![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's nearly a week since I saw Skyfall. I've not seen all the Bond films and I still haven't seen the Craig Casino Royale, so the first time I encountered this Bond was Quantum of Solace, an interesting film but bleak. Bond's hamfisted management of Gemma Arterton's character is the only sequence to linger in my mind.
In contrast, Skyfall was much more visually rich and felt more strongly performed too. As a child of the Roger Moore era, I was glad to hear a smattering of awful jokes; but as someone not blind to its failings, I was happy that we did not end on Bond and his female co-star in the throes of passion in an unlikely location. It seems to be a motif in the present era that the candidate for traditional Bond girl meets an unpleasant end not long after her introduction.
The great strength of the film was the cinematography. The Shanghai exteriors dazzled and framed the confrontation between Bond and Patrice in the skyscraper well. It was the night of the Komodo dragon, too, clearly CGI, but this emphasised the heightened unreality of the whole enterprise.
I'm joining those who point out that this was as much if not more the last film of the Judi Dench era than the third Daniel Craig Bond or the fiftieth anniversary film. I thought there were elements of both the Brosnan-era M and the Craig-era M here, and appropriately so; though Kincade's referring to M as 'Emma' transports me briefly into an alternative universe where Diana Rigg played M instead of Judi Dench, and that too brings in an extra layer of meaning given Diana Rigg's role earlier in the franchise. The reorientation of Craig's Bond as an older agent who has seen it all ("What makes you think it's my first time?"), together with the unveiling of Connery's Aston Martin in an archway, restore (or canonise?) the sense, slightly lost recently, of an idealised (for good or ill) agent in an MI6 standing outside time, which puts on the clothes of the current age in order to tell its story.
Retreating to Scotland reminded me a little of the 1967 Casino Royale - though this time without Ursula Andress in a kilt - but more of John Buchan's Richard Hannay, who draws the enemy on to his ancestral ground. After so much emphasis on England in dialogue addressed to or spoken by Bond, revealing that he is Scottish is a reminder of Buchan's England as an ideal best defended by outsiders. Albert Finney's transformation into an Andrew Keir/Andrew Cruickshank-esque veteran Scot was uncanny.
Early on in the film, I'd assumed that Ralph Fiennes's Mallory was to be revealed as some sort of mole, through the double bluff of setting him up as untrustworthy, suggesting he was on side after all, and then revealing that he was Silva's ally or puppetmaster. This did not happen (though something similar yet might) and he is for the moment established as a Bernard Lee-esque M. Whether this set-up - complete with Naomie Harris's Eve Moneypenny settling for a somewhat and antiquated role - will endure beyond what was essentially a nostalgic reference to the early films remains to be seen.
ETA: A comment I've just made at tree_and_leaf's should be appended here: Skyfall is clearly a Highland estate bought cheap in the early twentieth century from a penniless peer by an arms manufacturer who supplied the Royal Flying Corps and renamed it to commemorate his fortune.
In contrast, Skyfall was much more visually rich and felt more strongly performed too. As a child of the Roger Moore era, I was glad to hear a smattering of awful jokes; but as someone not blind to its failings, I was happy that we did not end on Bond and his female co-star in the throes of passion in an unlikely location. It seems to be a motif in the present era that the candidate for traditional Bond girl meets an unpleasant end not long after her introduction.
The great strength of the film was the cinematography. The Shanghai exteriors dazzled and framed the confrontation between Bond and Patrice in the skyscraper well. It was the night of the Komodo dragon, too, clearly CGI, but this emphasised the heightened unreality of the whole enterprise.
I'm joining those who point out that this was as much if not more the last film of the Judi Dench era than the third Daniel Craig Bond or the fiftieth anniversary film. I thought there were elements of both the Brosnan-era M and the Craig-era M here, and appropriately so; though Kincade's referring to M as 'Emma' transports me briefly into an alternative universe where Diana Rigg played M instead of Judi Dench, and that too brings in an extra layer of meaning given Diana Rigg's role earlier in the franchise. The reorientation of Craig's Bond as an older agent who has seen it all ("What makes you think it's my first time?"), together with the unveiling of Connery's Aston Martin in an archway, restore (or canonise?) the sense, slightly lost recently, of an idealised (for good or ill) agent in an MI6 standing outside time, which puts on the clothes of the current age in order to tell its story.
Retreating to Scotland reminded me a little of the 1967 Casino Royale - though this time without Ursula Andress in a kilt - but more of John Buchan's Richard Hannay, who draws the enemy on to his ancestral ground. After so much emphasis on England in dialogue addressed to or spoken by Bond, revealing that he is Scottish is a reminder of Buchan's England as an ideal best defended by outsiders. Albert Finney's transformation into an Andrew Keir/Andrew Cruickshank-esque veteran Scot was uncanny.
Early on in the film, I'd assumed that Ralph Fiennes's Mallory was to be revealed as some sort of mole, through the double bluff of setting him up as untrustworthy, suggesting he was on side after all, and then revealing that he was Silva's ally or puppetmaster. This did not happen (though something similar yet might) and he is for the moment established as a Bernard Lee-esque M. Whether this set-up - complete with Naomie Harris's Eve Moneypenny settling for a somewhat and antiquated role - will endure beyond what was essentially a nostalgic reference to the early films remains to be seen.
ETA: A comment I've just made at tree_and_leaf's should be appended here: Skyfall is clearly a Highland estate bought cheap in the early twentieth century from a penniless peer by an arms manufacturer who supplied the Royal Flying Corps and renamed it to commemorate his fortune.
Tags: