Longitude

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and historically accurate
Review: I first watched this story on A&E network, but only saw the last few minutes of it. The second time I caught it was the same, but I saw even less of it, frustratingly broken up with the inevitable commercials. However, since celestial navigation at sea is one of my skills and interests, I ordered the VHS tapes (there are four of them.)

One of my Bowditches (American Practical Navigator), attests to the accuracy of the research involved in the story. John Harrison, the son of an English carpenter, was born in Yorkshire in 1693. He followed his father's trade but soon became interested in the repair and construction of clocks. In 1714 the British Parliament offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling for an accurate method of finding longitude at sea, which can be found using spherical trigonometry with an accurate time piece set to and kept at the time of the place of departure. (For practical purposes, all such chronometers are set to the time of the so-called Greenwich meridian--the Prime Meridian, which traverses Greenwich, England.) Since it requires approximately 24 hours for a complete rotation of the earth (360 degrees), each hour of time the earth rotates 15 degrees regardless of the latitude (At the equator, the surface spin is faster.

Harrison undertook to make such a timepiece, and submitted his first attempt (Harrison No. 1) to the Longitude Board in 1735, at the age of 42. Eventually he submitted a total of four separate instruments, before he was finally awarded the prize money at the age of 80, and then only through the intervention of the Crown and, in the story, the Parliament.

This movie is the story of his struggle against the obstinacy, deceitfulness, arrogance, superciliousness and pomposity of the astronomers on the board, who sought to solve the problem with lunar observations, and to prevent it being won by a "simple carpenter."

The movie is masterfully acted by Michael Gambon, as John Harrison, and a parallel story involving a Royal Navy commander, Rupert Gould (played by Jeremy Irons) is meaningfully incorporated, by flashing from one to the other, which relieves some of the tension and serves almost as well as background narration. As the story explains, at the end, Gould is also a historical person who died in 1948, and who did much to restore John Harrison's timepieces and eventually became director of the British Horological Society and curator of the museum in which Harrison's timepieces are shown.

An excellent movie, well-acted and entertaining as well as educational.

Joseph Pierre

Rating:
Summary: Powerful presentation of an important part of history
Review: I have watched this story a few times and a couple of times with my children. Always I find new things in this telling of the tale of how Harrison gave us our first ability to find our way across the oceans by knowing longitude with confidence through the accuracy of his timekeepers.

The performances by Gambon and Irons are powerful. Just as powerful is the way the story of the builder and the the restorer of 200 years later are intertwined. Their individual stuggles, both personal and technical, are seen more clearly by telling the story this way. This is a skillful crafted movie.

But more than that it is just a wonderful story that is fun to watch. And then there is the payoff of having so many wonderful lessons to teach.

The set also contains a featurette on the making of the movie that is also entertaining and informative. The best part is that my eight year old asked me to get out our copy of Dava Sobel's book (the illustrated version) so we could read it together.

Bravo!

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful fictionalized story of the Harrison saga
Review: I initially purchased this work for use with a 5th grade class doing an exploration of the problems surrounding the need for calculating longitude in early exploration and seagoing. My 5th grade class was riveted by excerpts from the story and always disappointed when we had to shut off the VCR to attend to the hands-on aspect of the project! They weren't alone as I have easily watched this work three times with pleasure. Based on the book by Dava Sobel, Longitude shows the typical A&E high quality stamp (particularly the network's talent for authentic sea and period pieces) by juxtaposing Rupert Gould's early 20th century restoration of the Harrison clocks with the actual story of Harrison's lifetime struggle for perfection and recognition. Both stories are compelling and the acting of high quality. A highly recommended series for private and academic collections.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful fictionalized story of the Harrison saga
Review: I initially purchased this work for use with a 5th grade class doing an exploration of the problems surrounding the need for calculating longitude in early exploration and seagoing. My 5th grade class was riveted by excerpts from the story and always disappointed when we had to shut off the VCR to attend to the hands-on aspect of the project! They weren't alone as I have easily watched this work three times with pleasure. Based on the book by Dava Sobel, Longitude shows the typical A&E high quality stamp (particularly the network's talent for authentic sea and period pieces) by juxtaposing Rupert Gould's early 20th century restoration of the Harrison clocks with the actual story of Harrison's lifetime struggle for perfection and recognition. Both stories are compelling and the acting of high quality. A highly recommended series for private and academic collections.

