User reviews

I ran into this at late night on A&E a couple of years ago. Although I missed about 30 minutes of the beginning part, I immediately got 'glued' to TV by the casts' great performance, great story line, and its historical-correct setting.

As a side note, Sir Isaac Newton (1642--1727) was in the same era as in the time setting of the story. I wonder if Sir Isaac Newton had ever involved with this 'board of longitude' ;)

Who would of thought that a movie about Longitude could be so engaging? Great acting and a compelling story telling turn an historical footnote into a great drama.

The story flip flops back and forth between the life of a shell shocked (literally) 20th century academic and the tale of an 18th century clockmaker, John Harrison, obsessed with winning the Prize of Queen Anne for calculating longitude.

The surprising part is that the two loosely related plot lines work so well together, despite frequent and rapid cuts back and forth. This is a tribute to the great acting skills of the cast, including Jeremy Irons as the 20th century academic. At times, you have to wonder what the heck Iron's struggles with sanity have to do with the 18th century story, but it all seems to quietly tie together in the end.

Harrison knows that if he can develop an accurate watch, solving longitude was a breeze. This may seem academic, but the lives of British seamen were literally at stake. Developing an accurate timepiece was a far more difficult task than we can today imagine, and Harrison faced a skeptical board of theoreticians who preferred more complex scientific solutions than they thought could be provided by a humble clockmaker. The board utterly fails to grasp that the simple solution is the product of a profoundly complex and innovative device.

We think so highly of the great technological achievements of our times, and they are great. We need to be reminded from time to time, as this film does so well, that the breakthroughs of other generations were in there time quite profound. Moreover, we would not be where we are today without them. As the great Sir Issac Newton once said, "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the backs of giants".

Staying with my in-laws in rural Ireland,kids,wife and said in-laws watching ER or whatever,I had to stay in the kitchen to watch on a small portable TV this film I thought would be interesting.(Dirty dishes,dogs etc...). I was taken aback quite from the start. The actors (Gambon,Irons..)were terrific,but more so,believable.After 30mns I forced my dad-in-law to at least have a look at the show,which he did.

We didn't leave that kitchen for the 3 nights the series was on and merrily sorted out the after-dinner mess,all the while conversing on how to build IT.Anecdote: on the last night my eldest aughter who was 7 came into the kitchen to see what we were watching,and at that age, was captivated. It is also a great tribute to the ethics of learning and wanting,working to achieve something. Sorry if I sounded a bit Victorian in that sense.(Am not). Please watch and recommend this.

Longitude is an example of the very best in television drama. Based on a true story, meticulously acted and directed, this is the type of movie that the British do better than anyone else in the world.

The performances of the two principals, Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons were awe inspiring, the excellent supporting cast did not let them down.

What on the surface sounds like a dry story - the search for a means of accurately determining longitude at sea - and the obsession many years later of a returned WW1 soldier with locating and restoring the devices invented for that purpose - was turned into a genuine cliffhanger by the producers. Initially I found the switching from one story to another somewhat disconcerting, but it was done so well that it soon felt quite comfortable.

This is the story of one man's lifelong trial and error search to perfect his devices and to win the prize offered for the solution to the longitude problem. Against all odds and at great damage to his health he and his son eventually succeeded. Interspersed with this is the story of another man centuries later who was determined to locate & restore the devices and to ensure their preservation for future generations.

I can really recommend this show to anyone with an enquiring mind, who enjoys a fascinating story, excellently told.

A&E's "Longitude" is perhaps the most emotionally compelling, made for TV dramas yet. I was so impressed when I first saw Longitude on A&E that I had to buy it on DVD the minute it came out. A highly realistic, fully drawn out, historical drama of how one man's dream tamed time and space, "Longitude" strikes home with its all-star cast (including Jeremy Irons and Micheal Gambon) and two-part storyline. The first story is that of a carpenter, John Harrison, who struggled for almost 50 years to perfect a "practical and useful" marine chronometer. The second story revolves around Commander Rupert Gould, a man who discovers Harrison's forgotten prototypes and fights to not only restore the timepieces but to also restore the honor of Harrison.

