The Mutineers Dramatization of the mutiny on the Bounty 1789 by Christian Lanciai (1992)
Already as a child I was deeply fascinated by this true story of the tragedy of a ship and its crew brought on an epic adventure of destiny leading them all where none of them had intended to go and even less ever dreamt of. Of course, it is very difficult to put such a vast saga into a comprehensive dramatic form, there are so many personal destinies and stories involved, and just as every one of them is vital and indispensable for the great whole, it’s impossible to do them all justice by completing their stories. This is actually just a sketch, ever since it happened the debate about what really happened and whose fault it was has been going on presenting constantly new books and films on the subject, from the first casual account after the first visit of a ship to Pitcairn Island after Bounty, to the versions by Jules Verne and the great trilogy by Nordhoff and Hall, still the most ambitious effort to comprise the whole thing, to the first films with Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, and to new findings and films as late as in the last decades. This is a story that you can never finish, never get through with, never completely understand and never forget or leave aside. It is of timeless concern, and if I have made any point at all in this effort to give it a comprehensive form, I think my conclusion that it was all actually like a natural catastrophe that couldn’t have been avoided, and that the greatest mistake committed was to blame anyone for it, maybe could bring us closer to some further understanding. Today we are more prone to 1