Right Pulse

Peter Weir’s Master and Commander has recently been rated as the best conservative movie of the decade, by the Telegraph’s Nile Gardiner:

Peter Weir’s unashamedly old-fashioned and visually stunning adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s novel is one of the greatest odes to leadership ever committed to celluloid. Australian director Weir has made many terrific films, including Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, The Year of Living Dangerously, and Witness, but Master and Commander was the pinnacle of his career so far. Nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, it should be essential viewing for any commander-in-chief. Russell Crowe delivers a powerhouse performance as Jack Aubrey, Captain of HMS Surprise, a British warship that hunts and ultimately captures a far larger French adversary during the Napoleonic Wars. Set in 1805, it is an epic tale of heroism and love for country in the face of incredible odds, and a glowing tribute to the grit and determination that forged the British Empire.

Of course it is all a matter of taste. I’ve previously covered Weir’s appeal to conservative movie goers, in which I claimed that M & C should be regarded as the number one conservative movie of the last 25 years. The National Review ranked it in the top 25 only. From the NYT:

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 [H.M.S.] Surprise as a coherent society in which stability is underwritten by custom and every man knows his duty and his place. I would not have been surprised to see Edmund Burke’s name in the credits.

I am not sure if Weir is aware of the appeal his movies have to the right side of politics. I would imagine that he does. Maybe he figures it is a market largely untapped? His next movie looks set to continue the trend, bringing to life a book on the gulag that the often makes top conservative book lists.