Think about how Tony Hillerman's books give us a glimpse of life among the Navajo, seen from the points of view of Officer Jim Chee and Lt. Joe Leaphorn. What sets these wonderfully well-written and carefully crafted mysteries apart is their accuracy in bringing a true picture of the Navajo Nation today to the reader.
And think about how Peter Weir's early film Witness gave us a glimpse of mainstream society impacting the Amish.
That's how well Weir's recently-released film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World brings to life, in accurate detail, life on a ship of the British Navy in 1805, during the Napoleonic wars. Patrick O'Brian's 20 novels about Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin, physician, naturalist, linguist, and musician, who sailed with him as ship's doctor, and sometimes as an espionage agent, trying to defeat Napoleon's forces, are based on ship's logs, diaries, letters, and other primary sources, which O'Brian researched carefully and thoroughly, to form the basis of his fictional captain's sea adventures.
In other words, the fictional Jack Aubrey and his ship and crew do what Royal Navy ships like the fictional Surprise have actually done, some astoundingly brave and daring adventures under (at times) stupendously adverse conditions, whether from the enemy or from nature.
But saying that isn't enough, because the film is not a mere historically accurate re-enactment: it's an exciting, breathtaking, suspenseful, strongly acted and beautifully filmed wonderful experience. At the end of the film, I found myself wanting it to go on and on. It's a great film on its own and it forms a solid basis for what I hope will be several more movies about the adventures of Aubrey and Maturin -- there are lots of adventures, episodes and encounters to choose from, all different, in the 20 novels.
In some reviews and articles I've read about the movie, some writers seemed to be dismissive about the Napoleonic wars as (to them, at least) without interest to people today. Randy said to me during a discussion of the O'Brian books that he saw the Napoleonic wars as the first modern world war, even though the war-numbering hadn't started back then (shame on us humans for having enough world wars that we have to number them to keep them straight). It was in fact a war involving many powers and their spheres of influence, with fighting ranging all over the globe, and the outcome affecting lives of people all over the globe. If that's not a world war, what is?
If you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it! It's important to see it on the big screen, because Weir fills every square inch of that big wide screen -- to show us the sea, the ship, the people, the weather, everything. Good as DVD technology can be, no small screen can really do it justice. See it, see it! What are you waiting for?
10:02:16 AM 
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