Last weekend, I finally managed to lay my hands on a movie that I had been intending to watch for quite some time. A movie on perhaps the most famous mutiny in naval history - Fletcher Christian and his men revolting against the supposedly tyrannical rule of Captain William Bligh on board the HMS Bounty.
"Mutiny on the Bounty" happened to be one of the stories I had been fascinated, with since a very early age - my father had watched the 1962 Marlon Brando version and my grand-father had watched the 1935 Clark Gable version. The fact that the story holds such perennial charms to have given rise to 5 cinematic adaptations is a testimony to the adventurous streak that abounds in all of us. In a way, I completed a family tradition when I watched the Clark Gable version last week.
And it is a story that would warm the cockles of many an adventurer's heart. A young, well-educated man, driven by fate, to a life at sea, decided to take fate in his own hands, by leading a mutiny on one of His Majesty's ship. Fletcher Christian would always be associated with mutiny and it can be seen as an act of courage or improper rebellion, depending on where your sympathies lie. But irrespective of your stand, I guess it was the sheer adventurism of leading a new life on a forgotten island that really held me spellbound.
Is it simply a submission to the lure of something different from the mundane? Does it simply seem alluring because life is inherently, so staid and drab? Perhaps.
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