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The Far Side of the World
Nov. 20th, 2003 08:17 pmLast night I went and saw, "Far Side of the World". I give it a, qualified, OK.
First, there is no way to do justice to any one of the O'Brian novels in less than five hours, so much was lost. Second, by starting in the middle (and this is the 10th story of 20) they leave a huge amount of background out, things which are alluded to, but if one is not in the know, how are we to take the speaking of Portuguese by Maturin, or the letter to Sophie, lingered on by the camera, just before we see Jack Aubry's eyes lingering on a native girl?
And there are other things for which the allusions are more opaque,hints at spies, references to Maturin's Irishness, Killick's tyranny over his master.
Those are the bits which never really cooked in the pudding.
Crowe, as Aubry is too small (Depardieu would be the right size), in both physique, and manner (and he needs more hair). Too jovial, not quite bluff enough... his table is raucous, never is there any sense of the reserve which oppresses his genial nature. Nor do we get to see any real reason the crew should love him so.
The ship... It suffers, mostly it suffers from being so well known. Of 20 novels, the Surprise must be in 15, so we know her quirks (if we've read the books), the odd gripe she has when the wind is running fast, how quick she is in stays, the anomaly of her ship-of-the-line mast.
These are glossed over, as is almost all of the art of sailing, so much a part of the books, the shifting of the rigging, the need to re-arrange the ballast to keep her trimmed aft; so she is not so far down by the head on a stiff breeze as to lose half a knot, the ease with which Aubry senses her every quirk. To add to my sense of the wrong (though they had to find a ship of decent size) she has a gun-deck in the film, which makes her possession of a quarterdeck not strange at all.
Maturin is too neat, too attractive, and nowhere near acerbic enough to suit me (though no one who has not read the books could find him sympathetic without all the background, and at the point of "Far Side of the World" he was quite disagreeable). He has no vices, and where we might see one (his reckless love for natural history) it becomes a moment for him to seem magnanimous, when what he is really doing is putting his hatred of Bonaparte above his love of birds).
But the writers obviously loved the books. They took so many details right from them, and from more than just the one. Bits to show that Maturin was not merely a surgeon, but a Doctor; a Physician, the names of the guns, Killick and the toasted cheese (with his mutterings about the music), scenes from the dinner table ("Which of these weevils would you choose Steven?" [though I think what they had were bargemen, not weevils) the scratching of backstays.
All of which gave the film it greatest asset; it was inviting to those who don't know the books. It also gave it the hardest bit to take, for me, the sense of being incomplete.
But, and credit where credit is due, they did not fall victim to overtelling the story. It ended when it was over, and the rest must be imagined.
I hope, and it may not be barren, the follow on stories fill in the
gaps.
First, there is no way to do justice to any one of the O'Brian novels in less than five hours, so much was lost. Second, by starting in the middle (and this is the 10th story of 20) they leave a huge amount of background out, things which are alluded to, but if one is not in the know, how are we to take the speaking of Portuguese by Maturin, or the letter to Sophie, lingered on by the camera, just before we see Jack Aubry's eyes lingering on a native girl?
And there are other things for which the allusions are more opaque,hints at spies, references to Maturin's Irishness, Killick's tyranny over his master.
Those are the bits which never really cooked in the pudding.
Crowe, as Aubry is too small (Depardieu would be the right size), in both physique, and manner (and he needs more hair). Too jovial, not quite bluff enough... his table is raucous, never is there any sense of the reserve which oppresses his genial nature. Nor do we get to see any real reason the crew should love him so.
The ship... It suffers, mostly it suffers from being so well known. Of 20 novels, the Surprise must be in 15, so we know her quirks (if we've read the books), the odd gripe she has when the wind is running fast, how quick she is in stays, the anomaly of her ship-of-the-line mast.
These are glossed over, as is almost all of the art of sailing, so much a part of the books, the shifting of the rigging, the need to re-arrange the ballast to keep her trimmed aft; so she is not so far down by the head on a stiff breeze as to lose half a knot, the ease with which Aubry senses her every quirk. To add to my sense of the wrong (though they had to find a ship of decent size) she has a gun-deck in the film, which makes her possession of a quarterdeck not strange at all.
Maturin is too neat, too attractive, and nowhere near acerbic enough to suit me (though no one who has not read the books could find him sympathetic without all the background, and at the point of "Far Side of the World" he was quite disagreeable). He has no vices, and where we might see one (his reckless love for natural history) it becomes a moment for him to seem magnanimous, when what he is really doing is putting his hatred of Bonaparte above his love of birds).
But the writers obviously loved the books. They took so many details right from them, and from more than just the one. Bits to show that Maturin was not merely a surgeon, but a Doctor; a Physician, the names of the guns, Killick and the toasted cheese (with his mutterings about the music), scenes from the dinner table ("Which of these weevils would you choose Steven?" [though I think what they had were bargemen, not weevils) the scratching of backstays.
All of which gave the film it greatest asset; it was inviting to those who don't know the books. It also gave it the hardest bit to take, for me, the sense of being incomplete.
But, and credit where credit is due, they did not fall victim to overtelling the story. It ended when it was over, and the rest must be imagined.
I hope, and it may not be barren, the follow on stories fill in the
gaps.
