Mastering the Seas

DEVOTEES OF PATRICK O'BRIAN'S celebrated series of historical novels are likely to be not just relieved but delighted by Peter Weir's beautiful film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World."

They had reason to be worried at the prospect of a Hollywood version of the beloved Aubrey-Maturin novels. The twenty-volume series, set during the Napoleonic wars, mostly aboard British naval vessels on the high seas, is too literary and language driven, its humor too subtle and dry, to be promising movie material (although you can just about imagine a "Masterpiece Theater"-style miniseries). Worse, the stories form a fairly tight chronological sequence, and the title of Weir's film combines the titles of O'Brian's first and tenth books in a worrisome way.

All of which means that Weir's "Master and Commander" is a small miracle: a genuine achievement in literary adaptation. For all its beauty and excitement, there isn't a movie-ish moment in the movie. Every scene demonstrates a restraint and intelligence that accord with the spirit of O'Brian's work.

Perhaps the most important thing to point out to non-initiates is the Aubrey-Maturin books are not precisely "genre fiction," the pejorative term of literary snobbery used to damn even the best detective, science-fiction, western, and romance novels. They are not maritime adventures (in England there are whole sections of bookshops devoted to the genre) like the Hornblower stories of C.S. Forester (although these are underrated and inspired a very good British television series), Dudley Pope, and Alexander Kent. Rather, as Richard Snow wrote in the New York Times essay that introduced O'Brian to a wider public, these novels are arguably "the best historical fiction ever written."