The Matt Walsh Show - April 19, 2025


Matt Walsh Explains Why Every Man Should Watch THIS MOVIE

Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Jack Aubrey Russell Crowe Peter Weir Stephen Maturin Jesus Christ Hollum
Ep. 1579 - Family Of Karmelo Anthony Hosted The Most Disgusting Press Conference I’ve Ever Seen Matt Walsh Roasts Bad Feminist Takes

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

185.54

Word count

1,651

Sentence count

120

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Master and Commander is one of the most underrated films of the 20th century. It was directed by Peter Ware, who also directed another one of my favorite films, The Truman Show. Master and Commander was released in 2003 and stars Russell Crowe in the lead role of Captain Jack Aubrey.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 All right, we're going to do a little series of videos called The Movies Every Man Must Watch.
00:00:04.820 These are films that, if you're a man, you need to watch.
00:00:07.960 And if you're a father, you should watch with your son.
00:00:10.700 For this first video in the series, we're going to start with one of my favorite films of all time.
00:00:15.200 It's called Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World.
00:00:17.980 It was released in 2003.
00:00:19.780 It was directed by Peter Ware, who also directed another one of my favorite films, The Truman Show.
00:00:24.400 Master and Commander enjoyed only modest success in the box office when it released.
00:00:28.720 It debuted at number two and got beat by Elf, which was in its second week of release.
00:00:34.180 Incidentally, if Master and Commander is one of the most underrated movies of this century,
00:00:38.160 the movie that beat it, Elf, is certainly one of the most overrated. 0.86
00:00:41.420 You sit on a throne of lies.
00:00:43.540 But this is not a video where we're complaining about bad movies.
00:00:47.520 It's one where I want to talk about a good movie.
00:00:49.520 Master and Commander is a great film, and it has a pretty simple plot.
00:00:53.260 It follows a British naval ship in 1805 patrolling the Pacific.
00:00:57.300 And in the beginning of the film, the ship, captained by Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey,
00:01:02.580 is pummeled in a surprise attack by a French privateer ship called the Akron.
00:01:07.860 And Captain Jack's ship, the surprise, is badly damaged in the assault, but not destroyed.
00:01:13.180 And the rest of the film follows Captain Jack and his crew as they pursue the French ship around the Pacific.
00:01:18.820 And finally, spoiler alert, we are going to be talking about spoilers here.
00:01:21.540 So, at the end, they finally catch up to their French antagonist, 0.97
00:01:24.820 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.
00:01:31.420 Fire at Shiba!
00:01:33.540 Fire!
00:01:38.100 Fire!
00:01:41.820 Fire!
00:01:42.380 In between the two battles that bookend the film,
00:01:45.240 we get to see a very accurate depiction of life aboard an early 19th century military ship.
00:01:51.400 They battle the weather, they battle injury and disease,
00:01:54.100 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.
00:02:02.600 From a pure filmmaking standpoint,
00:02:05.200 the movie is expertly made by a great director at the top of his game,
00:02:09.460 features pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast, starting with Russell Crowe.
00:02:13.120 Even though there are only really two major battle scenes separated by about two hours of runtime,
00:02:18.220 you're never bored watching the film.
00:02:19.880 The cinematography is extraordinary.
00:02:21.780 Every frame is beautifully composed.
00:02:24.340 But that's not what makes this essential viewing for men,
00:02:26.980 and it's not why I've watched it three times now with my sons.
00:02:31.580 I love this film for two reasons especially.
00:02:33.820 The first is the philosophical debate that the movie has with itself, basically.
00:02:40.180 Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey is a man who puts his patriotic duty to his country above everything.
00:02:46.140 And his best friend and the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin,
00:02:50.160 believes that compassion and mercy should come first.
00:02:54.740 So there's a tension between the man and the mission here,
00:02:58.400 which films like Saving Private Ryan have also explored.
00:03:00.680 But I think few films have explored it with this kind of depth and maturity.
00:03:05.960 And what I appreciate is that the director, Peter Ware, doesn't give any easy answers,
00:03:11.060 but he does have the artistic and moral courage to give an answer.
00:03:16.280 You know, it's easy enough to raise difficult questions in a film and then just never answer them.
00:03:20.620 And in my view, you know, the film ultimately answers the questions the right way.
00:03:25.800 It answers it by telling us that the captain is right,
00:03:28.900 that a man must do his duty, must serve God and country,
00:03:32.920 and that that comes first, even if it means allowing or in some cases even directly causing human suffering.
