O, this base quality / Of intelligencer!

[lareinenoire]

I almost posted earlier today in a panic because I have hit a Research Crisis. It is definitely a good thing that said research crisis happened roughly an hour before I was supposed to meet nineveh_uk for cocktails and Quantum of Solace. Alcohol and Daniel Craig shooting people was precisely what I needed.

As a result, this post will not be about the Research Crisis. It will be about Bond. Which is far, far more preferable.



As I had suspected, Quantum of Solace picked up almost exactly where Casino Royale ended, complete with dangling plotlines. It was extremely fast-paced, lots of Bond shooting people (which, as I said, was precisely what I needed tonight), and a lot of people chasing Bond/Bond chasing people across highly questionable terrain. One review I read was a bit disappointed in that it felt more like Bourne than Bond -- admittedly the only Bourne film I've seen in its entirety was the 1980s Bourne Identity with Richard Chamberlain, which I'm told is completely different from the recent films. I saw part of the second Matt Damon film and it didn't do much for me.

Quantum of Solace, on the other hand, I really enjoyed.

Part of it can probably be chalked up to my deep-rooted weakness for revenge plots. Vesper Lynd absolutely haunted this film. It was all about her, all about Bond trying to make sense of what happened in the only way he knows how. Which unfortunately seems to revolve around killing as many people as possible. M at one point calls him on it, accusing him of giving in to 'inconsolable rage'. It was a great moment. Particularly in light of Craig's performance, which really seemed to highlight just how cold-blooded Bond could be when he really tried. It made the few moments where the ragged shreds of humanity reemerged far more poignant.

ETA 1:50: tree_and_leaf just reminded me of the particular moment that was bugging me that I could not remember -- when Mathias dies, and asks 'Can we forgive each other?' and there's this awful compassion in Bond's face and this oddly poignant shot of him cradling Mathias' body as he's dying...before the shutters fall and he throws the body in a skip, poor man. The other was the bit with Camille in the burning room toward the end when she asks him to kill her -- I wonder if she was almost disappointed when he didn't; it felt a bit like that.

Vesper's presence really came through in -- of all places -- the music; these little fragments of piano motifs from Casino Royale, catching everyone (presumably including Bond) by surprised. An unquiet ghost, that one. And constantly hovering over Our Hero -- or perhaps I ought to call him Our Antihero, considering all the nasty things he manages to do -- slowly driving him mad. A guilty conscience / Is a black register, wherein is writ / All our good deeds and bad, a perspective / That shows us hell! Far be it from me to claim that comparisons between James Bond and Daniel de Bosola will occur anywhere outside the confines of my head, but as far as I'm concerned, they were definitely there. Vesper killed herself for Bond, as people keep reminding him for vastly different reasons. The baddies taunt him with it, playing on his guilty conscience, and M lacerates him for giving in to that selfsame conscience even as he rages his way around the world, leaving a substantial trail of bodies in his wake. We value not desert nor Christian breath, / When we know black deeds must be cur'd with death. There's also something about Daniel Craig's eyes -- this incredibly creepy lack of expression whenever he's about to kill someone or has just killed someone.

The relationship at the heart of the film seemed to be between Bond and M, which I thought was wonderfully done. That, and Judi Dench is always fantastic, and any excuse to give her more screen time is, in my view, always a good thing. I hesitate to call her Bond's conscience, or even a link to his better nature, since it's sometimes really hard to tell if he's even got a better nature. There are a many ways that conduct to seeming / Honour, and some of them very dirty ones. But I think what exists of that better nature does tend to come out around M. She's the one who has the world turned upside down in this film; Bond seems to be the only constant she can cling to, much as she hates to admit it. And she needs him because he's already been driven beyond the brink -- the 'blunt instrument' of the first film has become a loose cannon -- and it isn't a question of whether or not he'll get the job done; it's how much collateral damage will result.

So, I will admit there are things about old-school Bond that I miss: Q, mostly. Associate with Q, I do miss some of the silly gadgetry. But overall, I find the Craig films to be far more interesting. His Bond is an enigma, appropriate for a more shadowy conceptual framework where the demons are everywhere and nowhere at once, not to mention a number of them inside his head.

Could Quantum of Solace have had a clearer plot? Probably. It did occasionally feel like a long string of set-pieces, but impressively not in a way that I found boring at all. This may have been due to contrasting it with Casino Royale, where one of the main plot points was a long-running game of poker, rather than chasing down fragments of a global network of Generally Nasty People.

That being said, there were a number of things I really loved about it. One of the aforementioned set-pieces took place during a performance of Tosca, and had a series of gorgeous moments involving 'Tre sbirri, una carozza', complete with full chorus and the Te Deum, and some great editing cutting back and forth between Bond's escape and Tosca's murder of Scarpia. But that's the sort of counterpoint that I love in almost any context, so it was more or less a happy surprise to find it in a Bond film.

The reference to Goldfinger was simultaneously brilliant and awful. The golden girl knows when he's kissed her / It's the kiss of death. Oil is black gold, our modern conception of gold, and just as Goldfinger could waste molten gold on a spectacular murder in the 1960s, so can our nebulous villains waste oil on another poor girl unlucky enough to fall for James Bond. The turnabout at the end with Greene was fair play; no doubt poetic justice as far as Bond was concerned.

Which brings me to Camille. Who managed to do what it seemed they were trying to do with a number of previous Bond girls -- namely find one who reflects him, rather than being subsumed. They're both so very broken, so damaged, trying to outrun and battle demons simultaneously. We are only like dead walls, or vaulted graves, / That ruin'd, yield no echo. And how happy am I that she never slept with him? He helped her kill the man who had destroyed her childhood, and she chose to walk away. The scene just after she shot the general was particularly effective; even now, even though she's had her revenge, to find herself trapped yet again in a burning room with what seems like no chance of escape, and begging for anything but that kind of death. Death is what she's expecting, but it's not what she gets, because Bond doesn't work that way. But now she's adrift, rudderless, and he's got something else to finish that's got nothing to do with her.

And finish it he does. The speech to Vesper's supposed boyfriend was certainly aiming for his throat -- really well done on Craig's part. And the final exchange with M worked very well to bring the film full circle. 'Come back'. 'I never left.'

The ending was, admittedly, a bit abrupt. nineveh_uk and I were talking about how there could have been a little more of a conclusion, but they are really setting up for a franchise, so I suppose it makes sense. Plus, I have a weakness for continuity, so there we go. I really, really want to rewatch Casino Royale now, and QoS directly after.


In all, Bond films are about location porn, car porn, fashion porn, and people dying in unconventional if not often spectacular ways. The location porn was quite fun here, although it would take a lot to beat Casino Royale for sheer gorgeousness. And, well, it's a Bond film, so the fact that it has any plot at all, let alone a half-decent one, should be impressive in and of itself. I'm probably reading far more into it than was necessarily there, but this is what I do to films, and I happen to enjoy it. Plus, it really was a very enjoyable film, and a really fun evening altogether.

Comments

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

LOL. Obviously I am trying not to think about my actual scholarly work, aren't I?

[tree_and_leaf]

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