"Longitude" is filled with tons of edge-of-your-seat, gritty scenes, and every second of the 200-minute film glows with a profound message. The ending scene is especially powerful, in which Rupert Gould remarks, "What makes a man great? A man may be great in his aims, or in his achievements, or in both...but I think that man is truly great who makes the world his debtor..who does something for the world which the world needs, and which nobody before him has done or known how to do."

Definitely a great educational film to watch, and an excellent film to own. "Longitude" is an unforgettable experience and a demonstration of just how good a movie can be.

This film was absolutely stunning, and after watching it we were amazed at how quickly the time flew. Though the entire movie (DVD) was 200 minutes long, we felt as though it had taken less than an hour. The sets and costumes were beautiful, the acting was superb, the meshing together of the two different times worked extremely well, the "timing" was impeccable, the tension built wonderfully, and the climax was powerful. We never dreamed we would feel so strongly about a movie depicting what we originally thought would be a mundane, boring subject. We are grateful to the makers of this film for the attention to detail and the feeling they put into this movie. It came alive for us, and we now feel more appreciative toward those geniuses of former times who persevered against all odds to improve the human condition. Kudos to Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons for their exquisite performances of complex characters, and for the depth of feeling they both portrayed.

All great stories deal with conflict and overcoming difficulties. The vast majority of films that are produced thesedays feature heros who triumph based on who is a bigger bad ass or has got the biggest guns or bombs. Here is a film that has virtually no 'action' other than a few cannons fired and a lashing or two during the parts at sea, but is filled with the sort of tension and drama that keeps the viewer constantly involved.

If you enjoy intelligent movies, then you should definitely seek this film out. It sounds dreadfully boring if you read the plot summary, but it isn't. It is wonderfully written and produced and contains much light humor as well, making it truly entertaining.

One film that it reminded me of is "Master and Commander" because of the similar scenes of the British navy and the theme of the struggle of science and progress in the face of war and politics with intelligence and perseverance winning out in the end.

The interwoven story of Rupert Gould is just as interesting and provides an artistic counterpoint to the main story. Again, we have the story of a man who continues with his work in spite of numerous obstacles of the most serious magnitude because he knows that the world will be a better place as a result of that work.

The film is long and you should wait until you have enough time to sit down and watch it through to the end because once you begin you will have difficulty turning it off.

Despite its feared four-hour length (including commercials as shown on A&E), "Longitude" gets my top rating. Totally engrossing, with absolutely no false or phony notes. Acting, photography superlative.

(Available on home video without commercials and with additional footage.)

In the 18th century, latitude is readily observable but longitude is nearly impossible. The inability to find longitude is the difference between life and death. After one particularly devastating loss, the government offers £20k for a practical solution. The solution lies in a marine chronometer that can work on the rolling seas. Clockmaker John Harrison (Michael Gambon) creates such a clock as he struggles to prove his invention's accuracy. In post-WWII, Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) becomes obsessed with finding Harrison's clocks and restoring them to their working conditions.

It's an eye opening slice of scientific and exploration history. It seems like such an unsexy slice of history but it's such an important one. Surprisingly, this movie makes it compelling. It's a great way to see into another era. Harrison is the quintessential underdog and Michael Gambon does a great job making him a socially awkward man. There is a compelling competition with the scientific old guard. Jeremy Irons' modern story isn't quite as compelling. Overall, this is very enlightening history lesson and a well-made one at that.