Rating:
Summary: The Quest for Longitude.
Review: I just watched this docudrama this weekend, and while it is too early to see if critics will give this film any latitude, I will.

As a historian, I often long for at least a blend of authenticity when discussing historical events. Often, as in Jean d'Arc films, accuracy is forgotten in leiu of mythology. Longitude give us the story of one of the greatest quests in history, and remains true to Dava Sobel's book on John Harrison and his son William. The two of which have perhaps saved more mariner's lives than life preservers! One mistake of a few minutes cost more than 1,700 men their lives in one incedent.

The drawback to accuracy is length, as this is a four hour film. However, it took the Harrisons 40 years to construct the four clocks/watches, thus an hour per decade seems reasonable.

If you care about maritime travel, history or clocks, this film will keep you interested for the entire four hours.

Exodus I; BA History EWU

Rating:
Summary: Parallel Lives End Up In Same Spot
Review: I saw this movie both in its original form as broadcast on A&E and as a VCR tape. The movie is a stunning example of the power of a well written script, a director with vision and actors that can portray real people. The editing of this movie would win an Academy Award if it were eligible. The weaving of two lives, 200 years apart into one cohesive story line is a wonder to behold.

The movie subject is complicated and requires viewer attention. I found the science and the emotion of the time, including class prejudices to be right on. The movie making craft was no better than when the viewer is transported out to sea and witnesses the brutal reality of sailing in the 1700's. A scene when the young Harrison of about 6 or 7 lectures Sir Edmund Haley on the celestal observations of the sun and the accuracy of their own clock is priceless. Some might call the movie predictable at the end, but I think it is fine movie making to remind us that without Harrison, the voyages of James Cook and others after him would never have been successful without his time keepers.

This movie has passion, action, love and devotion. It reminds all of us that to move the human race along to the next plateau requires more than what most of us are willing to risk today.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling story, but ...
Review: I suspect the reason I was drawn to this film was my love of gadgets. What I found was a story of a man with a passion and his decades-long battle with a prejudiced bureaucracy. Michael Gambon gives a wonderful performance as John Harrison, whose 18th century quest for an accurate timepiece that would work at sea is continuously met by a review board with a fixed agenda. Their agenda is not that of Harrison, as they steadfastly believe that a gadget is not a "scientific" solution to the problem of maritime navigation.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers chose to include Rupert Gould (played by Jeremy Irons) in their story who, two centuries later, worked to reconstruct the neglected machines of Harrison. We are led to believe that, due to a lack of credentials, Gould and Harrison are a lot alike. But Gould is presented as a pathetic creature whose personal problems ruin his life, while Harrison is given as a strong-willed man who will devote his life to attaining his goal. The insight we are allowed about the workings and history of the devices, as told by Gould, would have fit nicely in the historical account. I found Gould's interruptions an irritating detraction from an otherwise compelling drama. (Without Gould's character, I could have given this 5 stars.)

I didn't find the film's length to be a problem. Gambon's portrayal of Harrison has enough to hold my interest, as is the storyline. And, while I understand this is an historically accurate story, this is more drama than docudrama. However, I don't feel that Longitude is worthy of being priced so high. This knocks off one more star for me.

