Master and Commander re-viewed

We watched Master and Commander again last night; we first saw it in 2004, a year after it was released.  I wrote about it then, and pretty much what I said then still applies.

It’s a great film in terms of putting the material across, the acting is top notch from the little cabin boys to the old sea dog. Crowe is better than he is in Gladiator, I think, where he was expected to be just a little lower than a god. And Paul Bettany, who plays his good friend, the ship's doctor, (he appeared with him in A Beautiful Mind, I later realised) is very good.  There’s a wonderful sense of camaraderie presented throughout; perhaps it’s a bit too positive (in spite of the section where one of the midshipmen kills himself because the lower crew have begun to see him as a Jonah) but it means that we get a great deal of satisfaction in seeing a movie in which only men appear, and appear without fighting with each other -  they fight the French instead!  The French, however, aren't seen until the last great battle at the end; until then they're nothing more than an impersonal, somewhat ghostly ship.

Peter Weir does a great job of building up the personnel on board, bit by bit, showing us different characters often only in glimpses at first, and then gradually filling in the outlines. The characters have more than minor moments, and many of them are well delineated. The sheer complexity of life on board a small ship with 170 or so other people is presented well; we don’t get a full impression of its less-pleasant aspects, since we see more of the upper-class side than the lower-class, but enough of that is presented to keep us in mind of the fact that there is a lower-class. Weir again and again tosses in a shot that relates to the main action but isn’t explained; it has to speak for itself, and it does. In some of the more active sections we have dozens of these kind of shots that just build up the whole picture, even though the main action may be going on only in one spot. And the kids in it are good too: particularly the one who loses his arm early in the piece (Max Pirkis in his first screen role). The camera often focuses in on a face, and some of the shots are like portrait paintings of the period for a moment.  The scenes between Crowe and Bettany are very well done, and so are the supper scenes in the captain’s ‘great’ cabin.   Then there’s the music: a judicious mix of real 18^th century pieces and pseudo material, nearly all of it strings.  (The captain and the doctor play duets on board, between a cello and a violin.) 

I'd forgotten quite a bit of the story, so it was almost like watching a new movie.  Technically, it's superb, with huge attention to detail.  The direction is sharp - as is the editing - and the script, which seemed when I first saw it to have a bit of a lull in the middle, on second viewing hangs together exceptionally well, considering the number of characters and our need to get to know them in some way or other.  Crowe seems thoroughly at home in the role, never missing a beat whether as the full-scale leader driven to chase the French ship to roughest seas in the world, or as the generous-hearted Captain who knows every one of his men and can identify with them, or the man willing to be criticised by his friend.

Playing an unsympathetic role

In an article by Luaine Lee on actor Peter Mensah in the freebie paper that comes with the ODT on a Tuesday, I was interested to read the following quote:

Mensah admits it takes daring to be an actor. "Becuse the job requires that I put myself out there and just lay it open. It is a courageous thing to do for a living because you are emotionally bare at times..."


I'm not in the least taking the mickey out of Mensah here - he plays an in-your-face gladiator in the TV series, Spartacus. I agree that there's an element for actors in which they have to take risks, even in the most 'ordinary' roles. I'm still getting used to those first days of rehearsal when you're exploring the character you're playing and having to say and do things that don't necessarily come naturally to you. You have to get over 'yourself' and become something/someone else.

Curiously enough this can be even harder with a role that isn't particularly over-the-top, when you're playing someone 'ordinary.' The ordinary character can be harder to play because he requires less extrovertness. The person I've been playing in Shadowlands, over the last week or so, isn't particularly unusual, doesn't seem to stand out in a crowd (in fact, in the first act of the play he says less than ten lines all up) and seems difficult to play in any way but 'straight.' There are no quirks or peculiarities to him.

So it seems. However, it came to me during rehearsals that he's shallow in his Christianity, and is a surprising person for C S Lewis to have as a friend, because his narrow view of Christianity is quite at odds with Lewis'. I'm not sure how you play 'shallow.' Just speaking the lines doesn't cut it, and you have to find postures, gestures, and facial expressions that portray what he's thinking inside.

On Saturday night, after the performance, a friend who'd been in the audience said she didn't like him: "he's so unsympathetic." And while I hadn't thought consciously about this, I'd obviously brought this to the acting of the part. He is unsympathetic, and thinking about this since confirms that I'm getting hold of what's in the character.

Why I quoted Mensah at the beginning is because Rev Harrington (the role I play) isn't liked by the audience - and I was very aware of it once we actually had audiences. While other characters get audible response from the audience (and that's been the case with most parts I've played in recent years), Harrington doesn't. People will be thinking about how they react to him, no doubt, but you can't hear this, and it's rather isolating for the actor playing him. You have to trust your acting instincts and hope that what you're doing with the part is actually communicating to the audience - and that you're not making an absolute ninny of yourself in doing so. I think that's what Mensah is getting at.

By way of an afterthought: when I first started working on Harrington as a role, I was playing him sympathetically, as it happens. It's my natural default approach to a part, to find the good in a character, and 'enjoy being him.' And this isn't an impossible reading of the role, by any means. I was thinking through the lines again on the way home from the performance last night, and the part could be played this way, as someone who's a step behind the other characters he interacts with, and who's Christianity is still in a stage where he needs to learn some more depth.

But this would leave C S Lewis as something of a bully, because in a couple of scenes in the second act, instead of us having something of an argy-bargy about the issues, as we do now, Lewis would be trampling over the sensitivities of a lesser soul. And I don't think that would put him in a very good light.

Of course, Lewis himself could be played differently. In an early scene, Joy Gresham accuses him of using his intellect to undermine an argument she's making, and in the second act she talks of him being an 'intellectual bully.' This line isn't pursued in this particular production, but in an entirely different one it could easily be.

The fascinations of what you can do with words on a page....

Mensah on the left putting everything out there, and on the right in everyday mode.