Film Notes part 3: dramas & thrillers

 

Film Notes part 3: drama & thrillers

 

Aside from ‘Casino Royale’ – which I love and consider one of the best in action he-man cinema – and earlier instalments, James Bond doesn’t do so much for me, but it seemed fully appropriate to complete Daniel Craig’s Bond arc in ‘No Time to Die’ with the finale explosion. I thought Craig was good, but the urge to give backstory and introduce children seemed an unnecessary and a bad fit for this particular action-fantasy.

 

A film like Teodora Mihai’s ‘La Civil’ was the kind of drama that shows up fantasy-action films for lacking the social consequences the crime scenarios riff on.

Park Chan-Wook’s ‘Decision to Leave’ played with thriller and noir conventions and dark romance. He’s a detective, she’s a murder suspect: they are attracted to one another and so he wants to keep investigating and she wants to be suspected. Structural play, mystery and a few twists keep this always fascinating; it’s elegant and, if it perhaps lacks a little of the visceral punch of some of Park’s other work, this is still beguiling and brilliantly rendered.

 

Jonas Govaerts’s ‘H4Z4RD’ came from the more lowlife end of crime fiction. Filmed totally from within a car, this is a fun and furious thriller that is perhaps ultimately not a quite as goofy as expected from the first half. One of those “One Bad Day” plots where the bad luck just piles on for our petty-crime adjacent protagonist. He and his car must take punishment upon humiliation until he learns his lesson (well, we can assume he does).

 

The formal fun and pounding soundtrack and some off-colour gags make this entertaining, a memorable entry in the lowlife farce sub genre.

 

In David Victori’s ‘Cross the Line’, mild-Mannered people-pleaser Dani (Mario Casas) has devoted his recent life to caring for his father, but now it’s time to move on and start anew. And he’s on the verge when he crosses paths with the kind of domineering good time girl that you know is going to be trouble. The film makes exceptional use of music as it goes from dad’s unremarkable dying room to neon nightmare as Dani finds that straying from his caution only gets him deeper and deeper into trouble and desperation.

 

Victori is obviously going for something more poignant here with the title (online translator says the original Spanish translate as “You will not Kill”?), but the fun is following how things, pretty realistically, spiral out of control, forcing increasingly desperate and extreme reactions. Like ‘Victoria’, there’s a sense of playing out in real-time across the city, the handheld camera staying close to the protagonist– in this case, across Barcelona. It won’t win any friends with portraying the threat as a wild side female, in film noir style or a nineties “yuppie peril” scenario, but Smit’s performance is compelling. However, it’s Casas’ portrayal of a man being altered for life by one night, the toll taken showing increasingly on his face, that really grounds the film. Perhaps the film ultimately overreaches for sadness rather than closure, but it’s a vivid and entertaining thriller with lots of panache.

 

Adam Mackay’s ‘Don’t Look Up’ had a pedigree cast and a satirical bent that was sharp enough to upset the right people with a certain criticism of the mainstream media’s shallowness and callousness. Perhaps I thought its targets were too obvious, but it captured a certain zeitgeist with its focus on the venality and egos of politicians and media and the narcissism of a tech-bro scuppering the survival of humanity. Applying a typically American Mainstream bright-and-breezy gloss and a little sophistication to politics – ref: ‘The Big Short’ – certainly helped reached a wide enough audience to outrage.

 

Joachim Trier’s ‘The Worst Person in the World’ was peppered with memorable moments (the flirtation at the party being a personal favourite), this is a superior character study of fickleness and the roaming intentions and disappointments that come with aging. Indecision about who you are and where you are going lingering long after you’ve grown up is a theme not widely pursued aside from the dominance of the Man Child in mainstream entertainment, so it’s nice to see it dealt with such a mature eye here.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’ suffered from taking a little overlong to reach its destination. The journey was beautiful, understated and immaculately crafted, but coming to the last act you may wonder if it will actually arrive anywhere. But it does, so all the beguiling incidentals aren’t left hanging. It’s a mature film about the lingering and open-endedness of grief and life, and knowing its destination, a second watch will no doubt be an even more fulfilling journey.

 

Jane Campion’s ‘The Power of the Dog’ had a slow burn that paid off if you were willing to pay attention. Of course, it had beautiful vistas, a certain understatement of performance and plotting and smouldering pace to keep you engaged. Ultimately, it achieved a chill that was hard to shake off and made it truly memorable.

Speaking of upsetting chillers: Justin Kurzel’s ‘Nitram’ scored high in its deceptively mater-of-fact rendering of the infamous Australian mass shooting. Between this and "Snowtown", Justin Kurzel proves again a master of the upsetting and grim, in capturing with empathy and a relentlessly clear eye on pending national trauma. With stunning performances by Caleb Landry Jones and Judie Davis, this again shows Kurzel's adeptness in fleshing out characters that commit monstrous atrocities with empathy but not endorsement (including ‘The True History of the Kelly Gang’).