Rating:
Summary: The Fourth Dimension.
Review: In the 18th century much had already been achieved in the exploration of the world: In addition to the achievements of Columbus, Cabot , Vespucci, Cartier, da Gama and others in the discovery of the Americas, Portuguese sailors commissioned by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) had sailed along the western African coast; Bartolomeu Dias (1457-1500) had circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope; Vasco da Gama had been the first explorer to reach India by sea (1498); 1518-19 had seen Francisco Magellan's almost-complete global circumnavigation; in the mid-16th century Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries had made contact with Japan; and about 50 years later the Dutch had established their first trading posts in South-East Asia. On their voyages, these early explorers had overcome storms, hunger, scurvy and uncertainty about their exact course and the feasibility of their aim; and they had suffered from a severe navigational handicap: For while it is comparatively easy to determine latitude, the exact determination of longitude requires consideration of the world's fourth dimension - time. Only the knowledge how long the rotation of the earth vis-a-vis the sun takes from one point to another enables a seaman to determine where precisely he is at any given moment; wherefore he needs to know both the time at his departure port and the time aboard ship. The inability to make that determination invariably adds the danger of getting lost at sea to the perils of every naval voyage (and in fact, even da Gama's Indian expedition was almost derailed when the navigator miscalculated his position off the African coast).

Having emerged from the shadow of the continental European powers and become a major seafaring nation in its own right, the England of the Age of Reason was no longer willing to sacrifice thousands of sailors to the inability of determining longitude. After the 1707 death of over 2000 men under the command of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovel, who had mistaken his ships' position for the coast of Brittany while in fact sailing right into the Scilly Islands off the coast of Cornwall, Queen Anne in 1714 signed an act promising a reward of 20,000 pounds (today, approximately $5 million) to the discoverer of a "practicable and useful solution to the problem of finding longitude at sea." Among those taking the bait were proponents of rocket signals, would-be scientists working with injured dogs and a so-called "powder of sympathy" - and a self-taught Yorkshire carpenter named John Harrison (Michael Gambon).

"Longitude," based on Dava Sobel's novel of the same name, tells the story of Harrison's quest; expanding the book's premise, however, and contrasting it with that of Navy Commander Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons), who - having suffered a nervous breakdown in WWI - unearthed and restored Harrison's by then almost-forgotten chronometers. Originally a TV mini-series, this is in fact one single coherent film; realized with the broad vision of a big-screen approach to filmmaking. Part naval adventure, part historic docudrama, the movie first and foremost explores the two lead characters' hearts and souls: That of the mercurial (yet, with his chronometers infinitely patient) Harrison and that of the fragile Gould; the former a puritan on a scientific mission, the latter searching for his peace of mind, hoping to regain it by giving new life to Harrison's timekeepers. They are united by their infinite respect for all watches and clocks, which to them are living things - dearer, in a way, than their own flesh and blood - and by a screenplay joining their stories into a single rhythm of discovery, setbacks, apparent triumph, despair and fulfillment; seamlessly cutting between the 18th century's candle-lit world and that of the 20th century and its technical advances.

Both Harrison and Gould are at odds with society's established rules: Harrison, in the eyes of the Board of Longitude created to oversee the 1714 act, is utterly unworthy of receiving the prize; awarding it to him, according to board member Lord Morton, would be letting "the longitude prize [be] stolen by a country toolmaker." Gould on the other hand, by sacrificing his marriage to the work on Harrison's chronometers, risks scandal and social isolation. And the juxtaposition of Harrison's ever-more practical approach (eventually resulting in the creation of a chronometer just a little over 5 inches in diameter, capable to measure longitude within the revolutionary degree of approximately 1 minute or about 1 mile) and the method favored by the astronomers on the Board of Longitude (lunar observation, soon earning them and their darling, Astronomer Royal-to-be Reverend Nevil Maskelyne (Samuel West) the nickname "lunatics" in the Harrison household) is a classic tale of David vs. Goliath, and remains so even after Harrison Sr. is joined by his son William (Ian Hart). Although his benefactor Graham has once suggested that, after having convinced the Admiralty and the Royal Society's initial appointees to the Board, Harrison's real test will be the politicians, it finally falls to Parliament to come to his aid, more than 50 years after he has begun his work; and after the intervention of stout Harrison supporter First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State Lord Sandwich, Australian explorer Captain James Cook, and eventually even King George III, who likewise fancies himself a scientist.

