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Longitude [2000]Snagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here! Longitude [2000] starring: Jonathan Coy, Christopher Hodsol, Jeremy Irons, Peter Cartwright, Gemma Jones directed by: Charles Sturridge ![VHS : Longitude [2000]](http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/video/icons/video-no-image.gif){kind=icon} List Price: £5.99 Price: £4.70 You Save: £1.29 (22%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 5014138290184 Format: PAL Label: Cinema Club Languages: Manufacturer: Cinema Club Number Of Discs: 1 Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Cinema Club Release Date: April 08, 2002 Running Time: 198 minutes Studio: Cinema Club Theatrical Release Date: 1999 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: Gracefully adapted from Dava Sobel's extraordinary bestseller, the four-part TV production of Longitude combines drama, history and science into a stimulating, painstakingly authentic account of personal triumph and joyous discovery. Equally impressive is the way writer-director Charles Sturridge has crafted parallel stories that complement each other with enriching perspective. The first story involves the successful 40-year effort of 18th-century clockmaker John Harrison (Michael Gambon) to solve the elusive problem of measuring longitude at sea. In 1714 the British Parliament had offered a generous reward to anyone who solved the problem, and Harrison devoted his life to that solution. The second story, some 200 years later, involves the effort of shell-shocked British Navy veteran Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) to restore the glorious clocks that Harrison had built. Like Harrison, Gould is the most admirable type of obsessive, but, also like Harrison, he risks his marriage to accomplish his difficult task. Thousands of sailors perished at sea before Harrison's triumph changed history, but Longitude demonstrates that Harrison's glory was slow to arrive--and his prize money even slower. A fascinating study of 18th-century British politics and clashing egos in the arena of science, the film is both epic and intimate in consequence , and Sturridge's magnificent script inspires Gambon and Irons to do some of the best work of their outstanding careers . The ever-reliable Ian Hart appears in Part 3 as Harrison's now-adult son and apprentice, and Longitude approaches its dramatic climax with the exhilarating tension of a first-rate thriller. Rallying after sickness to prove the integrity of their marvellous seafaring chronometers, the Harrisons still had to fight for official recognition, and Gould's restoration of the Harrison clockworks provides a fitting coda to this exceptional story about the thrill of discovery and the tenacity of remarkable men. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com Average Rating:
 Rating:  - The Fourth Dimension.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 by the navigator's miscalculation of 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 (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:  - Enjoyable, but cliche-ridden, spoilt by the sub-plotThere were an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman... You think I'm joking? Well, you obviously haven't seen this ambitious attempt to dramatize the best-selling "Longitude", by Dava Sobel. Sobel received criticism, mostly unfair, for supposedly unhistorical elements in her book, but the creators of this film cast such concerns to the four winds. It is a long film, originally broadcast in two parts, but I doubt whether there is a single line of dialogue within it, with the possible exception of quotations from the Houses of Parliament, which can be shown ever to have been spoken in reality. That makes for an awful lot of contrived dialogue. John Harrison metaphorically tugs his forelock before the local squire and bickers with his wife and later with his son. Various learned men of the cloth adopt supercilious expressions whenever in Harrison's presence and go into conspiratorial huddles whenever out of it. Harrison certainly was obstructed by astronomers, determined that his concept of a reliable clock was a chimaera, but they can't have all been so comically incapable as this bunch. The caricature extends to the Royal Navy, where the ratings are all decent, forward-looking types, who instantly grasp the import of Harrison's work, while the officers are pompous, incompetent stick-in-the-muds, never happier than when attending a good floggin' with the cat-o'-nine-tails, donchaknow. And this is where the Englishman, Irishman and the rest come in. We have a Welsh carpenter, instinctively rooting for the "clock-maker", an Irish captain whose boat seems to consist entirely of barnacles, but which nevertheless remains afloat, and a Scottish seaman who steps into so many dead men's shoes during Admiral Anson's gruesome circumnavigation of the globe that he ends up an officer and a gentleman. Then there is the English master of a frigate which John Harrison saves from being turned into driftwood. The sailor derides Harrison at the time, but swallows his pride and comes forward to acknowledge that the Harrison chronometer is the bee's knees. All very manipulative, implausible and highly enjoyable. I'd probably have given this production five stars, were it not for the preternaturally tiresome sub-plot, starring the effortlessly tiresome Jeremy Irons. This envisages the tribulations of Commander Gould, a veteran of the First World War, who restored the Harrison clocks and to whom we genuinely owe a great debt. Whether turning his life into a sort of period soap-opera is the way to repay it, I am inclined to doubt. The scriptwriters are constantly angling for parallels. Harrison may have bickered with his wife about going to London, so the Goulds argue incessantly, too, with the result that Mrs. abandons Mr. and doesn't see him again until he surfaces as an umpire at Wimbledon. The tenuous links to John Harrison are rather ladled on here. Somebody is painting a line on a tennis court (like a line of Longitude - geddit?) and