 

In this portrayal of "Nitram" and the build-up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the frightening observation is of someone that has no sense of the consequences of his actions, and of how dangerous he is. Although one can sympathise with his ineptitude with social skills and subsequent loneliness, this lack of self-awareness is terrifying. Although not quite as relentlessly bleak as ‘Snowtown’, and on top of its anti-gun polemic, the focus on issues of how to assimilate someone with problematic behaviour and mental health issues was uncomfortably central.

 

Philip Barantini’s ‘Boiling Point’ delivered one of the best portrayals of working life on screen, focusing on a single night’s shift in a restaurant. It’s focus on the overlap of detail, on the interplay of mini-dramas hardly aware of one another, struck a recognisable truth to anyone familiar with a busy workplace.  For this, it deployed a single take to capture how drama and conflict unfolds in real time, giving this aesthetic a purpose that surpassed its gimmick status (and I am a sucker for the choreography of the one-take).

Alternatively, on the less neo-realistic side, there was Mark Mylod's 'The Menu'. Although you will go in knowing the nature of the beast, there's enough unpredictability to keep you at the table and the sprinkling of social commentary adds a little substance. Mostly, it's an enjoyable enough Mad Chef tale.

 

Olmo Omerzu’s ‘Bird Atlas’ provided a droll family drama focused on a ruthless, selfish patriarch of a technology company. He is an irredeemable aging bully and, when taken seriously ill, one son seems to be making his move, the other is a quiet enabler, and the daughter is preoccupied with a new baby. The trouble starts when company millions go missing. Yes yes, a ‘Succession’ scenario, but less gaudy and acerbic and the characters aren’t wholly obnoxious. In fact, there’s a straightforward approach to mundane glass and vanilla set design that is akin to the drabness of soap operas. But there is a bright trip to a snowbound apartment, and one fantastic shot of a blue train going through a snow-white mountain route.

 

There’s weight when the unappealing Ivo – a stony Miroslav Donutil – momentarily turns into an unlikely anti-hero detective to pursue the mystery and money. Just when it verges on being too dry for its own good, to almost tedium tedium, there’s a touch of the fantastical when birds, via subtitles, start to give philosophical and business observations. And it’s a tale where no one gets what they want and one man’s loveless attitude leaves a trail of unhappiness. A moderate drama that occasionally hits real heights but might be an underachiever. But the Greek Chorus of birds is inspired.

 

Ben Parker’s ‘Burial’ was perhaps minor, but a decent World War II that I expected to be a vampire flick, maybe, for a moment, but isn't. Rather, it's a solid wartime drama set in a horror landscape - coffin, woods, shadow-monster and isolated taverns. The tone is suitably austere but not drab and desperate, the performances good, the action decent too if occasionally lost in the shadows.

 

But for the real wartime deal, there was Edward berger’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. A German adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s phenomenal novel which whilst marking key moments deviates from the source is truer in spirit rather than detail. It is a truism that war films are often remarkable and thrilling in spectacle, admirable and awe-inspiring in technical achievement even as they depict the very worst human kind has to offer (‘Come and See’ is as beautiful as it is traumatic, for example), and this ‘All Quiet on the Western front’ is no different.

 

Its depiction of the trenches and the use of stunning aerial shots, for example, are cinematically transcendent even as they glide into the mud and corpses of the trenches and No Man’s land. It stays on the front and forfeits the tale of soldiers returning home and being dissatisfied, of no longer fitting in, so the final image of Paul finally finding peace is somewhat lessened. This is replaced with a focus on the subplot of the politics, of men trying to stop the war and of arrogant, warmongering higher-ups sacrificing young men for their own ego and jingoism, a theme true to the novel. However, Paul’s final intimate scuffle that pauses when both soldiers realise that they are really just the same in their fatigue and horror, which is at odds with the faceless slaughter on the battlefield, strikes a resonant chord.

 

Rightfully horrifying, pretty and brutal, nicely performed and often stunningly filmed, an outstanding achievement.

 

For something joyful, if troubled: Panah Panahi’s ‘Hit the Road’ is set against rugged Iranian terrain and powered by the non-stop energy of child actor Rayan Sarlak, this slightly mysterious family road movie seems minor and intimate but reaches deep. Superficially jubilant and bright, but there’s desperation and persecution beneath. Nevertheless, the family never the let the peril get in the way of family squabbles and age-old grievances, so there’s almost a farcical edge. It’s bright, fizzing with interplay and detail (starts with the kid drawing a keyboard on a leg cast), amusing (the encounter with the cyclist is a highlight) and not adverse to a little musical interlude to reach even further, achieving something bittersweet.

 

And Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ was his most satisfying since his debut. Maybe verging a little ‘Father Ted’ at times, but mostly this is a picturesque exploration of the heartbreak that can enter male friendships and how those feelings manifest as bafflement, bitterness, resentment and violence. Oh, and self-destruction. The women know to get out when they can. Fine performances (is there no end to Barry Keoghan’s utterly mesmerising disturbing-disturbed-sympathetic oddballs?), sparse aesthetic, funny and increasingly dark and weighty.

The Spy Who Loved Me

Lewis Gilbert, 1977, UK

Coming after the much derided “The Man With The Golden Gun”, “The Spy Who Loved Me”, along with the subsequent “For Your Eyes Only” are generally seen as the best of the Roger Moore Bonds. Whilst it is true that Moore owns the role here and convinces adequately both as combatant and seducer, knowing when to look serious and when to put his tongue in his cheek, this is still pretty much “Carry On Up Yer Spying”. The most expensive Bond at the time (Biggest! Best! Beyond!), it works best as a weak parody of itself. 

Bond is never one exotic location away from getting laid – Bond is here; he’s there; he’s everywhere – and never one woman away from trite innuendo, occasionally tied into the rote patriotism that makes him a national icon. The biggest joke of the film being that Bond has to team up with sexy Russian agent XXX, Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach… and is that kisses? X-rated?), and ... well, you know how men and women are different, yes? Even when fleeing death, Bond will pause to raise an eyebrow at the efforts of a lady because, well, you know how women are? See how agent XXX has trouble getting a van going to escape danger? Women drivers, right? See agent XXX pursue a lethal killer in a sleek evening gown, high heels and clutching a handbag. Etc.

The plot is a tracing over “You Only Live Twice” and we are firmly in science-fiction land and a long way from, say, Harry Palmer and John Le Carre. Okay, so that realism is not what the Bond franchise was engaging with and Bond is far more Flash Gordon than George Smiley, but it seems a shame to have Bond just a sequence of weak gags and innuendo until harder-edged action steps in from a far more convincing if no less silly film. But there has always been a part of Bond films that want to be all things to a mainstream audience. It’s a grab bag of generalisations held together by leading man charisma, gadgets and girls. Oh, but Richard Kiel as definitive henchman "Jaws" steals the show.

vs Ian Fleming's "Dr No"

"Dr. No" by Ian Fleming

Once you get past the misogyny and the racism - which you can’t because neither are particularly subtext - the problem with reading James Bond is that James Bond is a dick. His plans frequently require innocents getting killed; he generally blames the women; he is unable to treat women as adults; he antagonises and insults his captors instead of playing clever; he sulks when he doesn’t get his way. 

As presented by Ian Fleming, if this is an exemplary example of their agents it is a wonder the British Secret Service resolves anything. Head of the Secret Service, M, seems equally dickish, apparently only happy throwing his agents into serious danger without proper forethought. Assumedly, he is meant to be the stern paternal type, but he too seems like an idiot. For example, in “Dr No”, M16 agent John Strangways fails to send his daily message to headquarters: Fleming goes into great detail how Strangeways follows stringent routine every day, mentioning how even the keyboard he uses can pick-up his particular typing technique so recognise whether anyone unauthorised is making a report, etc, etc; and yet, when Strangways fails to report in one day, his superior M’s first reaction is to simply dismiss the matter on the assumption that Strangways has eloped with his female co-agent. It is only because Bond needs an easy assignment to help him recover from a previous mission that M thinks he might as well send someone to investigate, despite being certain that Strangways has simply done a runner for some sex. If I was a secret agent, I would surely hope for a little more concern and support. 

And when Bond arrives in Jamaica to pursue the disappearance, he arrives to find they have provided him with Strangways’ car… not so good at secrecy and subterfuge, this Secret Service. Well, let’s not forget that Bond uses his real name all the time upon arrival anyway. Most hilariously, when finally captured by Dr No – in a secret base that treats its prisoners like hotel guests – and his captors ask him for “next of kin”, he gives them M’s real name, we are told. And before that, he simply arrives in Jamaica and assumes Dr No’s guilt due to a mixture of xenophobia and local gossip; oh, there are certainly clues for concern about Dr Julius No, a Chinese-German, and his army of Chigroes (that people of mixed Chinese-Negro heritage, according to the book) but Bond jumps to the conclusion that the Doc is up to no good on his reclusive island almost from the off. He hires a local boatman, Quarrel, as his sidekick – not sure what training and qualifications Quarrel has for such covert operations, but…. - and Bond manages to survive a couple of assassination attempts, most memorably one involving a poisonous centipede crawling over his crotch and up his body. But what to do about being such a recognisable target in Strangways’ car? Well, Bond gets Quarrel to hire a couple of look-alikes to drive around in the car to see what happens: and the unfortunate impersonators are both promptly murdered. How about that? 

Anyway, Bond convinces Quarrel to take him over to Dr No’s island, despite the native’s fear of a dragon that is meant to prowl upon it. It is here, apropos of nothing but happenstance, that Bond meets his love interest Honeychile Rider. She is on the beach, collecting shells to sell. But this complicates things: what is what Bond to do with this luscious lovely? And more, how can he possibly ignore the deformity of her broken nose? Yes, the book stresses, this is such a “deformity” for a female; but luckily, like all other disabilities, after a while you hardly notice it! And this is exactly the kind of thing to distract Bond on his adventures. For her part, Honey has had a tough time of it, orphaned and raped (and that’s how the nose was broken) and now living off of her own wits. She has managed to avoid Dr No’s army and collect her shells for some time, and yet as soon as Bond turns up, she becomes a simpering female, clutching to him for protection. She is out of her teens and yet there is a passage where Bond takes time to wrestle with his conscience about whether to treat her as a “girl” or as a “woman”. Well, Fleming evidently makes the decision and for the rest of the book she is simply “the girl”. Doesn’t stop them from closing the book by having what she amusingly (and degradingly) calls “slave time”.

