Longitude

Rating:
Summary: An intimate portrait of the rational temperament
Review: "They think in straight lines, not prepared for the curve, the line of suprise that takes you to a place you cannot see." - Michael Gambon as John Harrison in "Longitude"

"Longitude" would be interesting enough if it merely dealt with how precise and reliable chronometers were developed for navigation at sea. However, the great acting by nearly all those who participated in this production and the deep attention given to the highly personal aspects of the lives of the two main characters make it a window into the temperament of the natural-born scientific type, the people with a gift for tracing "the line of suprise". What makes them tick? Where do their ideas come from? Why do they often have such trouble relating with other people? How do they find happiness (if at all)? Many of these particularly human questions appear thoughout this mini-series. If you consider yourself to be of this temperament (which I do) you might get wrapped up in the struggles that confront the main characters and even be affected emotionally! If the popularity of Sobel's book has attracted you, and you happen to have a family member or significant other who is creative, intelligent, but at times distant and awkward and strange, "Longitude" just might be an eye-opener.

Rating:
Summary: True Story of a Lone Genius who Captured Time
Review: +++++

Note: This review has been written from a city with the following position on Earth:

LATITUDE: (43 degrees 2 minutes North)
LONGITUDE: (81 degrees 9 minutes West)

This movie (based on the 1995 book by Dava Sobel) on two DVDs is "a sweeping epic that takes place in two worlds." The two worlds are the eighteenth century of John Harrison (1693 to 1776) and the twentieth century of Lieutenant Commander Rupert Gould (1890 to 1948). This movie chronicles the life of Harrison who builds sea clocks and alternates his story with Gould's who restores Harrison's clocks and at the same time restores his own health. (Note that most of Sobel's book {that has the same title as this movie} is concerned with Harrison's story while only four pages in the last chapter of her book are devoted to Gould's story.)

The beginning of this movie is narrated and lasts less than three minutes. However, this narration is probably the most important part of this movie because it tells the viewer about latitude and longitude, indirectly how to calculate longitude, how time is related to longitude, and why longitude was so difficult to measure "during most of human history." (How to determine latitude was discovered centuries before this.)

I felt this narration was adequate but it did not mention one simple and important fact:

In 24 hours, the Earth spins 360 degrees on its axis from east to west. (Thus, as the narrator states, four minutes of time equals one degree of longitude east or west.)

The first DVD tells the story of how ships (with their crew and valuable cargo) were being lost at sea because they could not determine their position properly since their navigators were unable to calculate the ship's longitude accurately. As a result, the British parliament offered a reward that's equivalent to many millions of dollars today to anyone who could practically solve "the longitude problem."

Most of the scientists of this time thought that this problem's solution, even at sea, was astronomical. However, a lone genius, simple carpenter, and clockmaker named John Harrison (acted superbly by Michael Gambon) knew the fact stated above, so he reasoned that time was the solution to this problem.

So Harrison began building a clock (eventually called a "chronometer") that would be accurate enough to be used by a ship at sea. (Realize at this time there were only pendulum clocks that were quite bad at keeping time on a swaying ship at sea.) The viewer is shown Harrison constructing his clocks with it's many components. As well, we are shown the final beautiful result -- a clock that was to be used at sea. (Note that this first clock was named "H-1.") We are also shown the maiden voyage of H-1 as it's tested in 1736 on a ship bound for Lisbon (with Harrison, a non-sailor, on board). H-1 worked well during this trial. Because of Harrison's perfectionism, he elected after this trial, to build a better clock called H-2 (which was never tested). H-2 led to H-3 (which was also not tested).

As mentioned above, we are also shown scenes of Rupert Gould's life (very well-acted by Jeremy Irons) that alternate with Harrison's adventure described above. We are made aware that Gould's own life was tragic. As a result, he volunteers as a sort of therapy to restore clocks H-1, H-2, and H-3 that, in his time, were almost two centuries old. The result is that the viewer is shown more of the exterior and interior of Harrison's beautiful and complex "timekeepers" and how they actually work.

The second DVD tells us of Harrison's masterpiece -- H-4 (that was the size of a large pocket watch). As with H-1, H-4 is tested in 1761 on a ship bound for Jamaica with Harrison's grown son (well-acted by Ian Hart) on board. This timepiece worked well.

