Age is no guarantee of efficiency.
And youth is no guarantee of innovation.
At the risk of ruining the film, please note that the
following commentary reveals the ending to Skyfall.
As I mentioned in my initial reaction to The Dark Knight Rises, foreshadow can often
be an ungainly literary device. It requires a certain amount of
finesse, a deft blend of tugging at the thread but not opening the entire
kimono. Reveal too much and the story's ruined; reveal too little and you drain
the story of any and all momentum.
I'm reminded of a particular example of foreshadowing known
as "Chekhov's gun." It stipulates
that if you present a loaded gun in the first act of a story, that gun must be
fired in the third act; otherwise, the mention of the gun is worthless and should
therefore, not exist in the story at all.
Skyfall suffers
from the burden of explaining its "Chekhov's gun" - the cryptic
title. Early on in the first act, Bond goes through a battery of physical,
mental, and psychological tests. At one point, a psychologist conducts a word
association test in which he mentions "Skyfall." The music kicks in,
signaling that this word is key to the story; and Bond noticeably stiffens from
the mention of it. He coldly states, "Done," and promptly ends the
testing.
The reason I bring this up is the mention of Skyfall doesn't actually directly relate to anything in the film's
first two hours (the film clocks in at just about two and a half hours). Its
mention in the first act - its presence as the loaded gun - looms heavily over
the entire plot, urging us to continually ask, "Wait, so what is Skyfall
again?" As such, the story is burdened to explain it and its reason for
inclusion in the third act - a commitment the film is asking of its viewers
that is both tiresome and unnecessary.
In Richard Brody's lukewarm but astute commentary on the
film, he states that "[Skyfall is] the work of a machine that aspires to nothing more than self-perpetuation, and it shows." Indeed, I wholly agree with his sentiment. And reading between the lines, I believe what Brody is remarking on is the nature of this particular Bond film and more specifically, the fact that it felt compelled to sketch an origin story for James Bond. In other words, Skyfall almost serves as yet another reboot to the franchise - introducing a new Q, Moneypenny, and M in one fell swoop - instead of fleshing out the mystique of Bond.
What made Casino
Royale so irresistible in 2006 was the raw portrayal of a new James Bond -
not the smooth and suave lady's man that had preceded Daniel Craig but rather,
a flawed and egotistic anti-hero who by the
film's end, reels from losing his true love, Vesper. It
succinctly defined this man - complete with all his strengths and indelible weaknesses - and propelled James Bond into the 21st century as an action hero that
was somehow incomplete, somehow inherently less heroic and more human than we
had previously known him.
What's so sorely lacking in Skyfall - or so sorely overexposed, to be more accurate - is the
feeling that we're no longer watching the same James Bond that we had grown to
love in Casino Royale. The film unravels
throughout the first two acts quite smoothly, dropping clues like bread crumbs. But at one point around 1:45 into the film,
Silva - the story's oddly homoerotic but eerily captivating villain - reveals
his master plan to assassinate M. So as Silva converges to M's location, Bond
sprints through the streets on foot in an effort to save the only maternal
figure in his life. The music swells and hearts start pumping. And in a move reminiscent of the climax in Mendes' own Road to Perdition, the director drains
the audio except for a somber voiceover by M, quoting Tennyson's "Ulysses":
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Its message is clear - the old James Bond, M, and 007
mystique are outdated. A new era is dawning; and it's time for yet another
update. I understand what the screenwriters were trying to do. They felt the
need to explain Bond's origins, to explicitly describe his childhood, including the death of his parents and his rise as an orphan through the ranks of
MI6 (Mendes' opening shot of the film conveys as much - Bond steps into a doorway, out of focus, blurry. He slowly walks into focus, mirroring the story's ambitions to clearly define this character).
So at the conclusion of the completely unnecessary third act set at Skyfall Lodge - Bond's childhood home - M dies in Bond's arms on the same grounds on which his own parents perished. Undoubtedly, we're now meant to understand the childhood psychological troubles behind the James Bond character. But I find it supremely ironic that on the 50th anniversary of the 007 franchise, Skyfall would feel compelled to so unequivocally define James Bond, a character that has hitherto withstood all manners of depictions, representations, and time.
So at the conclusion of the completely unnecessary third act set at Skyfall Lodge - Bond's childhood home - M dies in Bond's arms on the same grounds on which his own parents perished. Undoubtedly, we're now meant to understand the childhood psychological troubles behind the James Bond character. But I find it supremely ironic that on the 50th anniversary of the 007 franchise, Skyfall would feel compelled to so unequivocally define James Bond, a character that has hitherto withstood all manners of depictions, representations, and time.
