Ray Pride

Whatever subject they explore, Peter Weir's movies seethe with confidence.

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" has a readymade audience in the acolytes of Patrick O'Brian's twenty seafaring novels that chart the friendship, follies and victories of Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). (David Mamet considers the late O'Brian one of the greatest novelists of the past thirty years.) Others will savor Russell Crowe at his most masculine yet most contemplative. Crowe plays Aubrey as a man of calculation and bluster, of confidence yet concerned for the safety of his crew and his ship.

But for me, whether haunting earlier work like "Picnic at Hanging Rock" "The Last Wave," "Fearless," or popular successes like "Dead Poets Society," "Witness" or "The Truman Show," the 61-year-old writer-director's work is always an event. (A DVD with "The Plumber" and "The Cars That Ate Paris" was just released by Home Vision, with succinct interviews with Weir, taped while he was editing.)

"Master and Commander" is set in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars. Most of Weir's movie takes place onboard ship, teeming with sailors, men and boys alike, weaponry, ambition. When the crew alights in Galapagos, Weir's wonderment shines: this is the strangeness that met explorers each turn of the way, a place as brilliantly colored and strikingly strange as the surface of another planet.

"O'Brien's writing," Weir says, "Mmmm. So full of wonderful images." But much of Weir's influence, both while working and in his movies, comes from music and sound. "There were paintings to be looked at. But for me, there were all sorts of other things. Music plays a primary role, at least at much as the visual, in settling into [a story]. For whatever reasons music seems to be suggestive of even more images for me. On occasions, I had tapes and CDs made up of music to listen to in the car, and different tracks will send me to different parts of the story. I think the music is important in the way that it inhibits the intellect and allows this more unconscious thought to come to mind."

There's a lot of nineteenth century sailor-speak in "Master and Commander." "Well, that was a concern in early screenings with the studio," Weir says, calmly, "that there were too many [terms of art] that were incomprehensible to the majority of people. I thought they were part of the atmosphere of reading the books. It is true, you do trip over them. But it lends an authenticity. My final point to any concerned executives was that if we were doing a medical story, we wouldn't say, instead of 'Pass that scalpel,' 'Pass that knife.' It just doesn't go that way! It helps you understand that you are entering a very foreign world. For O'Brien, he was not going to condescend to you. You had to join that ship like the landlubber you were."

The movie's opening reels are mesmerizing in their use of sound, easing an audience into this strange world. "Exactly the plan. Generally speaking, [old movies set on the sea had] a very big score. When the sails went up, the music went up, when the sea was wild, the orchestra came in with a complementary feeling. But I wanted you to get to know the sounds. My experience of traveling [on a ship is] is that there was always sound, there everything was moving and rubbing and creaking and grinding or falling. I wanted the audience to have those sounds in their ears."

Another memorable sound is Crowe's grumbly voice, which dialect coaches suggested should essentially be his own Australian accent. Crowe's kind of a throwback, offering lessons in swagger. "If overt masculinity is a throwback, possibly yes to that. There are very few [actors who suited the role] and considering the casting, there was Russell and, you know, there was Russell. I think he's strongly male. And in a period picture, it can be demonstrated in a way that masculinity was in that period. I think it's very attractive to people."

Weir had turned the project down. "I said to the studio, when turning it down the second time, 'Look, I love the series. But I would prefer one of the books toward the middle of the series, where it's a long voyage.' And they rightly said, 'What about the friendship? In book one, you see them meet.' And I said, 'Well, why not go on a mission and learn they're friends during the course of that mission?' But I felt since this genre, as they say, was being reawakened, you had to do something fresh."

Like most assured and gifted directors, Weir thrives on limitations, even on a $135 million project like this one. "I thought a very limited palette was the solution. Group of people on a ship, one landfall. At the same time, I thought that would remind the audience in some way of how space movies have appropriated the experience of these people who opened up exploration from the fifteenth century right through to the tail end of exploration in this period. That you would realize they set out into the unknown, the sea would become space. The vessel would be like a spacecraft. The chances of getting back, maybe fifty-fifty. It was a dangerous thing to do, and an adventure."

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" opens Friday.

(2003-11-13)

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