Skyfall,
the twenty-third James Bond film which started playing this month,
has wisely kept the trademarks of the fifty year old series while at
the same time invested weight and complexity to its characters and
story. The result is not just one of the best Bond films ever made,
but a fine movie, period.
When
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, resigned from his job in
naval intelligence at the end of the war he promised to his friends
that he would “write a spy novel that would be read as literature”.
Although Eric Ambler had made this leap before the war, Fleming
didn't manage it. Casino
Royale,
the first James Bond adventure published in 1952, did have a number
of interesting characters, but it was closer to pulp than literature.
The Bond adventures that followed it did little to close the gap. The
cinematic James Bond was even further down the line. His first
adventures were a clever mixture of reality and fantasy, but in just
a few years reality had gone out the window and given its place to
outright male fantasy. The movie Bond was mostly an adult fairy-tale
figure who moved on the fine line between absurdity and over the top. There were a couple of small detours towards reality (On
Her Majesty's Secret Service,
License
to Kill)
but that's exactly what they were—detours.
Then
in 2006 came Casino
Royale.
Although it didn't make much sense chronologically, it kept close to
the book and in doing so, it went back to Bond's beginnings. As a
result we got a glimpse of Fleming's Bond which was, say, a plastic
doll figure compared to the cinematic cardboard one. A character who
bled and made mistakes, someone closer to humanity. The next opus
Quantum
of Solace (2008),
otherwise forgettable, invested further in this idea of a vulnerable
Bond.
Now
with Skyfall,
Bond has developed from cardboard figure to as close to flesh and
blood as a super hero could possibly get. Of course it took
immeasurable talent: Academy award director Sam Mentes (American
Beauty,
Revolutionary
Road)
who is an avid Bond fan was able to enlist a top notch cast that
includes Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes and
Albert Finney. To illustrate the adventure, he persuaded
cinematographer Roger Deakins (Coen brothers regular) to join. The
film is postcard material and some scenes are outright stunning. All
other key production crew is first rate from Adele's memorable title
song and Daniel Kleinman's title sequence to Thomas Newman's score.
Of course all would have been in vain without the highly inventive
script that put everything into motion.
The
pre-title sequence begins in Bond-like fashion with a spectacular
chase in Istanbul that involves everything imaginable from jeeps in
an open market to motorcycles on rooftops to culminate on the roof of
a train. For half the film we get what we expect: exotic locales
(Istanbul, Shanghai and Macao), a credit sequence and title song, M
and Q, the trade-mark drink and the Walther PPK. After all, the cars,
the girls and the guns are what makes Bond, Bond. But after the half
way mark we begin to feel disoriented. Bond movies traditionally
move forward with a series of very enjoyable and intense set-pieces. These are vaguely
connected, they have to be, but they could be shown in any order. Here, time is invested on the characters until
they occupy centre stage and move the story forward. And we lose
track of the set-pieces. The villain (Javier Bardem) a smooth but
creepy character, is not set to conquer the world but after something
quite more understandable. He is capable and intelligent, and always
one step ahead. Bond's vulnerability not only scares us but allows
the movie to make a number of unexpected twists and turns. When Bond
gets into his antique Aston Martin DB5, he steps back into his past
until we can understand why he is, what he is. There are a couple of
interesting and willing nymphets, but they reminded me of Circe and
Nausicaa in Homer's Odyssey. And just as Odysseus real love
was the goddess Athene, Bond's true love is his chief, M. Unusually
for a Bond movie, there is not only thematic unity but symbolism as
well. We can still enjoy his adventures, admire his girlfriends,
laugh at his one-liners but now we can also care about him as a
character. Sam Mentes and co. has done for Bond what Ian Fleming had
originally set out to do sixty years ago.
But
make no mistake. James Bond is no slouch. In the sixty years that
have passed, this lame character is firmly established as this
century's best known fictional character. Even in music, his theme is
the most world-wide recognizable tune ever written. I have enjoyed
all 13 books as an adolescent, and when I was old enough, my dad took
me to see the Sean Connery movies. In turn, I have taken my two sons
to all the others, including this one. And just when I thought that
the fifty year-old series was running out of steam, along comes
Skyfall
to blow away the cardboard hero, breathe life into James Bond and
restart him well into the new century. James Bond will now, as the
end titles claim, surely return.
I
can almost see myself taking my grandchildren to see him, in the
years to come.
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