Fleming is quoted as saying, "I write for about three hours in the morning ... and I do another hour's work between six and seven in the evening. I never correct anything and I never go back to see what I have written ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day."  And it shows: the plotting is purely whimsical, its consistency wavering, the plotting and ideas the kind to be expected from a hormonal teenager with all the cruelty, lack of discipline and unintentional humour that comes from that. We are a long, long way from John Le Carre’s George Smiley.

Dr No himself is a remarkable construction, the result of extensive plastic surgery and other physical modifications, let alone the fact that he is “one in a million” with his heart on the right side of his body (which saves his life). He is a heady mix of Chinese-German ancestry, Fu Manchu super-villainy in a Jamaican island hideaway. He also seems to think that Bond is the only one worthy of hearing his masterplan, which means he probably needs to get out more. Well, he thinks this one moment and then tells Bond he is not as clever as he thinks he is the next - which is both true and in keeping with the inconsistency of Fleming’s characterisations. For example, one minute Honey is a resourceful and admirable female presence and the next a weak sex interest in need of Bond’s protection; and the next she has the presence of mind and stamina to wait out an awful mass-crab attack. Bond is meant to be a super-agent, but that doesn’t mean he won’t sulk when imprisoned by a super-villain and when his plan to acquire a weapon falls flat (a plan, it might be mentioned, that features Honey getting a manicure). In one moment, Dr No’s soldiers are ruthless and efficient killers; the next they are intimidated and dissuaded from raping Honey by some vague and unfounded threats from Bond. It is all a little up and down and all over the place. It is as patch-work at Dr Julius No himself.

And it may well all be fun enough if its misogyny and xenophobia didn’t lead the book by the nose. These are not incidental traits as much as a watermargin through every viewpoint, and Fleming is simply not a good enough writer to circumnavigate these weaknesses. If you are not that way inclined, these might be insurmountable obstacles to enjoyment.

It is true that the film of “Dr No” manages to mitigate many failings of the book. M treats Strangway’s disappearance seriously from the start; there is much more detective work from Bond in the first half which is necessarily padded out more, particularly with assassination attempts. Bond is a jerk still, but he is also witty and far more enigmatic; more an anti-hero. The film is no less silly, but it delivers its nonsense with some flare. It is indeed remarkable to see how many of the defining traits of a Bond film are all present in his cinematic debut: the Bond-down-a-gun-barrel inset, the groovy opening titles, that theme tune, a sense of the  tongue-in-cheek rather than the campiness that would overrun the series later: all this dresses up Bond in a far more appealing aesthetic. 

On using "The Master" to draw dividing lines in audiences.

 

Rachel Cook's review of Paul Thomas Anserson's "The Master" has this as its header:

 

"Paul Thomas Anderson's long-awaited cult movie has pleased the critics, but most of us will find it heavy going"

 

Riiiight. Because there are two species on the planet, right? So called "critics" and the rest of the audience. Because audiences aren't critical, I guess, and critics aren't the audience... Oh, wait: perhaps that is meant to be that critics aren't "real/genuine" audiences. And Rachel isn't a critic, having her work printed on a national platform, presumably being paid for it; no, she's with "most of us". Geez, I mean, haven't we got entire new generations coming out with Humanities qualifications who have been trained in the delights of criticism and analysis? Hell, I'm a pretender just like anyone else - and I have this blog to prove it - but critics siding with the great unwashed popular audience to sniff at unpopular critical opinion... condescends to everyone and benefits and respects no audience at all. Oh, I'm not really bashing Rachel Cook, not particularly even if her post has instigated this blogpost, but why buy into that rubbish Grand Canyon dichotomy between popular and critical audiences, as if the two never share a overprized box of pick-and-mix at the local multiplex, or a coffee at the repertory cinema somewhere in the city?

 

I liked "The Master". Do I get my "Elitist" pass now?

 

Do critics sit in the front rows and the rest of "us" at the back?

 

Cook asks, "Will the public want to see The Master twice? I doubt it."

Well, I'm the public and I do want to see "The Master" twice, because I believe repeat viewings will offer repeat rewards, perhaps further insights from the details. I see no benefit in such a generalisation and, again, it feels like condescention and class-baiting of some kind. And from the critic of 'The Guardian'. Some films, you know, need watching more than once ('The Shining' seems to improve with every watch, for example). Isn't that one of the first insights of critical thinking?

 

She says that neither of the  lead characters in "The Master" change. That is not my perception at all. "But no film, surely, should end exactly where it began," she adds. Really? No? Why not? Because of the all-powerful if tired and trite concepts of character "journeys" and "arcs"? And what if lack of movement - narratively; geographically; for characters  - is the very point of the film? Stagnation is a theme in itself, for example. And that is not what happens in "The Master". Perhaps character obliqueness is the very point. Perhaps the changes are slight or barely percievable... not everything has to be underlined. And the two main characters of the film do change, and they don't change: that's part of the thematic content too and their mystery. 

