MASTER AND COMMANDER

MASTER AND COMMANDER

making no concessions to modern, egalitarian sensibilities, is among the most thoroughly and proudly conservative movies ever made.


magnificent vigor and precision.

This stupendously entertaining movie,



the smallest details of shipboard behavior become so breathlessly absorbing. The battle sequences are filmed with impressive coherence and rigor, but ''Master and Commander'' is, if anything, most thrilling between skirmishes, when the complex system of authority and deference that runs the Surprise -- and the personality traits needed to keep it running -- is at the center of attention.


The Napoleonic wars that followed the French Revolution gave birth, among other things, to British conservatism, and ''Master and Commander,'' making no concessions to modern, egalitarian sensibilities, is among the most thoroughly and proudly conservative movies ever made. It imagines the Surprise as a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place.

Mr. Weir's direction is appropriately old-fashioned, which is not to say that it is staid. It is rare, nowadays, to see a story of such scale and complexity filmed with such clarity, swiftness and attention to detail.

''Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World''
MASTER AND COMMANDER
The Far Side of the World

Directed by Peter Weir;