Longitude
Longitude
| 02 January 2000 (USA)
Longitude Trailers

Parallel stories: 18th century Harrison builds the marine chronometer for safe navigation at sea; 20th century Gould is obsessed with restoring it.

Reviews
SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.
jimjamjonny39 In 1920 Rupert Gould gained permission to restore John Harrison's chronometers. A self-educated English carpenter and clock maker who helped solve the longitude sea voyages safely and accurately. Something which is almost taken for granted now, nearly 300 years later. East and West points were necessary before the time of his designed watch, (which is why the Longitude prize was offered) as there were many errors calculating the previous to the current position, sometimes causing shipwrecks, with many lives lost, especially on longer voyages. This is two stories in one and flicks back and forth over the course of the storytelling. Captain James Cook navigated the South Pacific using a copy of Harrison's' 4th chronometer, praised it and made charts so accurate that copies of them were still in use in the mid-20th century.
A_Different_Drummer The great irony of course is that, because this was conceived as an "historical" -- almost educational -- drama, it never found an audience.Which of course is the insanity of the modern entertainment business.As a film, as a narrative, as a story, as entertainment it is perfect.Perfect as to script, casting, acting, direction, editing, the whole 9 years.In a parallel universe somewhere this film made it to theatres around the world and was cherished.In this is universe, it is actually hard to find a copy.
JD-007 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.
Judger 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".