Matt Walsh Explains Why Every Man Should Watch THIS MOVIE

All right, we're going to do a little series of videos called The Movies Every Man Must Watch. These are films that, if you're a man, you need to watch.
And if you're a father, you should watch with your son. For this first video in the series, we're going to start with one of my favorite films of all time.
It's called Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World. It was released in 2003.
It was directed by Peter Ware, who also directed another one of my favorite films, The Truman Show. Master and Commander enjoyed only modest success in the box office when it released.
It debuted at number two and got beat by Elf, which was in its second week of release. Incidentally, if Master and Commander is one of the most underrated movies of this century, the movie that beat it, Elf, is certainly one of the most overrated.
You sit on a throne of lies. But this is not a video where we're complaining about bad movies.
It's one where I want to talk about a good movie. Master and Commander is a great film, and it has a pretty simple plot.
It follows a British naval ship in 1805 patrolling the Pacific, and in the beginning of the film, the ship, captained by Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey, is pummeled in a surprise attack by a French privateer ship called the Akron. And Captain Jack's ship, the surprise, is badly damaged in the assault, but not destroyed.
And the rest of the film follows Captain Jack and his crew as they pursue the French ship around the Pacific. And finally, spoiler alert, we are gonna be talking about spoilers here.
So at the end, they finally catch up to their French antagonist, and they pull off a brilliant sneak attack that leads to one of the great climactic battle scenes you'll ever see in any film. In between the two battles that bookend the film, we get to see a very accurate depiction of life aboard an early 19th century military ship.
They battle the weather, they battle injury and disease, and most of all, they battle the psychological strain of being confined to a floating prison in the middle of the ocean 10,000 miles from home. From a pure filmmaking standpoint, the movie is expertly made by a great director at the top of his game, features pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast, starting with Russell Crowe.
Even though there are only really two major battle scenes separated by about two hours of runtime, you're never bored watching the film. The cinematography is extraordinary.
Every frame is beautifully composed, but that's not what makes this essential viewing for men. And it's not why I've watched it three times now with my sons.
I love this film for two reasons especially. The first is the philosophical debate that the movie has with itself, basically.
Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey is a man who puts his patriotic duty to his country above everything. And his best friend and the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin, believes that compassion and mercy should come first.
So there's a tension between the man and the mission here, which films like Saving Private Ryan have also explored. But I think few films have explored it with this kind of depth and maturity.
And what I appreciate is that the director, Peter Ware, doesn't give any easy answers, but he does have the artistic and moral courage to give an answer. You know, it's easy enough to raise difficult questions in a film and then just never answer them.
And in my view, you know, the film ultimately answers the questions the right way. It answers it by telling us that the captain is right, that a man must do his duty, must serve God and country, and that that comes first, even if it means allowing or in some cases even directly causing human suffering.
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That's pdsdebt.com slash Walsh, pbsdebt.com slash walsh. But perhaps the most interesting sequence comes about midway through the film.
There's a string of bad luck, and there's about, you know, there's several days without wind, without rain, so they're all thirsty, the ship is barely moving, it's just kind of, you know, meandering along in the middle of the ocean. And the crew of the surprise, they come to believe that their misfortune must be the fault of an unpopular officer named Hollum, who they decide has somehow been cursed.
So the men, because they think that this guy is cursed, they start showing open disrespect to him, which leads Aubrey to make an example out of one of the insubordinate crewmen by having him flogged. It's quite brutal, but he has to make an example because one thing you can't have on board a ship when you're in the middle of the ocean is insubordination.
That leads to mutiny. So you have to make an example out of somebody, which he does.
And once again, Aubrey decides that human suffering, in this case, suffering that he is intentionally inflicting, is a necessary cost for the sake of the mission. And there's an interesting exchange between Aubrey and his friend, the surgeon, where we learn that although Aubrey is defending his officer, he also is wondering whether the curse theory might be true.
And then Aubrey tells him that there are some things in life that cannot be found in your science books. Now, later that night, Haaland, having come to believe that he really is cursed, throws himself off of the ship.

The next morning, Aubrey eulogizes Haalem, tells the men that anyone who spoke ill of him or thought

ill of him should pray to God for forgiveness. And in that moment, the wind picks up and it soon

starts raining. So this is a fascinating story beat to include, because at first it would seem

to suggest that Haalem really was cursed. Thaler's buy it a great deal but not a journal my god you believe it too not everything is in your book statement i think the point is exactly what aubrey said to the surgeon which is not everything can be found in your science place and in that that way, it's one of the boldest moves that I've ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood film.
Now, the second thing that I love about this film is that it's a depiction of masculine leadership. And this is what makes the movie so valuable to men in particular.
I truly believe, with the exception of Jesus Christ and the biblical prophets, The greatest men to ever live were captains of European ships between the years 1400 and about 1900. You know, to be a ship's captain at this time in history, you had to be everything.
I mean, you had to be an expert navigator. You had to be a warrior.
You had to be a father figure. You had to be a pastor.
You had to be a judge. You had to be the jury.
You know, the ships operated as their own society, essentially cut off from the rest of the world. And the captain had to play about 20 different roles in this society.
Basically, every decision that he made while they were in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from home, was life or death. They're going to die of starvation.
Their ship's going to go under and they're going to die, you know, stranded in the middle of the ocean. Maybe they die in an encounter with natives who take them prisoner and then eat them.
I mean, these are the possibilities. These are all the different kinds of fate that may have awaited the men on board these ships.
And the captain is aware of that all the time. And every decision he makes could lead them to one of those endpoints.
So a good captain was, he had to be, smart, decisive, courageous, prudent. He had to be able to make hard decisions and make them confidently and quickly.
So the captain had to strike a perfect balance between all of this. And I think

that Master and Commander does a tremendous job of portraying this on screen, which is why you

should watch it. And it's why every man should watch it and why you should watch it with your

sons. And you should also tune in to the next video in this series, which should be coming out

sometime in the next five to seven years. See you then.