alternative bonds
by Douglas Messerli
Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John
Logan (screenplay, based on characters by Ian Fleming), Sam Mendes (screenplay)
Skyfall / 2012
Changing my usual pattern when
speaking of the movie I have just seen, I am going to try to resist telling
most details of the plot. Of course, in any James Bond movie plot is important
in that the vicarious vicissitudes of the spy’s exciting adventures is at the
heart of any episode. Given the complete diffidence of the early
figures—particularly Sean Connery, but even Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan—who
portrayed Bond as a suavely sexual, testosterone-filled male, who, in the
service of Her Majesty’s Kingdom—were basically invulnerable as they drank,
gambled, and sexually enchanted every woman they met, be she friend or
enemy—however, I don’t believe plot was ever essential in these Ian
Fleming-based fables. The Bond image, established by Connery, was an impervious
penis, who plotted, gunned down, and wittily dismissed the numerous evil
villains out to destroy him with a penetrating glance, along with any other
tools with which Q might have provided him. Despite all the manically
devastating tortures that might face him, there was no fear that 007 would not
come through, his thinly tuxedo-wrapped body intact, with yet another girl on
his arm or, more explicitly, impaled upon his hirsute chest.
In the remake of Casino Royale and
Quantum of Solace (a movie, I must
admit, I never saw) Daniel Craig as Bond, changed everything. Both of these
films made the Bond image over, without particularly emphasizing it, into a
more vulnerable, certainly less heroic figure, without sacrificing the heroic
events and womanizing of the original—at least superficially. Somehow, even in
those first two films with Craig, it wasn’t just vulnerability that defined his
character, but a willingness to explore terrains Connery could never have
thought of. Craig, for the first time, made Bond feel less like a cartoon
figure than a real human being, a troubled, sometimes confused, almost
existentialist hero who, despite his smaller physique and, at times, even
grizzly appearance, had all the pluck of the former Bonds without their
absolute athletic abilities. Craig as James Bond was a kind of remarkable
everyman, and even without all that beautiful body hair and rippling abs and
the polished Scottish accent, was far sexier in his bodily clinging suits than
the patriarchal debonair Connery or pretty boys Moore and Brosnan (although
Brosnan has since revealed himself as a far more capable chameleon who might
almost have been able to make the same transition that Craig has achieved).
While the previous two films merely hinted at the radical shifts of the
Bond figure, Mendes’ Skyfall takes
the whole Bond transformation on as its very subject, analyzing it from the
shift from the cold war spy tactics to the inevitable alteration of world
politics, where the evil forces are no longer moles, with their molls and evil
overseers from opposing countries and political forces, but are now figures of
shadowy world, where the villains are never who you might expect them to
be—and, accordingly, far more dangerous and unpredictable.
Raul Silva (Tiago Rodriguez) (played by the powerful actor Javier
Barden) is just such a figure, a former member of the British Secret Service,
one of M’s favorite operatives, who has gone rogue when she abandoned him to
the Chinese, who painfully tortured him. Even then, as we learn, he refused to
give up information, ultimately using the cyanide pill embedded in his tooth to
relieve his suffering—and release him from his discovery that M (the always
admirable Judi Dench) has betrayed him. Unlike all the villains of past Bond
adventures, Silva’s goal is not world domination, money, gold, or any worldly
possessions—just simple vengeance, and, accordingly, he is the most dangerous
villain of any Bond adventure to date. Just as in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, Bardem takes
evil to new levels; he is unstoppable, determined to track down his enemies and
all their associates with a ploddingly mad insistency.
Early on in this somewhat long fable, Bond is revealed, as is M, to be
outdated—both mentally and physically—figures who have outlived their value to
the system which they have served. M refuses to abandon her position even
though under her watch, and through Bond’s effectiveness, they have allowed
files listing the major spies embedded in international terrorist organizations
to be stolen and utterly compromised. Indeed, their encrypted computer systems
have been high-jacked, we soon learn by an international terrorist (Silva), one
of their own. Early in the film Bond is shot and is presumed dead, the results
of which have great significance of his possible continuance. When he,
“resurrected,” as he puts it, returns, he fails all his tests; but M,
mysteriously if predictably, protects him, allowing him to remain in his
position despite her—and everyone else’s—serious doubts. In short, Craig as
Bond is as different from Connery (Moore or Brosnan) as you can get. He can’t
even shoot, let alone lure any woman to him with great success. His brief
affair with Sévérine (Béréice Marlohe), a woman saved from the Macau sex trade
by Silva, ends in her death—perhaps not that different from the endings of
several previous “Bond women,” but sadder this time, simply because Bond is
totally unable to save her from Silva’s determined murder through a perverse
enactment of the William Tell myth, with, instead of an apple upon her head, is
replaced by glass of Bond’s favorite whiskey as the target. Craig’s Bond, as
might be expected, misses the target, shooting high, while the villain
purposely does in the beauty.