It's a very nice look at history via historical retellings. There is really no movie, documentary, book or other media that has this direct a look on history. As it goes along you understand how ideal this storytelling is for this specific story. The book created a hailstorm of different movies and documentaries about this story and in the big documentary about it they for example don't explain how the watch was created so you see them build a huge clock and then suddenly you see them test a mini-watch on a ship. This jump is perplexing. The book has 100 such things that make little sense to an ignorant outsider, so it's very hard to understand what happened and why. In the doc you kinda see what happened, but don't understand how. For that reason this historical mini-series is very much worth a watch and very useful to teach history. The first episode is even fun and engaging overall. The second episode does drag a lot more though. The history is still impressive, but the passing issue becomes too much because the story itself is weak. They often use extremely primitive methods to create tension and excitement and every drama implementation makes the TV show worse. Characters that are supposed to depict high ranking intellectuals scream at each other like angry monkeys in irritating voices. Often dialogue is overly emotional melodrama you typically see in soap operas which of course is irritating instead of engaging. The historical setting still keeps it floating throughout though, but I wish they had cut the 20 or so pointless scenes. The scenes set in the future, for example, have no connection to the creation of the clock. They work in the first episode as they add some emotional appeal by adding in a family life to the story. In the second episode they drag down the story quite a bit as they have no additional emotional story to tell because the sailer is now a divorced loser. This is boring. It's just a guy in an insane asylum which didn't look much different from from the historical screeching monkeys scenes. They really should have kept this story in one single time and then added in some family life there somehow. But overall the melodrama everywhere makes this a hard historical pill to swallow. You'll watch it to see this stuff, but then feel like you kinda could have watched something better.

As cheap historical melodramas focused on real events go this is very much from the higher bracket. While the story overall is too long to be fully engaging the doc is worth a watch for history fanatics. Someone could edit out 50 minutes of it and it would be an overall fun watch I think.

Being a big fan of Dava Sobel's bestselling book, I wondered how this intricate and, on the face of it, not particularly exciting story would translate to the screen.

For the most part, director Sturridge has succeeded and with a sterling cast headed by Michael Gambon, Ian Hart, et al, really brought the race to resolve the longitude problem to brilliant life.

Unfortunately, for me, the overall effect was disastrously marred by the framework narrative involving Jeremy Irons, which did not really add to the central drama. Every time Irons with his haughty-taughty constipated look appeared, I found myself counting the minutes until we were back in the thick of the real action and the real story involving Gambon.

Nevertheless, this was a really accomplished production. Maybe when they repeat it or release it on video they could whittle it down to the bare necessities of the story and leave Irons on the cutting room floor.

7/10

I thought this film was over-long, in particular the Gould/Irons story was boring and irrelevant, and the piece would have benefited by cutting this bit out altogether.

Being a firm believer that truth is stranger and more interesting than fiction I was also disappointed by the sensationalising of events. This sort of dumbing-down of history is a real insult to viewers. The plot took the easy option at every point - the "Board" are villains from start to finish, Harrison not only proves his clock works but saves the bacon of the of ship or fleet at every turn, the proponents of the rival astronomical systems are all bungling fools. All nice cosy escapism I suppose.

However, the acting was fine and the production values superb.

Dec2004 update: I did eventually buy the DVD set, and it is very nice.

"Longitude" is a towering achievement as a movie. Shown in 4 hours on A&E network, I taped it to skip the commercials and was able to watch it in just over 3 hours. I only give ratings of "10" to truly remarkable movies, and this is one. It helps to be a scientist, and to have had a life-long fascination with navigation and timepieces.

The story is historical - the British government passed an act in the early 1700s for a prize of 20,000 Pounds for the first to provide an accurate and practical means of establishing longitude at sea. A Board of Longitude,comprising self-important scientists, would judge when the challenge was met.

John Harrison, a carpenter who understood the sun's apparent movement with the Earth's rotation, figured you could do it with a very accurate clock. He, with help from his son William, did it over a period of about 50 years, and met all conditions with his 4th clock, but the board kept throwing up roadblocks to avoid giving the award to someone who was not a scientist but a mere "carpenter." Finally, when Harrison was 80, in the year 1774, was given the prize by Parliament. He died only two years later.

The ancient story was interwoven with a WWII-era story of a man, played by Jeremy Irons, who undertook to restore all of Harrison's old clocks, and finally succeeded against similar resistance that Harrison had faced.

