Born in New Zealand and bred in Australia, Russell Crowe has been makin’ movies, singin’ songs and delightin’ ’round the world for almost four decades. He’s portrayed generals and goof-offs, cops who sing and sting, demons and diviners, pastors and priests, gladiators, reporters, whistleblowers and more than his fair share of murderers (in reality and virtual reality).
In honor of Crowe’s 60th birthday this month, Midwest Film Journal is celebrating the actor. We’ll look at the lightning-rod controversy of his 1992 Australian breakout, the genre pictures with which he broke out in Hollywood circa 1995, his early-2000s ascent into a leading man with consecutive Oscar nominations, his occasional zags into unexpected genres like comedy, musicals and exploitative schlock, and many things in between. This April, MFJ truly has A Murder of Crowes.
Adapted from Patrick O’Brian’s acclaimed series of novels, 2003’s Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World follows the crew of the HMS Surprise, a British frigate at sea during the Napoleonic Wars. Like a human body, this boat stays afloat through a series of complex processes — a breathing, sometimes seething being. Charting its course across a film so massive it took three studios to fund, director Peter Weir’s Master & Commander remains a work of organic elegance, reflective drama and aggressive action on par with Sir David Lean.
To receive Oscar nominations in 10 categories and win two of them was not a bad showing for Master & Commander. But it should have had 11 — specifically a fourth overall Academy Award nomination for Russell Crowe, whose turn as the skipper of the Surprise easily surpasses whatever you’ve forgotten about Jude Law in Cold Mountain.
Crowe plays Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, who pursues the French ship Acheron with the intent to either sink that ship or take it as his own prize. Aubrey would rather project a sense of vigilance than any hint of vulnerability, so he doesn’t mind coming topside for what turns out to be a nervous watchman’s eyes playing tricks on him. Someday, there will be something in that thick ocean fog, darting forth with intent to drag Aubrey and his shipmates to a violent end. There’s also enough of Aubrey’s blood in the woodwork of an old warhorse like the Surprise to qualify her as a relative. For all the men under his command, he’d sure hate to lose her.
Besides, it’s good for Aubrey to strap on his cutlass every so often, to reiterate his willingness to jump into a melee alongside his men and show them he understands that their work of triage to keep the ship going is as important as any combat triumph. Even deck swabbers need to know that they “do their best, which is all I could expect of anyone.”
At the same time, Aubrey must resolve to be a bastard and brute to “grind whatever grist the mill requires.” Sometimes the only language a laggard will understand is the whipping tongue of the lash. And if Aubrey must make the call to abandon a shipmate stranded in the sea, by god, he will cut the ropes (and, by extension, his own flesh) himself. After all, there can be only one guiding hand on the ship. All others could be amputated, quite literally, on a moment’s notice.
Forever wearing one mask or the other, Aubrey is the most loved but also the most lonely man on the Surprise — daring only to reveal his deepest concerns to Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), the ship’s doctor and naturalist, who is as much an ideological rival to Aubrey as a close confidante and partner in musical performance. Crowe and Bettany’s scenes of unfussed and unconcealed conversation are among the film’s most delightful.
Indeed, the last thing Aubrey wants is a mutiny aboard the Surprise. The reason is not because it would force him to surrender a power he is unwilling to yield. It is because this would prove right the mental misgivings Aubrey has about being a worthy leader — a concern neither Crowe nor the film’s screenplay ever utters aloud but which also remains at the forefront of every decision Aubrey makes and every choice Crowe makes as a performer.
Aubrey must not consider only sound naval strategy to win the day over the newer, sleeker and faster Acheron. He must consider the wide gap between the mantles of the film’s title bestowed upon him. Are the men merely following him as a master by fiat of military service into which they’ve been forced? Or do they truly consider him a commander, compelling them to act out of organic, open respect for his conduct? Militaristic folly is never a footnote. It becomes the chapter and verse of how-tos and historical records held by those trying to exceed your performance and, if things go horribly wrong, those left behind by the dead souls you created.
Master & Commander perpetually ups the weight of history’s record on Aubrey’s shoulders. Because there are children on the Surprise, Aubrey must also serve as a parent; it’s a role in which this lifelong loner seems clearly uncomfortable. One of the youngest, a midshipman named Blakeney, asks Aubrey to regale him with stories about the legendary Horatio Nelson, under whom Aubrey once served years ago. Blakeney has lost an arm in defending the Surprise, and it would be an easy comfort to dim the tumult of a child in pain. But Aubrey flits his eyes in discomfort and insists that Blakeney read the book about Nelson’s exploits instead.
It’s suggested here that Aubrey truly sees Nelson as a cantankerous and curmudgeonly sort, a captain with a cruelly narrow focus on success to supersede compassion — the antithesis to his goals. Perhaps acknowledging this as an error later, Aubrey answers another such inquiry (from the slightly older midshipman Calamy) with a barely convincing veneration to anyone who is really watching Aubrey’s halting body language: “With Lord Nelson, you felt your heart glow.” Indeed, what is the harm in remembering a hero as hailed by the historical record? Isn’t it better to not speak ill of intrepid captains even after any impetus of decorum has long since passed? When it comes to fact or legend in Master & Commander, one of these young midshipmen is sewn up and sent to a watery grave by film’s end … and it’s not the one who gets the legend straight from Aubrey’s mouth.
Crowe shows Aubrey’s simultaneous worry and wonder for how history will regard him once he’s retired, right down to ever-so-slight wincing over the nickname he’s picked up along the way. “Lucky” is a lose-lose sort of nickname, either ironic commentary on what’s actually perpetual misery or a feeling that people see your success as rooted in random chance rather than well-honed skill. Without ever betraying his stature as the man running the ship, Crowe lets us see these microscopic contemplations of humanity pop to the surface and how they propel Aubrey to always activate himself alongside his men during times of danger. Weir and John Collee’s screenplay also draws exceptional parallels between Maturin’s obsession with genetic evolutions that help species remain hardy in nature and Aubrey’s own adaptations — which extends to strategic choices like a decoy strapped to the back of the boat to dupe firing ships.
Something overt about Master & Commander is the Surprise as a microcosm of England itself. That is certainly persuasive, too, but that’s all text. Crowe goes further, burrowing deep into the eternally challenging connotations of one line: “The simple truth is not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be.” Weighing Aubrey’s own possible shortcomings against the value of the lives placed in his hands, Crowe delivers a portrayal of woe, wonder and worry that is believably, but also barely, buried beneath his barrel-chested bursts of action. By focusing on humanity more than heroics, Captain Jack Aubrey is one of the greatest turns by one of our greatest actors.