My top 5 maritime themed movies
By Tom Brawn
For my second blog post, I thought I’d write something a little more light hearted.
So here are my top five movies set at sea. I love them all for very different reasons, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ve tried to rank them. So here goes..
5) "All is Lost" - one of Robert Redford’s last movies. The movie begins with Redford’s nameless, and almost completely silent character coming on deck after his little sailing Yacht collides with a floating shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
After calmly repairing the hole as best he can (it’s been a while, but I think he uses his sail) he hoists himself to the top of the mast to repair his antenna in order to get help, only to realise that an enormous storm is heading straight towards him. Needless to say, it all goes tits up from there.
I like the film both for Redford’s stoic performance, but how well I think it captures the power of mother nature, and how insignificant you become if you're crazy enough to cross an ocean, alone in a little fibreglass tub.
4) "Das Boot" I have to give it to the Germans on this one, Das Boot is a great movie, even if it is about the baddies.
The film follows a grizzled U-boat captain and his crew in the north Atlantic during WW2.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of WW2, whereby German “U-Boats” (attack submarines) constantly harassed allied merchant shipping and warships, all whilst sustaining minimal losses themselves.
German U-boat “Wolf Packs” sank over 3,500 merchant ships, carrying vital supplies from North America to the UK and the Soviet Union. Around 175 warships were also sent to the bottom of the sea, along with more than 72,000 allied sailors and merchant seamen.
After the war, Winston Churchill wrote “The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the “Battle of Britain”
I like the movie because it’s not so much about the politics of the war, and with the exception of a particularly unlikeable propaganda officer incongruously inserted there to boost “morale” the characters are just trying to do their job and go home, whilst avoiding being blown up by depth charges.
The movie almost makes you feel like you’re there with them, and I must admit, you can’t help but start to route for them occasionally.
There are some truly butt clenching moments in the film, all made incredibly real by the set, which is a perfect replica of a real U-boat. It’s another slow burn and incredibly long, but I’d recommend giving it a try, just make sure you leave your phone in the next room.
3) “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” for a bit of a change of tack, if you’ll forgive the pun, no top five movie list would be complete without a touch of Wes Anderson.
I suppose it’s kind of like a weird, Wes Anderson version of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” with a main character in Murray’s Steve Zissou, serving as both a parody and homage to the legendary oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
It has a great cast and soundtrack, some really funny moments and also some heartfelt ones too. I dunno what to say, I like it.
2) “Crimson Tide” this one is a really great movie, and although it’s primarily a nuclear scenario movie typical of the 90’s, it is set in a submarine, and as we know, that's good enough for me to include it on the list.
With an epic cast including Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington as the two main characters, it will have you on the edge of your seat the entire film.
With a potential nuclear war having started, the two men are both trying to make the right decisions with limited information, but draw drastically different conclusions about what to do.
In a deliberately ambiguous scenario, the movie questions the justness of authority and challenges you to ponder what you would do in the same situation. Interestingly, and I suppose terrifyingly, the movie loosely parallels real events that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1) “Master and Commander” what can I say, this is just a masterpiece, and it seems to have gone under the radar a bit, I have no idea why.
I imagine that when people walk up to Russell Crowe in the street and ask him to quote something from Gladiator, he just sighs and feels a bit like Kurt Cobain apparently did when everyone wanted him to constantly play “Smells like Teen Spirit” all the time.
The movie is based on the books of the same name and follows Royal Navy Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew onboard HMS Surprise, during the Napoleonic Wars.
When she’s ambushed by the French (and much larger) privateer “Acheron” off the coast of Brazil and sustains heavy damage, the Surprise manages to escape into a fog bank. After some hasty repairs, Aubrey begins his dogged pursuit of the Acheron, which takes him and his crew around Cape Horn and beyond.
Only later do we discover that Aubrey’s orders only required him to pursue the Acheron as far as Brazil. But In the words of the Captain to his crew “Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly!?”
I don’t want to spoil anything, because apparently there are actually quite a few people who are lucky enough to get see it for the first time, and hopefully there are some among my next to non existent readership, but I think it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen about leadership, duty and the camaraderie that those who have spent lots of time on boats will recognise. Give it a watch. You won't regret it.
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