Skyfall, or: Taking on a 50-year burden

Skyfall (2012)

Directed by Sam Mendes

***SPOILERS***

“Action” has never really been my genre, in the sense that I don’t actively seek out new action films. For a while I thought the Die Hard franchise was the pinnacle action film, which was a pretty underwhelming thought at the time. I simply wasn’t engaged with the genre, probably because I hadn’t immersed myself in it. So as somebody who admittedly hasn’t seen a proportionate number of action films in relation to pretty much every other movie genre, let’s just say this: I’ve been on a fuckin’ roll lately. Total Recall, Point Break, Face/Off… and The Man with the Iron Fists. Last night I was rockin’ a manly action chub while watching John Woo’s Hard Boiled. Action films have even invaded my Top 20 for 2012 at an alarmingly high rate of 20% (The Expendables 2, Looper, Warriors of the Rainbow, The Raid: Redemption). Well I guess you can make that 25%, because I’ve officially bought into the Skyfall hype, but strangely for different reasons than I’m able to find on the blogosphere.

Let’s backtrack: I understand why some people hate action films. I have a friend who does. He also hates all superhero movies. I mean, come on, for every Looper there’s a dozen Safe’s. And for every Dark Knight there’s a Daredevil lurking around the corner. And if I retreat into my spectacle-adjusting years and narrow my mind a bit, Skyfall becomes a pretty goofy Bond film I don’t really need to bother addressing. Modigliani Movie Inquiries already pointed out the various tropes Skyfall writers Noel Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan borrow pretty lackadaisically. First there’s the strange Dark Knight-Inglourious Basterds mash-up of an introduction for Silva (Javier Bardem), accompanied by the fall-and-must-rise-to-prominence-again storyline (The Dark Knight Rises), followed by the villain being trapped in a glass cell (The Avengers), and ending with a rather strange Home Alone­-esque sequence where M (Judi Dench) rigs the joint with several cute booby traps (that KILL). But then again, if I were still in this mindset, I wouldn’t recognize the genius of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, which is satire at its finest, but unfortunately accompanied by laughable dialogue people like to turn their noses up at.

Even though I enjoy a good ole bloody time and manly handshaking, I still expect a bit of effort mixed in with my action, with moral complexities and social commentary and whatnot. And for my money, I’m willing to bet on Skyfall as (easily) the best Bond film yet. Yup: I’m jumping on the bandwagon.

“So Travis, why is Skyfall soooo special?” (You’re rolling your eyes in my head (ain’t that ambiguous?))

Well, in case you haven’t heard, Bond turned the big 5-0 recently, which means about diddly squat to me, as I’ve just about never been taken by any Bond film. They flooded my childhood and I reasonably enjoyed them, but revisiting a select few “premium” Bond films has left me underwhelmed. But luckily, for the sake of understanding the inner-workings of Skyfall, I only need to be a breathing, semi-conscious human being to recognize the iconicness of Mr. 007 himself. Because yeah, he’s everywhere, and even I cannot deny those well-defined abs I MEAN the films’ ubiquity. For me, this is what makes Skyfall such a treasure: literally anyone can understand (if in the right frame of mind) the giant task Skyfall takes on, and that’s the task of paying tribute to 50 years of Bond films. What’s even better are the two ways the writers and director Sam Mendes go about it:

1. Utilization of the environment
2. Humanizing the series itself

Skyfall can also be seen as a thriller, so I’ll go ahead and use this convenient opportunity to bash Argo once again, since it’s quickly becoming my least favorite film of the year (with Goon and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance in its sights). So you remember that really intense airport scene? You know when the plane tickets won’t show up on the computer, and then the dude suspiciously stares at the other dude’s passport for like twenty minutes, and then that one guy suddenly remembered he spoke Iranian at the last possible second to get the gang out of a jam, and then the car won’t start, and then the door won’t open, and then the plane somehow doesn’t stop with a gang of police on its trail? Yeah, no that scene actually wasn’t so intense, because it actually wasn’t a good use of the environment since it’s manipulative and constructed and not at all natural. I’d like to think that the environment should feel like a separate force. It can enhance the situation, but it shouldn’t control the situation, which is really the director's ego manipulating the situation. This is exemplified in Skyfall during a breathtaking sequence where Bond (Daniel Craig) fights a shooter inside a glassy building, with various neon lights creating a beautiful silhouette image of their bout. But I’m not here to discuss why Mendes is WAY better at recognizing the benefits of his environment than Affleck, but instead how he’s able to personify those elements and pay tribute to the series’ undeniable presence in pop culture.

Mendes opens his tribute film with a fitting image of Bond pointing his gun down a long hallway, mimicking the classic image that ends every Bond film. For, in a sense, Skyfall is the end and a new beginning for 007 films. M is killed in battle and in steps Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) in her place. The exploding pens are now gone (as Q (Ben Winshaw) says) and we’ve got simple radio distress signals instead. And screw the days of invading the enemy—Bond’s gettin’ gritty and hoardin' himself in a mansion with his old-school rifles and angrily grimacing about his destroyed Aston Martin DB5 in an evocation of manly frustration that hilariously adheres to Point Break. And while these weird little throwbacks are enough to send me into a fit of giggles, I’m not exactly seduced by them—Skyfall will have to do some work if it wants to get pass first base.

I guess this is the line I draw: when is the symbolic underlying of the action not enough? Again, I think it comes down to a combination of personification and emotional involvement. The Expendables 2—despite being a great gift for Father’s Day—is entirely too consumed with its finer action elements defining the genre to recognize the characters within the genre. But as Skyfall is utilizing various tropes from its own past in an effort to pay tribute, it’s accompanying such a task with humanistic elements. It seems that funny wink-wink lines and gadgets and cars from other Bond films are a double-edged sword. For if you’re going to attempt to define the Bond franchise, you must define Bond himself—a man of many faces, many lovers, many cars, many gadgets, and many films, but also a man of no succinct identity.