 

But, yeah, my reading of the film and my opinion of it and the performances differ from Rachel Cook's, and that's okay. That's why I feel compelled to blog, sporadically, because opinions are what we have. But sniffiness isn't enlightening. "The Master" is heavy-going because, well, that's part of its aesthetic. You can't chide a cat for being cute: that's what the thing is, and you start by giving in to what the thing is and go from there by paying attention to the cuteness, to accepting the cuteness, to blogging about it and, in later stages, amusingly captioning photos of it.  

 

And hell, not all films are for everyone, right? I saw "Skyfall" - great mainstream entertainment - and "The Master" - great arthouse entertainment - on the same weekend, and they served different pleasure centres because they have different agendas. Both are grand flawed gestures worthy of debate - why not!? -  but I see no great reward in setting up mainstream and arthouse as completely antithetical to one another. Indeed, I see the latest Bond revival with Daniel Craig as a highly successfuly mainstream/arthouse hybrid/crossover. Oh, I can be as pigheadedly opinionated as any other film fan (recent examples: email discussions with a friend over the stupidity of Argento's "The Bird With The Crystal Plumage" [me:it is]) and that probably makes me/us as tedious as many film fanatics - but damn it, we're all in it together. I may raise an eyebrow when Mark Kermode is a vocal fan of the "Twilight" and "High School Musical" franchises, but he's a great popularist critic and even if I don't agree, he knows how to verbalise why and how and comes from the starting point that the audience is a united thing, not a fragmented, class-ridden thing. Well yes, film is a joy, but it also reveals so much about us and how we think, feel and conceive the world around us as undividuals and collectively. But, first of all, it is a joy. When you start drawing lines in the sand, if you are a critic, it strikes me as disingenuous; strikes me as buying into the vision of critics as know-alls-and-know-nothings in order to circumnavigate the fact that you don't know how to explicate why you feel the film did not work. And that is why for me Rachel Cook's utilisation of ye olde "Us and Them" seems more, shall we say, "Well THEY didn't like it either, so there!"

 

If you are looking for a more rounded and respectful appraisal of "The Master", where critical reservations are backed up with acute observations, then try Calum Marsh's review at Slant Magazine. I think he reads it right although I believe the film is great despite its apparent flaws. And then there's Slant's Tom Stempel notes, but I also read some of 'The Master' differently to him.

 

 

JAMES BOND... and me.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, it's inevitable that I grew up with Bond in some way. Bond sign-posted special occassions, such as Bank Holidays and Christmas. There was always a 007 to catch up on or remind yourself of, always heralded with "Bond. Is. Back." It was near enough a patriotic duty to watch the Bond... practically mandatory... and I guess it is still meant to be. I was a kid when I saw "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Moonraker" and "For Your Eyes Only" at the cinema (1977, '79' '81) What do I recall remembering about them? Richard Kiel as Jaws, an arachnid-like underwater base; "Star Wars" tendencies and a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" security code gag; A parrot and some snow. When you're young, you're quite innoculated to the tackiness of these 007 outings, you go with the silliness and the puns - which I was used to from the "Carry On" films and Saturday night TV. I remember watching "Octopussy" ('83) when it came out, renting it on VHS of course, and watching it maybe two or three times in a week. Dear Lord, how weak and camp it actually turned out to be.

Of course, these weren't my only points of reference for Bond: I knew all the earlier stuff. "You Only Live Twice", for example. I was intrigued at the conundrum of the title, and knew I loved the sweeping strings of John Barry's music and the longing in the theme song. And I loved it equally when the Trash Can Sinatras did a heartbreaking cover of it. I remember thinking Roger Moore was the "funny" bond ... I didn't know what 'tongue-in-cheek' was, but I knew that "From Russia With Love" wasn't it. No, Bond number two related far more to my knowledge of steely, humourless Cold War-esque Seventies thrillers. I knew Bond was exotic, because he travelled and kick butt in countries that were only now being promised to us with the incredible opportunities of Concorde and and developing holiday industries. I knew Bond slept with any attractive woman onscreen and that they all had dirty names, not that I could quite work out why or how. I knew he wasn't part of the real world.

Apart from the mini Austin Martin car I possessed (pop-up bulletproof shield and ejector-seat! - the latter doomed to be lost...somewhere...), I also owned a book of Bond. Probably called "Book of Bond", I forget. It was a book without a wraparound jacket, so I was left with the serious black hardcover to contemplate. Inside, the book was packed with all the things you had to have or do or know to be a spy. I was young and impressionably and took much of this as rote and truth, and it panicked me that you had to have, do or know these things. It was threatening and anxiety-provoking because it seemed to be an anology for all the adult things I would have to do, and couldn't, and was expected to succeed at. Masculine things.

And Bond is nothing if not an mythical machismo. Being British, of course, it is suave and viper-like. It cuts you down with a deadly karate move and a neat one-liner, set off with either a sadistic smirk or raised eyebrow. And in a suit. It's very British, that. You reserved and repressed yourself until the right moment, and then struck at just the correct point in a surge of precise violence. I'd seen "The Avengers" and I adored "The Prisoner", so I knew all this. Americans, however, were earthier men, in cowboy and soldier outfits, chomping cigars with shark-like teeth a'la James Coburn, Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Or Magnum P.I. I like, and probably still like Bond best when he is silent, suited and deadly. Bond versus Oddjob... well, that was glorious. Lethal Englishness against the inscrutability of the East.