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On the one hand, Skyfall pulls out the stops to connect the Craig version with the Connery one—if only the audience might imagine a taller, more hirsute, more dapper figure having fallen through age into a slightly smaller, less handsome, but determinedly energetic other self. Connery’s links with Scotland, particularly in this film through the last dark scene in Bond’s childhood home, Skyfall, are retained. His long-term connection with M (as Judi Dench) has been brought forward from previous movies. Throughout the film, Mendes goes out of his way to reference several of the previous Bond films, subtly employing the memorable Bond themes, this time in low orchestral rumblings, spectacularly referencing Bond’s always international travels (some of the best scenes of this film were shot in the neon-lit Shanghai cityscape and in a recreated Macau backdrop), and, for the sixth Bond film, bringing back Connery’s silver-birch Aston Martin D85 car. Even Miss Moneypenny, this time a beautiful and sexy Black woman, Eve (Naomie Harris) who has previously worked with Bond “in the field,” instead of the white, slightly old-maidenish woman of the early Bond movies. There’s just enough there, if you are willing to suspend your belief, to trace that earlier Sean Connery Bond to this broken down and likeable Daniel Craig version. Upon viewing this film on Christmas day, my companion Howard asked, bemusedly, are we supposed to believe that Eve Moneypenny is Miss Moneypenny’s daughter? If so, I answered, Miss Moneypenny must have been much more exciting that she appeared on screen, to secretly have sex, apparently, with a black man.
The film fortunately does not truly
dwell on this aspect of its continuity of Bond-related events, instead creating
what might be described as almost an alternative universe for the famous spy
hero, establishing Daniel Craig as a very different—if simultaneously related
and similar mythical hero.
As I’ve already suggested, the Craig version of Bond is not at all
diffident, removed, invulnerable, but is a totally human being about to be
abolished, along with his boss. By film’s end, in case you haven’t seen this
movie, M. is killed. The world she represents is destroyed, while Craig’s Bond
has clearly created a new world order. Sure, he remains a ladies’ man—just like
Connery—as suggested in his shower scene with Sévérine. He wins big at the
Macau tables. He drinks endlessly, especially in the early scenes after he has
been presumed dead. But this Bond is a moral figure, attracted to Sévérine
because of his recognition of her dilemma, disgusted by his own drinking, and
slinking back in embarrassment and self-loathing into M’s home. This Bond is
not at all impervious to destruction: he is shot several times, almost killed,
presumed dead.
In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, tied up to a chair where
the evil Silva almost undresses him while he fondles the chest wounds that he
has inflicted upon him, the following conversation occurs:
Raoul Silva: [Silva unbuttons Bond's shirt and peels back the shirt
to expose the
scar tissue where Bond removed the bullet]
Ooh!
See what she's
done to you.
James Bond: [suspicious] Well, she never tied me to a chair.
Silva: Her loss.
[Silva begins caressing Bond's neck.]
Bond: Are you sure this is about M.
Silva: It's about her... and you, and me.
You see, we are the
last two rats.
We can either eat each other... mmm... or eat everyone
else.
[Silva strokes Bond's neck]
Silva: How you're trying to remember your
training now.
[Silva smiles].
Silva: What's the regulation to cope with
this?
[Silva strokes both of Bond's upper legs]
Silva: Well, first time for everything.
[Bond smiles]
Silva: Yes?
Bond: Hm. What makes you think this is
my first time?
Silva: [sits back] Oh, Mr. Bond.
The makers of this engaging action movie have also embedded enough clues
to future Bond films, asking questions such as “why Bond’s parents were
murdered?” and who, actually, is the
new M, Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), a former lieutenant colonel in the
British Army, to pique our interest for future manifestations of the franchise.
Even more intriguing to me, is the possibility of once again encountering
Bond’s family’s former gamekeeper, Kincade. It is so wonderful to see the
heavily bewhiskered elderly Albert Finney once more on British soil that it
recalled for me his puckish, slightly pudgy, adorably cute Tom Jones all over
again.
I look forward, for the first time in
decades, to more Bond episodes, with the vulnerable but eternally encased
action hero in his uncreasible silk suit on my local screen. His aging heroics
are quite perfect for our time—an agéd population after all.
Los Angles, December 26, 2012
Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (January 2012).
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