In addition to director Charles Sturridge's vision, "Longitude" benefits from the great sense of authenticity displayed by cinematographer Peter Hannan, production designers Eileen Diss and Chris Lowe and costume designer Shirley Russell - and from a cast list that virtually reads like a "who is who" of contemporary British cinema; featuring inter alia, besides Gambon, Irons, Hart and West, Gemma Jones (Elizabeth Harrison), Anna Chancellor (Muriel Gould) and Brian Cox (Lord Morton), as well as brief appearances by Stephen Fry as "powder of sympathy" proponent Sir Kelnhelm Digby and German actress Heike Makatsch as King George's wife Charlotte. - This is a complex, fascinating movie; one of televisions's finest hours in recent years: Nothing for the mere casual viewer, but truly rewarding to anyone willing to join Harrison and Gould in their voyage of discovery.

Rating:
Summary: The Fourth Dimension.
Review: In the 18th century much had already been achieved in the exploration of the world: In addition to the achievements of Columbus, Cabot , Vespucci, Cartier, da Gama and others in the discovery of the Americas, Portuguese sailors commissioned by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) had sailed along the western African coast; Bartolomeu Dias (1457-1500) had circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope; Vasco da Gama had been the first explorer to reach India by sea (1498); 1518-19 had seen Francisco Magellan's almost-complete global circumnavigation; in the mid-16th century Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries had made contact with Japan; and about 50 years later the Dutch had established their first trading posts in South-East Asia. On their voyages, these early explorers had overcome storms, hunger, scurvy and uncertainty about their exact course and the feasibility of their aim; and they had suffered from a severe navigational handicap: For while it is comparatively easy to determine latitude, the exact determination of longitude requires consideration of the world's fourth dimension - time. Only the knowledge how long the rotation of the earth vis-a-vis the sun takes from one point to another enables a seaman to determine where precisely he is at any given moment; wherefore he needs to know both the time at his departure port and the time aboard ship. The inability to make that determination invariably adds the danger of getting lost at sea to the perils of every naval voyage (and in fact, even da Gama's Indian expedition was almost derailed when the navigator miscalculated his position off the African coast).

Having emerged from the shadow of the continental European powers and become a major seafaring nation in its own right, the England of the Age of Reason was no longer willing to sacrifice thousands of sailors to the inability of determining longitude. After the 1707 death of over 2000 men under the command of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovel, who had mistaken his ships' position for the coast of Brittany while in fact sailing right into the Scilly Islands off the coast of Cornwall, Queen Anne in 1714 signed an act promising a reward of 20,000 pounds (today, approximately $5 million) to the discoverer of a "practicable and useful solution to the problem of finding longitude at sea." Among those taking the bait were proponents of rocket signals, would-be scientists working with injured dogs and a so-called "powder of sympathy" - and a self-taught Yorkshire carpenter named John Harrison (Michael Gambon).

"Longitude," based on Dava Sobel's novel of the same name, tells the story of Harrison's quest; expanding the book's premise, however, and contrasting it with that of Navy Commander Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons), who - having suffered a nervous breakdown in WWI - unearthed and restored Harrison's by then almost-forgotten chronometers. Originally a TV mini-series, this is in fact one single coherent film; realized with the broad vision of a big-screen approach to filmmaking. Part naval adventure, part historic docudrama, the movie first and foremost explores the two lead characters' hearts and souls: That of the mercurial (yet, with his chronometers infinitely patient) Harrison and that of the fragile Gould; the former a puritan on a scientific mission, the latter searching for his peace of mind, hoping to regain it by giving new life to Harrison's timekeepers. They are united by their infinite respect for all watches and clocks, which to them are living things - dearer, in a way, than their own flesh and blood - and by a screenplay joining their stories into a single rhythm of discovery, setbacks, apparent triumph, despair and fulfillment; seamlessly cutting between the 18th century's candle-lit world and that of the 20th century and its technical advances.

