This must have been a really great movie because I was paying rapt attention the entire time and I still couldn’t figure out what was going on. Seriously, there were about twenty-three or twenty-four different plots in the movie. They kept using this spinny map thing to tell them which plot they were supposed to do next. People were switching alliances left and right, locking each other up in their brigs, escaping from different brigs than the ones they just got locked up in, swirling around in gigantic whirlpools, awakening pagan gods, capsizing entire ships using wind sprints, and of course, blowing stuff sky-high with whatever they could find that exploded. Then Keira Knightly kept making out with people until she had tagged and bagged like everybody in the movie. I’m pretty sure she would have kissed with herself if she could have. They crowned her the Pirate King and everyone lived happily ever after. I think.

This story follows a priceless musical instrument over three hundred years’ time, as it changes hands several times, travels around the world and barely escapes destruction on several occasions before being recovered and put up for auction in the present day. It’s unique in that this is perhaps the only movie I’ve ever seen where entire sections are acted out in four different languages besides English. On the DVD version I watched, no subtitles were provided in the film itself. At first I kept stopping the DVD and turning on the English subtitles (for the hearing impaired) during these parts just so I could understand what was going on. I find subtitles distracting, however, especially when the film switches back to parts where the actors are speaking in English again. I eventually just let the movie play through without subtitles and found that I was able to gather enough information about the story simply by observing the body language and mannerisms of the characters. The film includes French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), and Italian in addition to English. Besides the annoyance of the subtitle issue (I’ve read elsewhere that they were included in the theatrical version), this Canadian-made film is a masterpiece.