Also we are shown how Harrison had trouble collecting his monetary prize. In fact, we hear one official on the board (the "Board of Longitude") responsible for bestowing this prize say, "I would not wish to see the longitude prize stolen by a country toolmaker." As fate would have it, an astronomer who favored an astronomical method, Nevil Maskelyne (well-acted by Sam West) became the head of this board, causing further delays. Harrison has to seek the assistance of King George the Third (well-acted by Nick Rowe) to cut through this bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, Gould finishes restoring the clocks and manages at the same time to overcome his own problems.

The acting of those indicated above and the supporting cast is exquisite. The cinematography is breath-taking with the scenes at sea very realistic. All costumes that represented the two alternating time periods transport the viewer back to those periods. The movie itself has it all: intrigue, science, history, geography, astronomy, navigation, clockmaking, ambition, and greed.

A minor complaint is that a simple calculation for determining longitude was not shown. As well, the DVD only has one extra feature called "Behind the Scenes."

Finally, although not absolutely necessary, I recommend reading Sobel's book before viewing this movie. Doing this will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the movie.

In conclusion, this movie was an A&E production. As a result, viewing this movie is definitely "time well spent."

(1999; made for TV; 200 min; 2 discs)

+++++


Rating:
Summary: True Story of a Lone Genius who Captured Time
Review: =====>

Note: This review has been written from a city with the following position on Earth:

LATITUDE: (43 degrees 2 minutes North)
LONGITUDE: (81 degrees 9 minutes West)

This 3 hour 20 minute movie (based on the 1995 book by Dava Sobel) that was first on television in 1999 (and transferred to two 100 minute DVDs in 2000) is "a sweeping epic that takes place in two worlds." The two worlds are the eighteenth century of John Harrison (1693 to 1776) and the twentieth century of Lieutenant Commander Rupert Gould (1890 to 1948). This movie chronicles the life of Harrison who builds sea clocks and alternates his story with Gould's who restores Harrison's clocks and at the same time restores his own health. (Note that most of Sobel's book {that has the same title as this movie} is concerned with Harrison's story while only four pages in the last chapter of her book are devoted to Gould's story.)

The beginning of this movie is narrated and lasts less than three minutes. However, this narration is probably the most important part of this movie because it tells the viewer about latitude and longitude, indirectly how to calculate longitude, how time is related to longitude, and why longitude was so difficult to measure "during most of human history." (How to determine latitude was discovered centuries before this.)

I felt this narration was adequate but it did not mention one simple and important fact:

In 24 hours, the Earth spins 360 degrees on its axis from east to west. (Thus, as the narrator states, four minutes of time equals one degree of longitude east or west.)

The first DVD tells the story of how ships (with their crew and valuable cargo) were being lost at sea because they could not determine their position properly since their navigators were unable to calculate the ship's longitude accurately. As a result, the British parliament offered a reward that's equivalent to many millions of dollars today to anyone who could practically solve "the longitude problem."

Most of the scientists of this time thought that this problem's solution, even at sea, was astronomical. However, a lone genius, simple carpenter, and clockmaker named John Harrison (acted superbly by Michael Gambon) knew the fact stated above, so he reasoned that time was the solution to this problem.

So Harrison began building a clock (eventually called a "chronometer") that would be accurate enough to be used by a ship at sea. (Realize at this time there were only pendulum clocks that were quite bad at keeping time on a swaying ship at sea.) The viewer is shown Harrison constructing his clocks with it's many components. As well, we are shown the final beautiful result -- a clock that was to be used at sea. (Note that this first clock was named "H-1.") We are also shown the maiden voyage of H-1 as it's tested in 1736 on a ship bound for Lisbon (with Harrison, a non-sailor, on board). H-1 worked well during this trial. Because of Harrison's perfectionism, he elected after this trial, to build a better clock called H-2 (which was never tested). H-2 led to H-3 (which was also not tested).

As mentioned above, we are also shown scenes of Rupert Gould's life (very well-acted by Jeremy Irons) that alternate with Harrison's adventure described above. We are made aware that Gould's own life was tragic. As a result, he volunteers as a sort of therapy to restore clocks H-1, H-2, and H-3 that, in his time, were almost two centuries old. The result is that the viewer is shown more of the exterior and interior of Harrison's beautiful and complex "timekeepers" and how they actually work.

The second DVD tells us of Harrison's masterpiece -- H-4 (that was the size of a large pocket watch). As with H-1, H-4 is tested in 1761 on a ship bound for Jamaica with Harrison's grown son (well-acted by Ian Hart) on board. This timepiece worked well.

