligent and gormless. Hence why they are willing to break protocol around him, opaquely insulting him as they scrub the deck while he is in earshot, jostling him as they pass -something caught by the captain, whose authority and superiority they do respect -and which comes with consequences that will only inflame further their disdain for the man. It is more than rejection and insecurity that kills Hollom, it is the confluence of factors in that world order which renders him an outlier in a time when such a thing is unthinkable. And the poor lad had no resolve for his subversions.
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Doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) however does -a consequence perhaps of being both close to the captain and well-respected for his expertise. While he doesn’t have a real rapport with the crew, he understands and respects them, and holds some pretty radical opinions in their interest. After the whipping of Nagle (Bryan Dick) for his insubordination towards Hollom, he has a terse argument with Jack in which he in a very modern way criticizes and invalidates the social conditions aboard the Surprise. “You see, I’m rather understanding of mutinies,” he says. “Men pressed from their homes, their chosen occupations, confined for months aboard a wooden prison.” The argument escalates in terms as much as one in an online forum would, to laws of nature and hierarchies (which the movie’s framing soundly shuts down) and outright authoritarianism. At every stage, Stephen is rebuffed. “Men must be governed,” insists Jack, and when Stephen compares him to Bonaparte himself, he hollowly shoots back: “You’ve come to the wrong ship for anarchy brother.” It’s a tense sequence that speaks boldly of class conflict philosophy, and identifies an enmity even to their two somewhat oppositional disciplines -but it speaks also to their friendship strongly.
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That Stephen can say these things openly without fear of harsh reprisal or outright punishment -which he would doubtless receive from a commanding officer whom he doesn’t know on a personal level- is indicative of the strength of their relationship and his confidence that his opinions matter to Jack. And while Stephen is certainly a man of some privilege and status aboard the ship, he is of a different breed than Jack and the other officers. There is a sense of grounded humility to the good doctor that is alien to the rich naval tradition Jack is so determined to uphold. Certainly, his passions are different, his determination to see and naturalistically explore the Galapagos connecting with those more noble pursuits of sailing the high seas. For this, he is an anomaly, existing almost outside of the hierarchy that the rest of the ship abides by, and on a meta level he may be something of an antidote to the pervading classism. He allows the audience to experience it as it is, tolerate it at times, but never dismiss or ignore it. Through Stephen Maturin we recognize the inequities of the Surprise and of the larger British Empire it represents with both inevitable, uncompromising grandeur and entrenchment, and the subjective understanding of its evils and ignorance.
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Still, the movie has a tendency to romanticize its class system a touch, in the general romanticization of the period and setting itself that is so openly engaged in. Master and Commander doesn’t depict scurvy or mutiny or any of the really horrible and harrowing facts of life aboard a ship like this. The discomforts and everyday toils that are seen are presented with neutral comment, everybody knows their place and does their job without complaint. And in their cooperation and united goals, their work is idealized –contributing to the ship’s function and to the great enterprise of sinking enemy French vessels. When fans, typically male fans, talk of imagining themselves on a nineteenth century ship of the line like this, they’re likely picturing themselves in the cushy officer class and not as the lower deck crew.
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And yet there’s a way in which romanticism is not a bad thing, and I think measured navigation of that is the key to why Master and Commander works in spite of its apparent positive expression of British Empire and class disparity. The romance of this film is in its spirit and its relationships more than its specificity of historical context, where that is represented purely through laudable details of authenticity. A romance that comes in the pronouncement of friendship between the officers, Aubrey and Maturin most notably, and fellowship amongst the crew. I know that the moments that particularly stay with me are the scenes of Jack and the officers singing merrily over dinner, or he and Stephen playing music in his cabin, or the crew just hanging out, otherwise working together efficiently to complete their tasks; and especially there’s the beat of Jack abandoning the hunt he has so obsessively been pursuing in order to save Stephen’s life. The bond between Blakeney and Calamy stands out, and the student-teacher dynamic that blossoms between Blakeney and the doctor. “You have the makings of a naturalist,” Stephen observes, and it’s not hard to see Blakeney’s new passion realized in a way it would not have had he not been sent to sea. There’s even a small focus placed on the close friendship between two crewmen, Nagle and Warley (Joseph Morgan) the latter of whom gives the captain important strategic information he was by chance privy to before he is sadly abandoned at sea when he falls overboard during a storm.
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Scenes like this are not taken lightly. Though few of the characters are granted dimension over the course of the movie you feel an attachment via familiarity –same as would likely be developed aboard these actual ships. You love how the young crewmen listen with reverence to the elder Plaice (George Innes) spinning yarns and conspiracies following his open brain surgery, you see the trust and admiration the captain has for his coxswain Bonden (Billy Boyd) and his steward “Preserved” Killick (David Threlfall). The weight of the deaths at the end of several of the crew, lower class and officers alike, feels genuinely solemn for this –and the assistance the silent “Awkward” Davies (Patrick Gallagher) lends Blakeney with tying up Calamy’s body bag is played with solemn virtue. Even if based in a context of empire-building, rigid conformity, and systemic suppression, there is nonetheless an endearing sense of community aboard this ship that Weir and his cast construct with aplomb.
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Again, I don’t believe a wholly British film would have been able to accomplish this. Master and Commander, in a way, needed to be a Hollywood production. And if the trade-off for that was substituting the American enemy from the book The Far Side of the World (from which most of the plot derives) for the French, it’s a small price to pay. It really is a tremendous film that has underrated nuances of character and craft beyond the exquisite period detail. And its approach to class politics is unique and fascinating, with that blend of complex honesty and critique and romance so captivating a conversation regardless of how you take it. It doesn’t necessarily break barriers, but by that token it doesn’t reinforce them either -it presents openly a world and its rules, and entertains the varying subjective ways these can be framed. Every few years I come back to it and find something new to appreciate -maybe in 2026 there will be a new angle I’ll write about it from. But I think in one last note on these particular themes, it is critical that in the title and the key relationship itself, Master comes before Commander. Peter Weir understood why that was, and his film does an apt job reflecting its truth.
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