If you either are not a scientist, or do not appreciate the magnitude of Harrison's effort, and its contribution to modern navigation, then it is possible that you would find this movie somewhat boring. Do yourself a favor - don't waste your time. For me, it remains one of the absolute best movies I have ever seen, both in significance of the story and the mastery of the acting and direction.

Wow! I rarely ever watch TV drama, especially costume dramas, but I was swayed by the fact that this movie was based on actual events, and was a dramatisation from fact. From the fantastic efforts of all the actors, the attention to detail of each and every setting & location, to the delightful cameos, I was captivated completely. The clever entwining of two separate, yet intrinsically linked plots kept my attention from waning. The powerful performances from Gambon and Irons were superb, and were backed by a wonderful cast, all dressed immaculately in their period costumes. I thoroughly recommend Longitude, the characters are endearing, the emotion at the injustice is strong, and the sense of pleasure and enjoyment was continual. Enthralling.

Longitude is an absolutle classic of its type. Every aspect of the production is supurb whilst what could have been a boring story if told in an interesting and moving manner. After you have seen this film, I doubt that you will every forget the contribution that John Harrision made to sailors throughout the world.

A&E has been producing some high quality programming lately. This movie caps a string of great films that outshine the rest of the cable programs around them. This film, specifically, held my attention from beginning to end. The clever flashing between the 1700s and the 1900s never got annoying, and both ends seemed historically accurate to my less-than-discerning eye. They story followed our two protagonists quite effectively, matching the highs and lows of their lives in a subtle and enriching manner. From beginning to end, this movie was much more than a History Channel documentary could have been; it makes the history truly come alive, and makes me want to read more about this subject.

Jeremy Irons, Ian Hart and Michael Gambon were all outstanding. in fact, the only problem with the whole production was the frequent commercial breaks. $8 would be a small price to pay to avoid them. I will probably buy this one.

I recall first watching this many years ago, looking at the timeline probably when it first aired. Since then it has often flashed through my mind that I really wanted to see it again ... and yesterday I was fortunate enough to find a copy.

I won't recount details of the actual story, the basic plot descriptions already do that well enough and other reviewers have already pointed out how superbly it has been crafted and delivered.

Instead, let's look at the cast. Every other character is played by someone who is now, and probably was at the time, a household name. Whilst the trend nowadays seems to be to get one or two 'headliners' to pull in the audience then populate the rest of a show with much less well known talent, this drama is jam-packed with just about everyone who was anyone in UK drama at the time. (Well, men, at least. I'm afraid there aren't a lot of decent roles for women in this one.)

This was a delight to rewatch. It certainly won't be another twenty years until I do so again.

A movie in two parts , the 18th century tale of John Harrison portryed by Michael Gambon is superb . However even though Jeremy Irons is superb too I could not give a fig for his problems in the 20th century and after awhile just began to fast forward through all the modern bits .

My rating is 6 . 5/5 for the 18th century and 1/5 for the 20th century. I was genuinely surprised noone else had similar qualms.

Ps Jhn Harrison was the name chosen by Khan the time suspended villain played by Benedict Cumberbatch in JJ Abrams second reboot Star Trek movie - was this a clever nod to history I wonder.

'Longitude' may be long, nearly 3 and a half hours, but it is so worth every single minute with not a single second of time wasted. Have absolutely no regrets watching something that exceeded already high expectations and seeing it showcasing two of the best actors of their generation (personal opinion of course) Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon, and no that opinion is not coming from an agent, a colleague or family member.

Am saying this because some that have offered that opinion have have that rather ignorant and insulting accusation directed at them, especially for Irons, so this is me challenging that. If anybody has not seen this already and badly want to or intend to, 'Longitude' cannot be recomnended enough. Some have said that Gould's framing storyline, in a mini-series of two parallel storylines from two different timelines, is not as interesting as Harrison's, of which there is more of. Can definitely understand that, personally love both storylines and both are exceptionally well made, written and acted on equal levels. Will say though that Harrison's is somewhat more compelling and is more relevant to the title and to the concept of longitude.