then Rupert Gould has a couple of timepieces in front of him, reminiscent of the last of Harrison's chronometers. (Why an umpire in tennis should be so obsessed with time escapes me.) I think that the sub-plot needlessly doubles the length of the film. A film concentrating solely on John Harrison's life would still have contained the questionable dialogue and caricature referred to above, but it would have been more defensible. I know that the Gould sub-plot is a ploy to introduce information about the construction of the four clocks and about their reconstruction, but it is far from satisfactory in that regard. All in all, I think the makers of this should have settled for two documentaries: one about Harrison's life, the second about Gould's restoration of the chronometers. As it is, there are some great performances, within the limitations of the script. Rating: - Gripping ViewingFrom the writer and director of the excellent 'Shackleton', this tells the story of the development of a clock which will work at sea-so important a development it saved thousands of lives. This is no dull story but a gripping epic which, thanks to a fine script, sharp editing and excellent main performances from Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon becomes impossible to leave, the equivalent of the unputdownable novel. Highly recommended. Rating: - Great Work From All ConcernedThis film is described as an adaptation of Dava Sobel's book of the same name. It is far more than an adaptation, however. Charles Sturridge took a somewhat threadbare tale and turned it into a stirring, dramatic account of the life, tribulations, and ultimate achievement of the 18th century English horologist, John Harrison. It's not that Sobel's book is poorly written. It is in fact entertaining and engrossing as far as it goes. The trouble is that she doesn't go into enough detail and leaves a lot of questions unanswered for the reader. Sturridge takes up her story and fleshes it out, providing the sort of background and character development that the book lacks. Providing the audience with a parallel storyline involving the WWI veteran, Rupert Gould (briefly noted in Sobel's book) also is a stroke of genius on the writer/director's part. The parallels between the lives of the earlier inventor and the shell-shocked vet are striking and poignant. It does nothing to hurt Sturridge's cause to have assembled such a sterling British cast. Irons and Gambon have great roles to their credit, but they surpass themselves in this production. Sturridge has demonstrated that he can squeeze good acting out of a virtual lemon such as Ted Danson in Sturridge's adaptation of "Gulliver's Travel." He has far more to work with here, and the results are remarkable. Gambon, perhaps best known to American audiences for his lead role in "The Singing Detective," and the recent "Gosford Park," again delivers the goods in this masterful performance. He captures perfectly his character's idiosyncrasies, vicissitudes and ultimate triumph. Much Of the series of course focuses on the "chase" for a solution to the longitude problem that plagued seamen for time immemorial. Methods for determining longitude before the chronometer ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Heavenly charts were sometimes supplanted by such ludicrous schemes as "the wounded dog method. The following is a transcription of a dialogue delivered by the method's inventor: " Now, it is vital to my process, Sir Edmund, that each dog be wounded with the *same knife*, as these three animals have been, under my instructions, some three days ago. Now, the animals are then to be conveyed aboard one of His Majesty's ships, uh, under the supervision of a designated officer, whose task it is to *prevent the wound from healing*. Now the knife, however, would remain here, in London, and at *precisely noon*, each day, is to be plunged into the Powder of Sympathy, which would immediately aggravate the wound, so that each dog, now matter how many thousands of miles away he may be on his particular vessel, would begin to howl... thus." Clearly, there was a need for a practical solution to this age-old problem, as thousands of sailors were placed in constant peril, owing to the fact that, without a reliable method, they really couldn't get their bearings. This is one area where Sobel does a very good job in her book describing the difficulty in determining longitude, versus the rather simple methods for calculating latitude. That a rather simple man of humble origins could work out the method was disconcerting to several members of the vaunted Board of Longitude, which was composed of members of the ruling class. Harrison's chief detractor and a rival for his claim of the longitude prize (20,000 pounds, equivalent to almost a million dollars by today's standard) was Sir Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne comes across in the film and in Sobel's book as a rather arrogant, self-inflated snob, who engages in actual subterfuge for Harrison's claims. Viewers/readers may be interested to not that Maskelyne also appears as a character in Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon," also in an unflattering light. In terms of a recommendation, I would have to give Sobel's book between three and four stars. While it is entertaining and engaging, it leaves way too many avenues and dramatic possibilities unexplored. Sturridge fills in all the gaps, and then some. It is not often that I recommend a film over a book, but in this instance, the film is a far richer and satisfying experience. Rating: - A lone genius whose story cannot fail to impress youMichael Gambon brings to life in a touching and beautiful performance the life and struggle of a genius of our time. A man whose humanity and persistance made him refuse to give up against all the odds to try to remedy a problem that took the lives of so many. WATCH THIS...you will not be dissapointed  Try searching the Internet for "Longitude [2000]" or Ebay for "Longitude [2000]". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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