I also knew that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was meant to be the crap one, because it had that other Bond who only appeared once. But that's a general fallacy, it seems, and I note a lot of reclamation of George Lazenby's outing in later criticism by more serious aficianados. Truth is, Lazenby does seem to be the perfect embodiment of the morphing from hallowed Connery to variable Moore. He looks and acts like he handle himself in a fight, and yet comes burdened with those puns that diffuse the horror of his murderous manner. "He branched off." Despite this, it was a film that, for all its silliness of brainwashed colour-coded national females stereotypes and so on, tried to have the sharper edge of the first Bonds. Oh yes, and tried to shade him in with an ill-fated wife. Diana Rigg makes the film, and when she turns up late in the adventure on the ice rink and smiles, you realise how sorely she's been missed for the middle chunk. The other fluff can't compete. And Lazenby was unfairly dismissed. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" still seemed to possess the Bond qualities that I liked most: good action; a certain edge of threat, rather than the TV-humour, tacky moments and excesses of, say, "Live and Let Die". Does the franchise's humour and campness increase as Bond's misogyny and sadism falls out of favour towards the Twenty-First Century? And yet Dalton was chastised for returning to the earlier seriousness... Brosnan settled a happy medium for a while.

And now there is that new Bond... with added pain again. It seems this time, it's being embraced. Zero tolerance and no-nonsense retaliation is thoroughly in vogue. The difference is that I have long since stopped being mildly excited at the promise of a Bond. I might go see "Casino Royale", I'm not sure. Last year, I read an A-Z of "Goldfinger", full of details on the development and history of the film, and my curiosity was aroused again. I have decided at some point to add the first three 007s to my collection, but I think my interest proper now in the series ends with "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Is Bond evergreen and seemingly endlessly remakeable because the legend and market tells us so? The brand is still strong, and the critics are saying "Casino Royale" 2006 is best one in a long time, and perhaps my curiosity is sparked again...

But really, I was always more of a Harry Palmer guy. Now, that Ipcress dilemma seemed closer to home and far more disturbing for it.

Buck vs. Fleming

CASINO ROYALE

Ian Fleming, 1953



The novel - What is most alarming about Fleming's novel and Bond, and what causes reservations about the romp, is the misogyny. Yes, we know Bond is a man's man and that he's a bit of a sexist from the films, and so ditto Fleming, but nothing quite prepares for this aggression and immaturity concerning women. Vesper is a "bitch" even before he has met her; she's going to be a hinderance with her feelings and girl stuff. Why couldn't she stay in the kitchen? Or more exactly, when Vesper has been kidnapped by professional, ruthless killers:

This was just what [Bond] had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men. ... For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. (pg.116)

Or: for Bond to spiel such a stream of impassioned invective, like some cartoon ex-Etonian stereotype from a bygone age. The silly buffoon. Caresses, it seems, are for Bentley's and for a villain's gaze upon the naked spy he is about to torture. Not for a "damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken, having her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was some kind of dormitory rag." (pg. 124) And let us not forget that, even if by proxy, it is Vesper that almost brings about Bond's emasculiantion. That's women for you.

But even this isn't quite the extent of Bond's immaturity. Whenever something goes wrong, he tends to blame others: if it isn't Vesper, then perhaps it is the fault of "M" and the Secret Service for not warning him of the superior villainy of his adversary. When initially beaten at baccarat, and when tortured and told how he cannot win, Bond seems just to give up in an instant. Is this truly an efficent, pragmatic and dependable spy we thought we knew (we can omit the superhuman elements)? And no, this doesn't necessarily imbue him with a more complex humanity: upon scrutiny, it is the immaturity that rises to the surface.

More surprising, having been nearly emasculinated, Bond lays in his hospital bed and has an existential, ethical crisis. Having been forced to identify with his adversary in the increasingly sado-masochistic torture triste, Bond finds himself questioning his whole stand. Is he really on the side of good? Are his actions and motivations uninpeachable? Does patriotism justify his career? Was Les Chifre truly the face of evil, and would patriotism justify his actions? How can Bond assure himself of his own righteousness? Bond seemingly starts to grow up, or at least belatedly starts to grasp the complexity and subjectivity of behaviour, politics, morality, his whole profession and so on. When a man has almost been made a eunuch, he begins to reflect. But this, indeed, does give Bond some true shading and certainly this chapter sets literary Bond apart from his cinematic interpretation.

Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy in this boy' s own romp. The concentration on a baccarat game rather than world domination. A streamlined narrative focused on a handful of set-pieces and an uncomplicated prose: Casino; torture; hospital; Vesper. Then there is the appealingly cartoonish portrayal of secret agents and evil organisations; and, yes, a formidable protagonist. Fleming proposes a seductive world of exotic locations and foreign menaces, something drawing from the Cold War era and looking towards the brave new world of affordable international travel and luxuries a decade or two ahead. Even now, it's a neverland that still captures culture's imagination. The 007 premise, it seems, is still durable in its datedness and still capable of appeal and being contemporised for new centuries.