Also we are shown how Harrison had trouble collecting his monetary prize. In fact, we hear one official on the board (the "Board of Longitude") responsible for bestowing this prize say, "I would not wish to see the longitude prize stolen by a country toolmaker." As fate would have it, an astronomer who favored an astronomical method, Nevil Maskelyne (well-acted by Sam West) became the head of this board, causing further delays. Harrison has to seek the assistance of King George the Third (well-acted by Nick Rowe) to cut through this bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, Gould finishes restoring the clocks and manages at the same time to overcome his own problems.

The acting of those indicated above and the supporting cast is exquisite. The cinematography is breath-taking with the scenes at sea very realistic. All costumes that represented the two alternating time periods transport the viewer back to those periods. The movie itself has it all: intrigue, science, history, geography, astronomy, navigation, clockmaking, ambition, and greed.

A minor complaint is that a simple calculation for determining longitude was not shown. As well, the DVD only has one extra feature called "Behind the Scenes."

Finally, although not absolutely necessary, I recommend reading Sobel's book before viewing this movie. Doing this will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the movie.

In conclusion, this movie was an A&E production. As a result, viewing this movie is definitely "time well spent."

<=====>

Rating:
Summary: A somewhat overlong adaptation of award winning book.
Review: A somewhat overlong adaptation of Darva Sobel's award winning book.

Imaginary lines cross the world: Longitude going from North to South - Latitude going from east to West. While latitude was easily enough calculated, there was no way to be sure of someone's location without latitude. It must have taken great courage to sail the seas when even the most minor miscalculation could imperil the lives of the entire ship's company.

Many methods of finding Longitude were attempted. When the loss of life and hazard to trade grew to be unacceptable, a Board was established by the British Admiralty offering a prize for a successful and practical method to establish Longitude.

A carpenter and self-taught clockmaker, John Harrison, determined to capture the prize by creating timepiece so accurate that they could be used as navigation instruments. There was no land-based timepiece this well built and to add also the pressures of dealing with the water and movement of the seas was a daunting prospect.

The irascible Mr. Harrison is able to make strides in the technologies of horology, which were unprecedented. However his own temperament mixed with the politically infighting of the Board of Navigation was able to impede these improvements for many years. The fact that Harrison was one of the yeoman class rather than the aristocracy was to cost him many years of extra endeavor.

The elegant shortness of the book is lost in this drama, which seems to drag on endlessly and often to no point. I think that a great deal of material could have been removed with no detriment to the viewer.

It was distracting having to deal with the endless drama of Rupert Gould the Naval Officer recovering from a nervous breakdown who the restores the clocks in the early part of the 20th century. The cutting between the 18th century and the 20th century portion of the stories does not add the to drama of the original discovery. It rather serves to lengthen the story considerably without adding any more light on the discovery of longitude.

Rating:
Summary: A somewhat overlong adaptation of award winning book.
Review: A somewhat overlong adaptation of Darva Sobel's award winning book.

Imaginary lines cross the world: Longitude going from North to South - Latitude going from east to West. While latitude was easily enough calculated, there was no way to be sure of someone's location without latitude. It must have taken great courage to sail the seas when even the most minor miscalculation could imperil the lives of the entire ship's company.

Many methods of finding Longitude were attempted. When the loss of life and hazard to trade grew to be unacceptable, a Board was established by the British Admiralty offering a prize for a successful and practical method to establish Longitude.

A carpenter and self-taught clockmaker, John Harrison, determined to capture the prize by creating timepiece so accurate that they could be used as navigation instruments. There was no land-based timepiece this well built and to add also the pressures of dealing with the water and movement of the seas was a daunting prospect.

The irascible Mr. Harrison is able to make strides in the technologies of horology, which were unprecedented. However his own temperament mixed with the politically infighting of the Board of Navigation was able to impede these improvements for many years. The fact that Harrison was one of the yeoman class rather than the aristocracy was to cost him many years of extra endeavor.

The elegant shortness of the book is lost in this drama, which seems to drag on endlessly and often to no point. I think that a great deal of material could have been removed with no detriment to the viewer.

It was distracting having to deal with the endless drama of Rupert Gould the Naval Officer recovering from a nervous breakdown who the restores the clocks in the early part of the 20th century. The cutting between the 18th century and the 20th century portion of the stories does not add the to drama of the original discovery. It rather serves to lengthen the story considerably without adding any more light on the discovery of longitude.

