So here are some (this time) abstract thoughts on Skyfall which assume you have already seen the movie. I was helped by the thoughtful comments to my earlier posts, but I went in another direction. Hope you enjoy these remarks because they are the last (for now). I know–too much on a popular movie. Enough! Who the hell am I?! Etc.
Saturday, November 17, 2012, 2:14 AM
November 17th, 2012 | 8:19 am
Not too long and certainly not tired.
November 18th, 2012 | 5:50 pm
I just saw the film last night and then read through the many great comments on the other Skyfall threads on this blog.
I agree that much of the film is concerned with technology, and presents arguments against technology. But the film is not simply of a critique of technology understood as gadgets or computer systems (or the models they provide).
The film goes deeper, critiquing the desire for perfect knowledge. Technology promises perfect knowledge and perfect control, but this knowledge and control is an illusion.
For example, Bond fails the psychological and physical testing he undergoes, and is declared by the tecno-experts as unfit both psychologically and physically for service.
Typically, films use such scenarios as set-ups for later events in the movie (the hero will fail a friend because of his psychological damage, for instance). In Skyfall, though, this never happens. Despite the expertise of the experts, Bond successfully reenters the field, and succeeds despite any psychological and physical problems that he might have. There is some part of the human beyond technological measurement.
Likewise, M gives the order to (accidentally) shoot Bond, not simply because she is bound to a technocratic system, because he is about to move beyond the range of her surveillance. She is about to lose her “perfect” knowledge of the situation. For her, her knowledge is the equivalent of having control (absurdly so, for she cannot affect the outcome of either shooting or not shooting).
Another example – and perhaps the most interesting one: M (?) says orphans make the best agents, and Bond is apparent proof that this is true.
In contrast to this claim, we discover that Bond actually does have a home (Skyfall, which he did not sell), and that, while his parents died, he was not without a man to raise him (someone who taught him to shoot, etc.), a man who claims to have overseen his transition from boyhood to manhood when his parents died.
The film’s true orphan is Silva, the film’s villain – and Silva made the worst agent. Bond was not an orphan CHILD, whereas Silva IS the orphan CHILD. Consider also where Silva lives – a wasteland of homelessness.
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There is also something very interesting going on with religion in the moving – the film ends with Bond kneeling at the front of his (family’s?) church.
The opening credit scene emphasizes Bond going to Hell.
Bond claims that the trait that defines him is resurrection
When Bond is stuck under the ice (a scene that the Credits shows as equivalent to his going to hell), he escapes by illuminating the hole in the ice above by using a flare – not by shooting the ice out from below with a gun (at least I think it was a flare). This is interesting in light of the emphasis placed on the importance of the secret life of agent – “the life of the shadows”. The shadow life is presented as being the option opposed to the light of technocratic oversight. But shadows require light, just as the shadows of the broken ice make possible the escape from the water. Shadows require both light and darkness, but in this scene it is the light of Bond that illuminates the shadows.
November 18th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
Patrick, that is all great and insightfull stuff and true as far as I can tell. I especially like your idea of the theme of a critique of both technology and technocracy and its contrast with timeless virtue.
November 18th, 2012 | 8:29 pm
Patrick, you’ve joined the critics’ corner late, but more than paid for your tardiness and full admission by enhancing our understanding and appreciation of the movie. Much obliged.
(You know, perhaps, that Mary Nichols makes the desire and demand for perfect knowledge & control central to her analysis of the Republic?)
November 18th, 2012 | 8:33 pm
Patrick, thanks for your thoughtful remarks and on the clarification–I remember it was a flare gun that Bond shot from underwater too.
November 18th, 2012 | 9:37 pm
John, thanks for the continuing installments on Skyfall. The energy you spent on this movie I think proved itself more than worthwhile in light of the conversations it helped to inspire.
Your statement regarding whether Bond’s character was possibly lessened by the writers choice to go into his background was something I was thinking on throughout the ongoing discussions on this topic.
My opinion is that this choice that the writers made was very much in keeping with this newest version of Bond with Daniel Craig. In that the writers wanted to make this Bond more serious, and the writing more substantive. An exploration into the hero’s past makes perfect sense. My only disagreement is that the writers took a more therapeutic route when they could have perhaps opted for something more classically heroic.
But, despite that, I personally find the Craig Bond to be the most satisfying version, frankly because, his portrayal is the most Achilles like of all the versions. The others tend to be more Odysseus like, clever but lacking a fire in the belly. Craig’s Bond is clever, but his artfullness never seems to obscure what seems to be a burning drive the source of which I think the writers were attempting to explore in this last installment.
I do wonder how they plan to proceed in the aftermath of Skyfall. Presumably the post Skyfall Bond will be more self aware and clear about his relationship with England and his (wait for it …) Duty and Obligation to her.
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