Casino Royale

Martin Campbell, 2006

Ah, the new Bond. Some critic said that it has the best opening sequence... since when, compared to what, I don't recall (Mark Kermode mentioned it.) Well I sat there in the cinema, finally deciding to pay up and serve my curiosity, and, hey what's this? Arty black and white? Noir Bond? And - BAM!! Brutal fight in public toilets. And, BOP! A dry one-liner and the opening song kicks in. Well, the Chris Cornell and David Arnold song is underwhelming but nonetheless, the hair on the back of your neck ought to be bristling. And then - cobra fight! Very retro-Bond. And then - that free-running chase in which the muscles of your jaw are loosening. I don't believe an opening hooked and shook and excited me so much since "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers".

I had been urged to see "Casino Royale" because of an reawakened interest in the early Bonds I had last year mixed with good reviews for the new one. I had just recently watched "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love" again (Christmas presents). I was surprised at how measured the pace of "Dr No" actually was, how economical it was with its absurd villain, how it was straight-faced about its ridiculousness. Slick and even faintly sinister. "From Russia With Love" even better, arguably due to two brilliantly iconic fight scenes: the claustrophobic train fight, which takes a couple of minutes but apparently three weeks to film, and which hurts; and the showdown with Rosa Klebb - a frenzied, insane old lady pinned by a chair like a wild animal; lethal spiked shoes. Unforgettable.

Famously, Bond descended into a campness and overblown hokum because, well, the public liked it. Whenever the series has famously tried to return to a more earnest and bruised agenda, it has famously been called a failure. Even "The Man With The Golden Gun" was deemed mostly a minor effort for its relative modesty. And apparently action fans, like horror fans, like one-liners and puns with their ultra-violence. I have never really understood that. At least with "Casino Royale", the few one-liners seem a part of the fabric; they don't capsize the drama ~ this too is like the early Bonds. And here, Bond's ego, misogyny and barely hidden brutality - all points of critical interest and fault-finding - are all points of character and plot. Like any typical mother, "M" simultaneously chastises and cultivates him as he tears around exotic locales in an attempt to undermine and reign in a man who funds terrorism and plays poker. Some think that the key card game doesn't make good drama, that it's boring and goes on and on. But it is the mundane, forced ritual of the table, the mind games played there and the skill required, that are meant to absolutely be 007's forte. Indeed, it is the conflict between his needing to maintain his sharp cool at the table whilst being interrupted between hands by various attempts on his life that surely create drama and tension? "That last hand nearly killed me," he says, and indeed we feel the quip is earned. There he is, playing poker with knuckles that have the skin torn off. Leaving aside the convenient fact that nobody seems to notice this, let alone question it, isn't it an apt symbol of what Bond is about?

And Daniel Craig's Bond is a scary proposition. You wouldn't want to get on his bad side. Aside from those steely, seemingly unblinking blue eyes, he has a physique and cold determination that makes you believe he can sprint for miles in pursuit of his quarry, or take some serious torture in his stride. And the gratuitous product placement even becomes absorbed into the ethos, for Bond is also all about that surface glitz, that cultural passport that knowing the right brand names allows you. OK, at this stage - and this is meant to be an origin story of sorts - he is a rough diamond. He needs a well-cultured girl to tell him what a real suit is, and when he first preens in front of the mirror wearing it, and that Bond bassline slithers beneath the moment, we can almost feel his vanity and awareness doubling up. Craig makes Bond vital again and I bet those that didn't believe he could do it are shaking at the prospect of a house visit.

No no, really, everyone seems mighty happy to have Craig prove the sceptics wrong, and not least the sceptics themselves. How Bond became nothing less than a British institution is quite odd, and surely the series has run on goodwill and the reputation of better earlier efforts? Hmm but how "British" Bond actually is open for debate: he's positively European and American friendly now, if you check out "Casino Royale"s listed country/s of origin. ...But now, we have a film in which everyone seems to have wanted Bond to matter once again. I was convinced. Too long? Possibly, but I can't say I wanted it to end. I held my breath in the brilliant action sequences and wallowed in the slower patches. The romance? Well, they tried to make it a key to his personality, and it didn't insult the intelligence. Eva Green, Caterina Murino and Ivana Milicevic all looked incredible and had the chance to play with Bond girl conventions. Even the bad guy was underplayed... someone with a foreign accent and an eyelid that weeps blood. Mads Mikkelson quietly stands his ground against Craig without ever seeming to want to upstage him. Menace rather than madness.