It is hard to know where to begin with the praise for 'Longitude', as everything in it works. The rich and handsome production and costume design is beautifully complemented by the photography which is immersive enough to stop it from feeling stage-bound or anything like that. Especially in Harrison's storyline, where the 18th century period detail is really quite lavish. Geoffrey Burgen, who compsed scores for one of the best mini-series ever made 'Brideshead Revisited' (the series that made Irons an overnight sensation) and childhood favourites in the 'Chronicles of Narnia' series, provides music that has presence but doesn't get over the top.

Cannot say anything bad about the writing either. A very literate, though thankfully never rambling, and intelligent script with plenty of moments that provoke thought and have grit and emotion, the momentum never really lost. Educational as well. The story, a long way from dull or bland, may be more edge-of-the-seat and gritty in the Harrison storyline, but Gould's is still beautifully written and acted. The latter stages of his storyline is sensitively done and should resonate with anybody who has ever had a breakdown of some kind. There is a lot of backing and forthing between the two storylines, which could have been a disaster, but it felt cohesive and never really jumpy. The ending is moving and the messaging didn't feel patronising.

Both Gould and especially Harrison are complex characters and acted in a sterling way. As excellent as Irons is, when it comes to the acting stakes (where Bill Nighy, Ian Hart and John Wood also shine), this is Gambon's show all the way in one of his finest hours.

Overall, wonderful. 10/10

This feature film is pretty shocking, considering the subject. It opens with an able seaman in His Majesty's Navy being hanged from the yardarm in 1707 for keeping an independent log of the ships position, whose figures disagreed with those of the captain by some ninety miles. Really. And then they cut down the body and it falls to the deck with a plop. The captain's reckoning was off and the seaman's was right but it doesn't matter.

Latitude at sea, that is, degrees north and south, is easy to determine. These are the lines that run east and west along the globe. If the north star, Polaris, is on the horizon, you're at the equator. If Polaris is directly overhead, you're at the north pole. By measuring the elevation of Polaris you can fix your latitude by degrees.

Longitude -- the lines that run up and down on a map and indicate degrees east and west -- is much more difficult because it requires an accurate timepiece, one that doesn't depend on a pendulum. (Ships rock and roll.)

Well, Britain is an island, and a seafaring nation, about to launch its colonial period. They need navigation more accurate than dead reckoning. The merchant ships and men of war need to know where they are and where they are going. That is, it's usually better to sail around the Cape of Good Hope rather than into it. So the government offers a prize for anyone who devises a solution to the problem. Some of the devices offered depend on using magic on wounded dogs and are pretty funny.

Carpenter Michael Gambon devises a clock the size of a refrigerator that he hopes is immune to the ship's movement and he's given permission to try a test run back and forth to Lisbon. The results are inconclusive and he continues with his work, running out of money and always running up against the Royal Society and its preference for "scientists" over "carpenters" -- scientists who believed that the pineal gland was the seat of emotions.

Meanwhile, there are rather abrupt cuts to the 1930s, where we see Jeremy Irons trying to reconstruct Gambon's antique clocks, now all weathered and stuck. It's frustrating work. Irons can't get much help either because he's been divorced and because he suffered from a nervous breakdown, as it was called in the 30s. It's irritating too, as Irons proceeds to duplicate Gambon's work, to find that when he had a problem, Gambon attached a corrective device. When that proved not accurate enough, he attached still another corrective device, until layer upon layer of corrective devices made the whole mad construction impossible. Still, in their parallel universes, both Gambon and Irons persist. These cuts, by the way, may sound more confusing than they are. Once the characters and settings are established, there's no problem.