Rating:
Summary: Good adaptation of the Sobel book
Review: Dava Sobel's book "Longitude" began the recent slew of books examining some important, but obscure aspect of history. This book well dramatizes the Sobel book, but interspersed with the story of how John Harrison found a useful and practical means of finding longitude at sea, is the story of Rupert Gould (well acted by Jeremy Irons), who overcame shell shock, mental illness, and a failing marriage to restore Harrison's chronometers.

Perhaps the major problem is that the stories do not mesh that well. The transitions seemed rather forced, and the effort to make the stories parallel (with Gould working on, say, the second chronometer as the Harrisons are building it) don't work to the benefit of either story. The idea seems to be to expand what isn't a terribly long book into a miniseries. Good idea, not so good in execution. The Harrisons have by far the more interesting story, and I suspect that most people (readers of the book, for example) wanted to see their story, not that of Gould.

Well set and directed, with the sea scenes especially well done (though why it was necessary to follow convention and have a flogging scene, I don't know, though that seems to be part of any sea story these days).

Michael Gambon is notable as John Harrison, playing him well both as a young man and as an elderly one. Look also for Ian Hart as the grown-up William Harrison.

DVD features include a "making of" feature, which is reasonably interesting.

Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good adaptation of the Sobel book
Review: Dava Sobel's book "Longitude" began the recent slew of books examining some important, but obscure aspect of history. This book well dramatizes the Sobel book, but interspersed with the story of how John Harrison found a useful and practical means of finding longitude at sea, is the story of Rupert Gould (well acted by Jeremy Irons), who overcame shell shock, mental illness, and a failing marriage to restore Harrison's chronometers.

Perhaps the major problem is that the stories do not mesh that well. The transitions seemed rather forced, and the effort to make the stories parallel (with Gould working on, say, the second chronometer as the Harrisons are building it) don't work to the benefit of either story. The idea seems to be to expand what isn't a terribly long book into a miniseries. Good idea, not so good in execution. The Harrisons have by far the more interesting story, and I suspect that most people (readers of the book, for example) wanted to see their story, not that of Gould.

Well set and directed, with the sea scenes especially well done (though why it was necessary to follow convention and have a flogging scene, I don't know, though that seems to be part of any sea story these days).

Michael Gambon is notable as John Harrison, playing him well both as a young man and as an elderly one. Look also for Ian Hart as the grown-up William Harrison.

DVD features include a "making of" feature, which is reasonably interesting.

Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good adaptation of the Sobel book
Review: Dava Sobel's book "Longitude" began the recent slew of books examining some important, but obscure aspect of history. This book well dramatizes the Sobel book, but interspersed with the story of how John Harrison found a useful and practical means of finding longitude at sea, is the story of Rupert Gould (well acted by Jeremy Irons), who overcame shell shock, mental illness, and a failing marriage to restore Harrison's chronometers.

Perhaps the major problem is that the stories do not mesh that well. The transitions seemed rather forced, and the effort to make the stories parallel (with Gould working on, say, the second chronometer as the Harrisons are building it) don't work to the benefit of either story. The idea seems to be to expand what isn't a terribly long book into a miniseries. Good idea, not so good in execution. The Harrisons have by far the more interesting story, and I suspect that most people (readers of the book, for example) wanted to see their story, not that of Gould.

Well set and directed, with the sea scenes especially well done (though why it was necessary to follow convention and have a flogging scene, I don't know, though that seems to be part of any sea story these days).

Michael Gambon is notable as John Harrison, playing him well both as a young man and as an elderly one. Look also for Ian Hart as the grown-up William Harrison.

DVD features include a "making of" feature, which is reasonably interesting.

Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Okay, but not nearly as great as the book...
Review: I enjoyed the book so much that I ran out and bought the DVD. Although it was well-cast and entertaining to a degree, I must say that I was somewhat disappointed.

For starters, this 4-hour miniseries is FAR too long. It dragged on painfully at times and could easily have been cut by a full hour (and very possibly two). Also, it focuses almost entirely on the struggle of the main characters while omitting most of the interesting scientific narrative and anecdotes that make the book so fascinating. The impact of the story is severely diminished without this narrative.

Moreover, I think it is difficult to figure out what is happening during most of the series unless you have read the book first. It is unclear why many of the secondary characters exist, and their interactions with the main characters are virtually inscrutable at times.

All in all, it is obvious that a significant effort went into this series but I think it could have been better.

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