It's an almighty reboot, and perhaps the best action film of 2006. I am already thrilled at the thought of seeing it again, and that is the sign I was thoroughly entertained. It is going to be really interesting to see what they do next. Finally, the excited interest in the next Bond will be warranted. Will they remake the earlier Fleming titles, but stick closer to the original plots? Will they hold on to their self-confidence and sidestep a lot of that Evil Genius Plots World Domination stuff? One can only hope. I am waiting expectantly. And trying to look both impeccably cool and brutish as I do so

buck bonds with 007

Growing up with ...
JAMES BOND

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, it's inevitable that I grew up with Bond in some way. Bond sign-posted special occasions, such as Bank Holidays and Christmas. There was always a 007 to catch up on or remind yourself of, always heralded with "Bond. Is. Back." It was near enough a patriotic duty to watch the Bond... practically mandatory... and I guess it is still meant to be. I was a kid when I saw "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Moonraker" and "For Your Eyes Only" at the cinema (1977, '79' '81) What do I recall remembering about them? Richard Kiel as Jaws, an arachnid-like underwater base; "Star Wars" tendencies and a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" security code gag; A parrot and some snow. When you're young, you're quite inoculated to the tackiness of these 007 outings, you go with the silliness and the puns - which I was used to from the "Carry On" films and Saturday night TV. I remember watching "Octopussy" ('83) when it came out, renting it on VHS of course, and watching it maybe two or three times in a week. Dear Lord, how weak and camp it actually turned out to be.

Of course, these weren't my only points of reference for Bond: I knew all the earlier stuff. "You Only Live Twice", for example. I was intrigued at the conundrum of the title, and knew I loved the sweeping strings of John Barry's music and the longing in the theme song. And I loved it equally when the Trash Can Sinatras did a heartbreaking cover of it. I remember thinking Roger Moore was the "funny" bond ... I didn't know what 'tongue-in-cheek' was, but I knew that "From Russia With Love" wasn't it. No, Bond number two related far more to my knowledge of steely, humourless Cold War-esque Seventies thrillers. I knew Bond was exotic, because he travelled and kick butt in countries that were only now being promised to us with the incredible opportunities of Concorde and and developing holiday industries. I knew Bond slept with any attractive woman onscreen and that they all had dirty names, not that I could quite work out why or how. I knew he wasn't part of the real world.

Apart from the mini Austin Martin car I possessed (pop-up bulletproof shield and ejector-seat! - the latter doomed to be lost...somewhere...), I also owned a book of Bond. Probably called "Book of Bond", I forget. It was a book without a wraparound jacket, so I was left with the serious black hardcover to contemplate. Inside, the book was packed with all the things you had to have or do or know to be a spy. I was young and impressionably and took much of this as rote and truth, and it panicked me that you had to have, do or know these things. It was threatening and anxiety-provoking because it seemed to be an analogy for all the adult things I would have to do, and couldn't, and was expected to succeed at. Masculine things.

And Bond is nothing if not an mythical machismo. Being British, of course, it is suave and viper-like. It cuts you down with a deadly karate move and a neat one-liner, set off with either a sadistic smirk or raised eyebrow. And in a suit. It's very British, that. You reserved and repressed yourself until the right moment, and then struck at just the correct point in a surge of precise violence. I'd seen "The Avengers" and I adored "The Prisoner", so I knew all this. Americans, however, were earthier men, in cowboy and soldier outfits, chomping cigars with shark-like teeth a'la James Coburn, James Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Or Magnum P.I. I like, and probably still like Bond best when he is silent, suited and deadly. Bond versus Oddjob... well, that was glorious. Lethal Englishness against the inscrutability of the East.

I also knew that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was meant to be the crap one, because it had that other Bond who only appeared once. But that's a general fallacy, it seems, and I note a lot of reclamation of George Lazenby's outing in later criticism by more serious aficionados. Truth is, Lazenby does seem to be the perfect embodiment of the morphing from hallowed Connery to variable Moore. He looks and acts like he handle himself in a fight, and yet comes burdened with those puns that diffuse the horror of his murderous manner. "He branched off." Despite this, it was a film that, for all its silliness of brainwashed colour-coded national females stereotypes and so on, tried to have the sharper edge of the first Bonds. Oh yes, and tried to shade him in with an ill-fated wife. Diana Rigg makes the film, and when she turns up late in the adventure on the ice rink and smiles, you realise how sorely she's been missed for the middle chunk. The other fluff can't compete. And Lazenby was unfairly dismissed. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" still seemed to possess the Bond qualities that I liked most: good action; a certain edge of threat, rather than the TV-humour, tacky moments and excesses of, say, "Live and Let Die". Does the franchise's humour and campness increase as Bond's misogyny and sadism falls out of favour towards the Twenty-First Century? And yet Dalton was chastised for returning to the earlier seriousness... Brosnan settled a happy medium.

And now there is that new Bond... with added pain again. It seems this time, it's being embraced. Zero tolerance and no-nonsense retaliation is thoroughly in vogue. The difference is that I have long since stopped being mildly excited at the promise of a Bond. I might go see "Casino Royale", I'm not sure. Last year, I read an A-Z of "Goldfinger", full of details on the development and history of the film, and my curiosity was aroused again. I have decided at some point to add the first three 007s to my collection, but I think my interest proper now in the series ends with "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Is Bond evergreen and seemingly endlessly remarkable because the legend and market tells us so? The brand is still strong, and the critics are saying "Casino Royale" 2006 is best one in a long time, and perhaps my curiosity is sparked again...

But really, I was always more of a Harry Palmer guy. Now, that Ipcress dilemma seemed closer to home and far more disturbing for it.