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00:04:46.340 But perhaps the most interesting sequence comes about midway through the film.
00:04:50.920 There's a string of bad luck, and there's about several days without wind, without rain,
00:04:55.820 so they're all thirsty.
00:04:57.500 The ship is barely moving.
00:04:59.020 It's just kind of meandering along in the middle of the ocean.
00:05:01.780 And the crew of the surprise, they come to believe that their misfortune
00:05:06.080 must be the fault of an unpopular officer named Hollum,
00:05:11.200 who they decide has somehow been cursed.
00:05:14.300 So the men, because they think that this guy is cursed,
00:05:16.980 they start showing open disrespect to him,
00:05:19.560 which leads Aubrey to make an example out of one of the insubordinate crewmen
00:05:23.420 by having him flogged.
00:05:24.880 It's quite brutal, but he has to make an example,
00:05:26.800 because one thing you can't have on board a ship
00:05:28.920 when you're in the middle of the ocean is insubordination.
00:05:31.280 That leads to mutiny, so you have to make an example out of somebody, which he does.
00:05:34.640 And once again, Aubrey decides that human suffering,
00:05:37.140 in this case, suffering that he is intentionally inflicting,
00:05:40.000 is a necessary cost for the sake of the mission.
00:05:42.640 And there's an interesting exchange between Aubrey and his friend, the surgeon,
00:05:46.840 where we learn that although Aubrey is defending his officer,
00:05:50.240 he also is wondering whether the curse theory might be true.
00:05:53.820 And then Aubrey tells him that there are some things in life
00:05:56.620 that cannot be found in your science books.
00:05:59.040 Now, later that night, Hallam, having come to believe that he really is cursed,
00:06:03.360 throws himself off of the ship.
00:06:05.280 The next morning, Aubrey eulogizes Hallam,
00:06:07.760 tells the men that anyone who spoke ill of him or thought ill of him
00:06:11.640 should pray to God for forgiveness.
00:06:13.680 And in that moment, the wind picks up, and it soon starts raining.
00:06:17.580 So this is a fascinating story beat to include,
00:06:21.400 because at first, it would seem to suggest that Hallam really was cursed.
00:06:25.820 Sailors can abide a great deal, but not a journal.
00:06:30.040 My God, you believe it too.
00:06:34.720 Not everything is in your book, Stephen.
00:06:36.260 I think the point is exactly what Aubrey said to the surgeon,
00:06:41.080 which is, not everything can be found in your science books.
00:06:43.820 And in that way, it's one of the boldest moves that I've ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood film.
00:06:51.100 Now, the second thing that I love about this film is that it's a depiction of masculine leadership.
00:06:56.880 And this is what makes the movie so valuable to men in particular.
00:06:59.220 I truly believe, with the exception of Jesus Christ and the biblical prophets, 0.96
00:07:04.200 the greatest men to ever live were captains of European ships between the years 1400 and about 1900.
00:07:12.140 You know, to be a ship's captain at this time in history, you had to be everything.
00:07:17.480 I mean, you had to be an expert navigator.
00:07:19.540 You had to be a warrior.
00:07:20.660 You had to be a father figure.
00:07:21.880 You had to be a pastor.
00:07:22.840 You had to be a judge.
00:07:23.940 You had to be the jury.
00:07:25.300 You know, the ships operated as their own society, essentially cut off from the rest of the world.
00:07:30.400 And the captain had to play about 20 different roles in this society.
00:07:34.160 Basically, every decision that he made while they were in the middle of the ocean,
00:07:38.580 thousands of miles from home, was life or death.
00:07:41.640 They're going to die of starvation.
00:07:43.780 Their ship's going to go under and they're going to die, you know, stranded in the middle of the ocean.
00:07:49.160 Maybe they die in an encounter with natives who take them prisoner and then eat them. 1.00
00:07:54.280 I mean, these are the possibilities.
00:07:56.120 These are all the different kinds of fate that may have awaited the men on board these ships.
00:08:01.860 And the captain is aware of that all the time.
00:08:05.500 And every decision he makes could lead them to one of those endpoints.
00:08:11.180 So a good captain was, he had to be, smart, decisive, courageous, prudent.
00:08:17.300 He had to be able to make hard decisions and make them confidently and quickly.
00:08:20.700 So the captain had to strike a perfect balance between all of this.
00:08:25.400 And I think that Master and Commander does a tremendous job of portraying this on screen,
00:08:30.220 which is why you should watch it.
00:08:31.960 And it's why every man should watch it and why you should watch it with your sons.
00:08:35.680 And you should also tune in to the next video in this series,
00:08:39.060 which should be coming out sometime in the next five to seven years.
00:08:43.940 See you then.
00:08:44.580 You.
00:08:46.320 You.
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00:08:48.980 You.
00:08:49.280 You.
00:08:50.160 You.
00:08:50.840 You.
00:08:51.280 You.
00:08:52.540 You.
00:08:52.700 You.
00:08:53.540 You.