Both Harrison and Gould are at odds with society's established rules: Harrison, in the eyes of the Board of Longitude created to oversee the 1714 act, is utterly unworthy of receiving the prize; awarding it to him, according to board member Lord Morton, would be letting "the longitude prize [be] stolen by a country toolmaker." Gould on the other hand, by sacrificing his marriage to the work on Harrison's chronometers, risks scandal and social isolation. And the juxtaposition of Harrison's ever-more practical approach (eventually resulting in the creation of a chronometer just a little over 5 inches in diameter, capable to measure longitude within the revolutionary degree of approximately 1 minute or about 1 mile) and the method favored by the astronomers on the Board of Longitude (lunar observation, soon earning them and their darling, Astronomer Royal-to-be Reverend Nevil Maskelyne (Samuel West) the nickname "lunatics" in the Harrison household) is a classic tale of David vs. Goliath, and remains so even after Harrison Sr. is joined by his son William (Ian Hart). Although his benefactor Graham has once suggested that, after having convinced the Admiralty and the Royal Society's initial appointees to the Board, Harrison's real test will be the politicians, it finally falls to Parliament to come to his aid, more than 50 years after he has begun his work; and after the intervention of stout Harrison supporter First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State Lord Sandwich, Australian explorer Captain James Cook, and eventually even King George III, who likewise fancies himself a scientist.

In addition to director Charles Sturridge's vision, "Longitude" benefits from the great sense of authenticity displayed by cinematographer Peter Hannan, production designers Eileen Diss and Chris Lowe and costume designer Shirley Russell - and from a cast list that virtually reads like a "who is who" of contemporary British cinema; featuring inter alia, besides Gambon, Irons, Hart and West, Gemma Jones (Elizabeth Harrison), Anna Chancellor (Muriel Gould) and Brian Cox (Lord Morton), as well as brief appearances by Stephen Fry as "powder of sympathy" proponent Sir Kelnhelm Digby and German actress Heike Makatsch as King George's wife Charlotte. - This is a complex, fascinating movie; one of televisions's finest hours in recent years: Nothing for the mere casual viewer, but truly rewarding to anyone willing to join Harrison and Gould in their voyage of discovery.

Rating:
Summary: Too long -- and takes cheap shots
Review: It's long. And that's not a good thing, but probably a necessity in its "made for TV" mini-series form. But, while it doesn't thrive on its length, it does survive it.

I do blue-water sailing, and that probably biases me in favor of the movie. But, at the same time, I do science/engineering. And I found myself wondering how many people came away from watching this film convinced that the astronomers who proposed a "celestial clock" were just jealous and nutty. They also happened to be correct, and that notion was suppressed to the point of turning an enterprise in knowledge into a good-guy/bad-guy triviality. There's something inherently distorting to having "a hero" anyway, but this went beyond distortion, and into pandering. A step too far -- the importance of the chronometer doesn't need to be shouted; with the emphasis on the "bad-guy" character of the astronomers, the possibility of learning something about the era (the human beings of the era) was lost.

Note to movie-makers. You don't have to hit me over the head in order to get me to see where you're going.

Nonetheless, I can't fault the flow of the story, the acting (damn -- if this is for Television, then the folks in Hollywood are a bit without a clue) the direction, nor the filming itself. It survived the four hours, an amazing feat given the subject matter.

It does make me wonder, though, whether it might not have become a shorter and better (much better) film, if the Jeremy Irons character had simply been cut. Oh, the cut film could have been saved for use as acting lessons -- this may have been the best performance Irons has ever given, and that's worth a lot. But, if something has to go (and, the film is long) then better to cut ruthlessly than to nibble away fearfully.

Rent it -- it's worth that, well worth the price to avoid the loss of continuity from TV commercials. Don't buy it because you won't watch it more than once or twice.