Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

In the book the hunted ship is American. In Patrick O’Brian’s novel the Surprise chases the USS Norfolk in the war of 1812; the film moves to 1805 and makes the quarry the French Acheron. Peter Weir gave the reason in the DVD extras: Americans would never back a film in which they were the enemy, and it confused audiences. The irony: the Acheron was modelled from digital scans of the USS Constitution. The adaptation draws on several novels, the tenth chiefly. The Surprise was a replica of the HMS Rose, now at the San Diego maritime museum. Most sea work was done in Mexico, in the tank built for Titanic; the Galápagos passages on Pinta and Bartolomé. The Academy Awards came for cinematography (Russell Boyd) and for the category then called sound editing (Richard King). Its nominations for best picture, directing and sound mixing all went to one rival, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. A good fit if you accept a story that almost never goes ashore, has no women, and draws its tension from rank on deck. Not for viewers who expect the chase to turn into combat at intervals: Weir gives the time to manoeuvre, the surgeon’s collecting and the argument over duty between the captain and the surgeon.