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Movie Review: 'Master and Commander'
by Richard Hartmann
6 June 2004
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" is a thoroughly enjoyable film. Based on the novels of Irish author Patrick O'brien set during the Napoleonic wars, it follows British naval captain Jack Aubrey and his crew in their pursuit of the French Acheron, a superior vessel which has it attacked them in the Atlantic. The chase brings the H.M.S. Surprise, Aubrey's ship, around the coast of South America to the Galapagos Islands, where the battle decides the day.
There are very few politically-correct distortions in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." It does not attempt to denigrate our history and ancestors and alienate us from them. There is none of the standard Culture of Critique-style distortion we've come to expect from jewish Hollywood, full of artifice and fabrication. It does not aim to demean our heroes or to guilt us for their actions or portray them in a way they were not. It treats these gallant men with the respect and dignity that is their due, and shows them as they likely were. It therefore also treats us with respect. The cast is stellar, the acting superb, the flow of the screenplay and dialogue, seamless. I did not once find myself critiquing the words or actions of the men aboard the H.M.S. Surprise.
A wide range of character types and emotional conditions is covered in "Master and Commander": men who hold up and push themselves harder under the toughest odds, and men who break under the slightest pressure. Men who in the face of death smile and affirm life, and men who cannot cope even with life's simplest demands. "Master and Commander" treats men realistically, with neither rose-colored glasses nor false, politically motivated distortions. Captain Aubrey and his close compatriot aboard the Surprise embody a certain European type, a type of man that existed until not too long ago in the West and remains today among us in small numbers: Men of thought, men of action, and men of culture, all in one. Civilized men; men of dignity and pride; aristocratic men. The standard Hollywood distortion and caricature present in the depiction of European historical figures is not found in this movie. It is not a political attack on our people or our identity, and therefore can be viewed without constant affronts and offense.
The men aboard The H.M.S. Surprise get along well enough; but they can read each other, they can sense weakness where it exists, and instinct rules. Respect only goes to him who commands respect; authority flows from its source, not its object, and only through strength is discipline maintained. This is something for parents to take note of. Authority is inherent; it is not position or title. If one has authority, it will be respected; if one has none, not all the titles in the world nor all the hot air will make up for it. You must carry authority in your very bearing, it must emanate from you like an aura of power. Do not argue with your offspring! Do not negotiate, do not reason, do not plea, do not bribe, do not bluster. Command, and enforce your command, and it will be followed. If you cannot command, you cannot be a parent.
"Master and Commander" gives a glimpse of a better time, a better world. A white world, where white men could feel at home, where they didn't have to look over their shoulders for dictating minorities or government bureaucrats, for meddling jewish "activists" and busybodies concerned with "everyone's welfare" but really just their own. Just to their own duty and to the authority of their superiors, whose interest was their interest, whose obedience was their obedience, both in service to the same goal, the same life, the same nation.
Something else that comes through when watching this movie is the level of science and technology of these 18th-century sailors and shipmen. Things were more rudimentary, more mechanical in those days, more hands-on, less detached from the original idea. Less electronic and internally complex. The level of sophistication can be seen, can be understood, because things were so young, still within the reach and grasp of the mind. Mechanical contrivances were comprehensible as freshly plucked ideas, plucked from the minds of thinking European men. This is all indigenous European technology and science, manifestations of European thought. No one helped us a bit. We created everything from nothing. We need no one. No other people can say this.
There is also a great contrast involved, because casting did such a good job of picking out real negroes for the ship's few slaves (who appear far too often and in far too many places they would not be). The viewer, if he has it in him, might just let his thoughts take him down forbidden corridors, toward even forbidden-er conclusions: these people are animals; will-less and helpless beasts, in a world they cannot understand and could not create. And it is being torn down by them, destroyed, subjugated, subdued and drowned in flood of filth and sloth and mediocrity and ugliness. He will see this world of order and saneness, of strong men, white men, living in a world of their own, a world that they created, wholly self-sufficient and the better for it, without any of the things we so deeply despise about the new world that has been re-fashioned around us by our unwelcome and unwanted, though all too often unseen and unknown, guests.
Of Course...
There are a few standard, politically-correct throw-ins from the jewish grab-bag that are barely memorable and do not detract from the overall goodness and worthiness of the film. Early on there is a brief scene where a snarling white crewman is cruel to a dutiful black servant -- but hey, it's not like he's a doctor or an authoritative detective, right? There is another scene, more offensive, in which Captian Aubrey and a conspicuously but unrealistically attractive native exchange suggestive eye contact. This squaw would have been four-foot-nothing with a tasty human limb between her jaws in the real jungles of South America's Pacific coast, but somehow looks like a modern day mulatto singer or actress. Anyway, that's about as brief and forgettable as the mean white/innocent black scene. Pass that, and it's free riding from here. Like an obnoxious, unwanted toll booth. A necessary evil, persisting as long as we put up with it. Necessary only as long as we do nothing to stop it.
Conclusion...
"Master and Commander" is a movie worth seeing if you're of a mind to do so. If you're going to spend your money on a product of Hollywood, this is the one to choose. In its bloody climax it captures the tragedy of our people: the pride, the warlike courage, the willingness to suffer and sacrifice in pursuit of noble goals, and the turning inward of these noble traits against ourselves, white against white, nation against nation, in fruitless civil war. The mutual slaughter of the best of our youth, the flower of our nations' manhood, in wars that preserved nothing and destroyed much. This is perhaps the starkest message for us in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: our obligation, our duty to vindicate our past and end this tragedy, to put our characteristics to good use in the right direction: in service of our common interest as Europeans around the world in a new political culture of unity and cooperation in this worldwide racial struggle. And Captain Aubrey has a message for us specifically, us reading this, us awaked ones:
"It's leadership they want -- strength -- find that within yourself."
There is no message that more urgently needs to be impressed upon our people than this. It is the calling of our times. Heed it, White man.
RICHARD HARTMANN
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