That is, of course, because he’s fucking James Bond, and MI6 cleans that shit up. But there’s something tragically fascinating about an individual with no clear past to decipher, no kin to address, and no single individual to accompany him in his journey through life. This is of course what makes M’s death so detrimental to Bond’s psyche, as he loses the only single human being we’ve consistently seen him interact with and lovingly protect. And the way Skyfall’s filmmakers go about addressing a past that cannot be addressed is pretty invigorating, to the point where you’re asking: why weren't other Bond movies doing this?

Starting simply, the absence of a “Bond girl” isn’t an accident. Even though Quantum of Solace didn’t have prominent female character either, the brief stint of Sévérine (Bérénice Marlohe) in the film is much more forceful and relevant in defining James Bond as a human being. The film begins with several women Bond fancies, apparently attempting to set a franchise record for solid lays in a film. But the smooth-talking Bond is interrupted by Silva’s dirty game, where a shot glass is placed upon Sévérine’s head for a bit of target practice. The shot glass has become a stark image for Bond, who now drinks Heineken with his martinis, but also owns a drinking problem. Bond’s shaky hand in this intimate situation is followed by a stunning flurry of gunmanship, displaying the disrupted mindset of Bond regarding those he cares about in relation to performing his professional duties. Utilizing imagery in a way practically foreign to the franchise, the clank of that shot glass (as it spills “perfectly good scotch” onto the dirt) takes the life of yet another woman victim on Bond’s watch. The denial of a Bond girl is not only the result of Bond’s moral complications (can’t stress enough how many action films don’t utilize this trait), but also a pronouncement of Bond’s beleaguered soul, unable to attach himself to any single romantic fling (a continued iteration from Casino Royale).

Even people personify these symbolic presences (crazy, huh?), as Silva (Javier Bardem) can be seen as Bond’s sinister alter ego: blonde, cheeky, mutilated, and completely off his rocker. Silva has no use for England, to which Bond has kept his loyalty. Bond still deals with Q’s wacky gadgets, while Silva giggles at such a prospect. Even as Bond seems a man with no use for the past or the rules, his attachment to such a past is what helps him to overcome Silva’s temptations (the sexual ones too). Silva’s attachment to M is the most striking correlation, as M is Bond’s only consistent companion and Silva’s most hated enemy. Complications are already afoot, with M’s call for the shot almost taking Bond’s life, and such a similar decision already mutilating Silva's pretty smile. The contrasts are there, and it becomes even more complicated with M’s presence as “mommy” in Silva’s eyes. It might seem silly to attach meaning to Silva’s terrifying pet name for M, but as M’s final breaths draw in Bond’s arms, you can feel the sense of any human attachment escaping Bond—a man who, indeed, no longer has a mom.

It’s also no mistake that such a loss takes place just outside Bond’s destroyed childhood home, which may be the most obvious/crippling piece of imagery in the film—build it up, burn it down, and build once again. When the psychiatrist asks Bond several word association questions, the mention of “Skyfall” invokes the response “Done”, which is about all you need to know of Bond’s willingness to actually speak of a past we desperately yearn to understand. But fittingly for a secret agent whose records will be wiped clean upon his death, the dissection of his past isn’t deep, but rather light and stubborn, keeping in line with the character at hand. In a story accompanied by Silva extracting the identities of several secret agents and releasing them the world, this fear of one’s identity being discovered is embodied through several murders around the world that, once again, came at M’s fault. 

But Bond doesn’t deny M or hold a grudge, but instead denies Silva’s past and embarks on the most loving romance I’ve encountered yet in the franchise. His first instinct becomes to protect M, and not only does he whisk her away into solitude, but guides her to his childhood home no less. What follows may be a series of events many find breezy and slight, but with the storied career through the 007 films, it instead becomes wholly relevant. Bond, who for so long never attached himself to another woman and never spoke of his family, retreats to such a place for protection—a loving embrace that speaks as much volume about his own touching cling to his past as his adoration for M. Bond’s new gun—his very weapon of choice years—is branded with his father’s initials, instantly pronouncing his past’s unshakable connection to his identity-free profession. And instead of Silva destroying Bond, it’s Bond who destroys his own home in protection of M, imploding it from the inside and sending a helicopter crashing into it. This fiery piece of symbolism doesn’t mark any sort of cynical attachment to the past, but instead a tragic one that undeniably paved the way for Bond’s psyche. And since we’ve come to tie such a snug connection between psyche and profession for Bond, such an act of self-destruction seems entirely too pertinent to disregard as another big-budget spectacle.

I do realize that much of this argument rides on the dependency of other Bond films, and many will never never ever ever agree with such an idea. But Skyfall is (despite how unfair many may think it) granted some liberties that other films cannot aspire to—and that’s a beautiful thing. We should want action films to take more audacious paths when presented with the opportunity; we should want films to attempt carrying a 50-year burden. It’s not a matter of fair vs. unfair, but a matter of recognizing the unique attributes a film is presented. Hell, Skyfall could completely botch this one, by either forcing the issue too heavily (like so many misguided dramas) or never utilizing the environment in a proper manner (fucking Argo). But just remember: Skyfall didn’t even have to go this route. It could have settled into mediocrity with the likes of Quantum of Solace. Instead it embraced 50 years of an ever-evolving franchise and went balls-to-the-wall with its idea. I want the franchise to keep getting better, and I hope I live to see the day Bond tops himself once again. And I’ll raise a martini—or a Heineken, or whatever the fuck else Bond is drinking in 50 years—to that.

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