It's reasonable to ask how much a viewer needs to know about a clock's innards before he can follow developments. It's easy. You only need to know the elements of potential energy, torque, bevels, a folio balance and verge escapement, a high ratio weight gear train, parallax, the piezoelectric effect, the Zeigarnik effect, Ohm's law, the Purkinje effect, the properties of subatomic particles, the genitalia of Saurians, Marbe's law, Murphy's law, and who Christiaan Huygens was. Actually, you don't need to know anything about clocks except that if they're accurate enough they can tell longitude. It demands nothing but patience. There's even an exchange of shots at sea with a Spanish privateer to liven things up.

Both Gambon, who plays John Harrison, and Jeremy Irons, who plays Rupert Gould, are balked at almost every turn, not only because of the nature of the technical problems they face but because of what might be called paradigmatic inertia. When you are dealing with a Royal Society that believes that curing illness requires bleeding the patient, you're going to have a hard time convincing them that a watch the size of a small frying pan will tell longitude. And in Iron's case, he was trying to find money in a country that was recovering from a depression and simultaneously preparing for war.

Both are successful in their pursuits. Gambon's character worked on his time pieces for fifty years and was finally awarded the prize he sought, not from the board of scientists but from Parliament. He was eighty years old. Iron's character recovered and became a well-known media figure specializing in science, and was eventually made curator of a prominent museum. All of these struggles are fleshed out and non-trite. What they led to is the reason all the world today measures its time according to "Greenwich Mean Time" or GMT.

In a way the program resembles an afternoon soap opera except that it has a much better budget, the writing and dialog are light years advanced, the characters are more flesh than cardboard, the direction is more sensitive and trusting of the viewer, the central theme isn't love but a problem that exists in nature, and the acting is exquisite. Both Irons and Gambon are nearly perfect in their entirely different ways -- Gambon proud and blustery, Irons neurotic and timid.

Irons is required to enact another breakdown of an unspecified source. It looks like a manic episode. In the 30s, there was no way of dealing with it except to knock the patient out with narcotics. Without that, you have a real-life "raving lunatic" on your hands. Fortunately, the extreme episodes tend not to last too long. The hospitalized Irons gets a radiantly beautiful nurse, Lucy Akhurst. They always get good-looking nurses in the movies. She's not only good for him; she's good to him.

This is the craziest movie I have ever seen. There are many movies that tell parallel stories. But to switch the subject every 15 seconds?

The story of Harrison's invention is told in a very primitive way. The movie is made in color but the people are painted in black and white without any half tones. Some situations are just implausible. The tale with a great potential is ruined by bad cinematography.

Long, but worth it! A blessed antidote to MTV's Tom Green and the rest of the scumbag-chic that passes for culture these days. Based on the brilliant history of the same name by Dava Sobel.

In the days when ships measured themselves by yardage of sail and bank of cannon, knowing your north-south latitude was easy. Finding your east-west longitude however (and keeping your ship off the reefs) was hit-and-miss. That could get you killed. The cure was to know the time in London, precisely, but keeping time accurate on a rolling ship was tougher than keeping milk fresh; pendulum clocks need stable ground, and pendulum clocks were all they had.

Queen Anne (Br., 1665-1714) had another idea: a 20,000 pound-sterling prize to anyone who had a solution. Problem was, no one expected a country carpenter cum-clockmaker to do it. John Harrison (Michael Gambon) was that carpenter, and it became *his* problem--a three-decades-long problem. It would also pose one for Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) two centuries later, as a marriage-busting, sanity-breaking obsession over restoring Harrison's neglected prototypes: clocks that could keep time at sea better than the quartz-timed digital you might be wearing now.

"Longitude" weaves seamlessly--almost--between the two eras, tracking the exertions and miseries of John Harrison and Rupert Gould with the same kind of synchronicity Harrison spent half his life pitching to astronomers who had scarce respect for the tinkerings of a hayseed. Michael Gambon's passionate performance as John Harrison is truly Oscar-calibre, eclipsing Irons--but only because the tunnel-visioned Rupert Gould is hardly a vehicle for the memorable. Too bad this was "only" a TV mini-series. As a theatrical release it would have lent due reknown to a scarce-remembered true epic of genius.

Watch this when you get the chance. Then go punch Tom Green in the nose.