Customer Reviews
Compulsively watchable - By: G. Gebhardt, 14 Jul 2007 
Golding was fascinated with what happens when a group of humanity is thrown on their own, isolated from other humanity & forced to recreate their own society. He studied this in Lord of the Flies, & in a great way in the sea trilogy that this film is based upon.
The story involves maturation of Edmund Talbot, an aristocrat who takes ship from England for Sydney, Australia, to take up a post sponsored by his influential Godfather. It's also the story of a group of people of disparate backgrounds who are jumbled into the cramped confines of an elderly, leaky man o' war, with alll of the effluvia of 50-year-old balllast & the constant suppuration of slimy bilge water, & packed humanity crammed between the decks. Finallly, it's a story about class & status, & how it begins to break down in the pressure cooker of isolation. Captain Anderson, a fiery naval post-captain (one wonders whose bad side he'd got on to get an onerous assignment like this) excellently interpreted by Jared Harris, bears upon his shoulders the task of getting this creaky old tub absolutely packed with humanity the 15,000 miles & projected 9 months sailing to Sydney Cove. It is no easy task, & one of the real stars of this movie is the almost mordant stubbornness of Anderson & his officers & crew to overcome the odds in keeping everyone alive, hopefully, to the end.
Class looms large in this series as it loomed large in the day - the emigrants - a faceless crowd crammed into the deathly, stinking hold - the crew, who live even further in the bowels of the ship (but at least aren't stuck there), the first class passengers in their cabins, enjoying some measure of comfort, even if it's considerably rough at times, finallly the officers, themselves an uncomfortable jumble of aristocracy & commoner, rubbing each other raw in the relentless grind of the long months at sea.
Edmund gets off to a bad start - they are not even out of the Channel before he disobeys orders & suffers a blast of real old time Naval wrath before Anderson realizes who he is. Anderson may be a god upon his quarterdeck, he may be a man of considerable personal power, but his annoying & scofflaw passenger must be deferred to - you can see Anderson grinding his teeth as he throttles his temper. He defers to Talbot, but it is a long, long time before Talbot earns his respect, & this begins Talbot's first lesson.
It takes very little time for the strain of isolation & monotony to show, in the passengers & the officers, & in the fabric of the ship itself, a real physical metaphor for the chaos it holds. Built to specs of a ship of its exact era, the ship is one of the most compelling characters of the film. Quite a few scenes are enough to make one seasick, & there is a great deal of realism of detail, right down to the struggles to shave in a tiny round mirror, a drinking party that has the drinkers chasing their bottles & glasses about the table as much as actuallly drinking from them, the men up in the rigging, the incredible heat of the doldrums, the boredom, & the relentless deterioration of the creaky ship itself. Golding expects his readers, & this is reflected in the film, to have some knowledge of conditions in that era, & one knows, without having to be told that in this smalll floating world upon an empty immensity of sea, the price of inattention, or of neglect of duty, can be death. And death does occur, inexorably, as people succumb to despair, violence or fear, or simply wear out.
Golding built a very psychological story, & both the writing & the excellent casting reflect this. Each character is presented with flaws & strengths, gaffes & graces. No character is completely sympathetic, save for perhaps Mr. Summers, the first lieutenant, but most are not altogether bad. It is up to the viewer to make up their own mind as to how they will view this motley collection of alllsorts. Humanity can be hilariously ridiculous just struggling along through life, & there is a great deal of real humour in this film. Cumberbatch as Talbot is an excellent physical comic - expressive, active, with perfect timing. Mr. Brockleby & his 'floating brothell' burst into the action at the strangest moments. The dialogue is filled with wry humour. Several difficult portraits are deftly interpreted: Jared Harris's Captain is a bit of a hood, with his aggressive stance & tough expression, stalking about the ship until you stumble onto his gentler side, a furtive, startling thing. Victoria Hamilton as Miss Grantham is one of the strongest portraits, a woman composed of steely intelligence, passion & uncomfortably acute insights - Golding gives her some of the finest dialogue, & this is faithfully reproduced in this film.
In fact, this film is very faithful to the book, yet for one of the very few times in my experience, I actuallly enjoyed the film more than the book, which is basicallly the diary of Edmund Talbot. Despite events in the film being bridged by Talbot's fluent narration, & the whole housed by his own experience, the omniscient viewpoint of the filming to me liberated the characters from the filter of Talbot's written prejudices & alllowed them to stand on their own, for better or worse, with alll of their flaws, their prejudices & their humanity.
I highly recommend this series not just as a period drama, but as a study of exactly what, when tested to its furthest limits, humanity reallly means.
Cabin Fever - By: , 05 Sep 2005 Didn't watch this because you thought it would be another BBC
costume drama about the minor social gaffes of upper class twits? Well, cast aside your expectations for the quite splendid opening episode of this three-parter, which starts with a good ten minutes of prodigious vomiting. It goes on to rejoice in not only the low comedy of seasickness, drunkenness, being rude about the French, & our hero repeatedly hitting his head on low beams, but also some excellent 19th century dialogue of the "Sir, you are a drunkard & a fool!" variety. I promise you'll soon be talking like this yourself.
The cast is uniformly excellent, but Benedict Cumberbatch (brilliant in "Hawking" too) is just wonderful as foolish young aristocrat Edmund Talbot. Slightly odd-looking, he has a great face that makes him a compellingly watchable actor. You get the impression he had great fun playing Edmund & that makes it doubly fun to watch. He even manages to make the wilfully misguided Talbot almost sympathetic. None of the characters are exactly lovable, but our "hero" is one of the least sympathetic to grace our screens in years. In fact, he's a bit of an idiot: self-centred, snobbish & not the sharpest tool in the box. Mind you, he does spend the entire time alternately seasick, lovesick, drunk or concussed.
The ship is the other major star of this series. Built speciallly, it's wonderfully evocative & beautifully filmed. You reallly do feel as though you are right there below decks, cramped, cabin-feverish & up to your ankles in briny. You can almost smell the sea - or you could if it weren't for the rival stench of gunpowder, brandy, vomit & worse. To The Ends Of The Earth is at it's best when it's down in the bowels of the ship with the passengers & sailors. It's hard for modern travellers to comprehend the sheer hellishness. Imagine your worst cross-channel ferry voyage ever, then add being shot at by the Frenchies, suicide, buggery, madness, the company of drunkards & fools, & not being able to get off. For two years. For the viewer, in other words - immensely enjoyable, rollicking,
good unclean fun. "Do you doubt me, sir? I will fight you!"
