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Rating:  - Disappointed
This movie contains two plot lines - one in the 17th century as a clockmaker tries to solve the problem on determining longitude, and the other a modern (50's) plot about a man trying to reconstruct the original devices made by the clockmaker and also put his own life together. I found the way the director cut from plot to plot distracting and made it hard to follow either plot. While I believe the story is close to historically correct, the jumping between plot line made the stories significantly less enjoyable for me - and I would skip this movie.
Rating:  - Should be better known
This is a well done movie that is about a real historical event - the navigation problem of fixing longitude and the lives saved by finally finding a solution. The acting is good, and the plot can be folllowed fairly easily.
The movement (cutting back & forth) between circa 1700 effort of John Harrison to develop his maritime clocks and the WWI-era efforts of Rupert Gould to rebuild Harrison's old clock that he finds stored away and in disrepair, is a bit disconcerting sometimes. You have to remember what the other was up to when it cuts back.
The movie is a bit sad at times as Harrison grows older and fights to get the prize money he deserves (over 20 yrs delay); and also Gould's problems as his marriage dissolves and he deals with his reputation as being "shell shocked". But assuming these events did occur, it makes the movie properly accurate and adds personal drama.
One drawback is the length of the film. Its rather long.I still recommend it though, especially as historical fiction.
Rating:  - A Sailor's Necessity
As a retired naval officer, I recommend the following: "Longitude" should be seen periodically by every seafarer - if for no other reason than to remind him/her of days when straying away from the sightable coast could be a death warrant. Without an accurate timepiece, accurate navigation on an east-west axis is iffy at best.
Of course, nowadays we have GPS and other exotic navigation aids, but when the computer goes down, a sextant and a chronometer provide the needed information at sea.
"Longitude" tells us how a man, hardly fitted to the task, gave navies (and tradesmen as well as pleasure sailors) the key to going from any Point A to any Point N at sea by observation of the sun and by time's arithmetic.
The same math that unlocked longitude's secrets will guide us to the planets and stars.
Buy this DVD or VHS
and... Well done, Mr. Harrison!
Steve Myers in PA
Rating: - The man who made his bicycle fly to France
"Longitude," in my view, is docco-drama at its best and could have been utterly boring, in lesser hands than Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons.
Longitude is actually two stories set about 200 years apart;
the first is set in the 18th. Century, about the carpenter, John Harrison (Michael Gambon), who believe that a clock impervious to extremes of temperature and the motion of a ship at sea will solve the problem of determining longitude.
The second, set in the early 20th century, tells of the trials and tribulations of Cdr.Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons),"on leave" from the Royal Navy, in finding and restoring Harrisons' 4 clocks.
It was common knowledge, even in the 18th. Century, that the Earth turns through 1º every 3 minutes 56 seconds. If every 3'56" unit of time = 1º of Longitude then all mariners need is some arbitrary Prime Meridian to compare with ship's time at noon! i.e. Greenwich. Through the Act of Queen Anne, Parliament offered a prize of £20,000, to anyone who could find a practical way to find longitude at sea.
To Harrison that meant a clock that could keep time at sea and so he presented the ad hoc Board of Longitude with the world's first chronometer. He was opposed by the "lunatics" on the board, personified by the obese Dr. Bliss (Ian McNeice) and rodent like Rev. Nevil Maskelyne (Samuel West,)astromomers who insisted that "lunar observations, properly charted, would solve the problem of navigation at sea" even though the moon could not be seen for 12 days in every month.
Gould was a British Officer in "disgrace for conduct un-becoming;" a nervous breakdown no less ~ whilst on active duty at sea in World War I. In the early 20th. Century it seems, Post-traumatic Stress disorder was no excuse for a British Officer and Gentleman to "fail in setting an example to the British Other Ranks." Gould had further "blotted his copy-book" by seperation from his wife Muriel (Anna Chancellor) who found the strain from his "obsession" with restoring Harrison's clocks unbearable.
After a roller-coaster ride of triumph and setbacks, the stories come together at the Greenwich Obseratory where Harrison's four clocks, restored by Gould and his journals on their restoration, are on joint display.
Harrison was given his £20,000 at the age of 80 by special act of Parliament and had 2 years to enjoy his wealth before his death on March 24, 1776. Gould was given a gold medal in 1946 and often appeared on the "The Brain's Trust" until his death 5 October 1948.
This two disc version of "Longitude" includes a useful docco that clarifies the Board's resistance to Harrison's "machanical" solution to finding longitude at sea: the board members, university educated astronomers, were deeply incensed by the prospect of handing over the £20,000 prize to a country tool-maker and not a man of science!
For me the great irony of "Longitude" lay in the clockmaker George Graham's(Peter Vaughan) warning to Harrison, that "the Board wants a practical solution - they won't reward a theory," because in their grim determination to ignore Harrison, in favor of luna observations the likes of Bliss and Maskelyne spent 40 years trying to do JUST THAT!
A quotation from elsewhere:
"In the excellent film "Longitude" Rupert Gould is seen on the TV version of "The Brains Trust," but the show was not televised until 4 September 1955; seven years after his death. The radio version of "The Brains' Trust" had it's first transmission on 1 January 1941."
Still both Harrison and Gould stuck to their guns and won out in the end and that makes it more than just a docco to me.
Rating: - Unsung Brilliance
The book, the movie and Harrison himself never quite got their full due. I can't add much to all the gushing reviews. It's an engineer's revenge fantasy, to solve the greatest problem of his or her era and overcome the stogey stonewalling of high-minded academics. From the book: Sir Isaac Newton himself couldn't accept a mechanical solution to what he thought should be a celestial solution. Move over genius, a humble watch-maker did it!
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