I hope you like Pussy…
… because I’ve finally posted my manifesto on the integration of Bond Girls in the 007 franchise reboot.
It gets its own page because it’s in the vicinity of 2000 words. If you’ve been following Critical Darling’s Bond musings thus far, be prepared for one or two moments of self-plagiarizing. (I assure you, I borrowed only for the sake of clarity. ) (But I should get around to suing myself in the spring.)
I think I’ve finally put this Bond thing to bed.
Quantum of what, exactly?
James Bond films proffer a special kind of camp charm that can be pleasing under the right circumstances. For example, in marathon form on basic cable in the dead of winter, when your suspension of disbelief is completely indestructible either because you are 12 years old or because you’re sipping your second — nay, third — hot buttered rum.
I could never ascertain the excitement over seeing a new James Bond film in the theater, though. Why people would pay to see such misogynist, imperialist silliness in a setting where you couldn’t even crack jokes or provide running commentary was beyond me.
I couldn’t understand it, that is, until 2006, when the Bond franchise was rebooted with Casino Royale. The shift from unapologetic biennial cheese to something aspiring toward an action franchise with indie appeal was signified by two primary alterations. For one, the filmmakers — taking a hint from graphic novelists and comic-book film adaptations — decided to truly begin anew by rewinding to Bond’s origin story, in this case Ian Fleming’s novel, Casino Royale. For that to work, poor Pierce Brosnan had to go in favor of a younger, beefier Bond (complete with ample stage cred): Daniel Craig.
From the first high-contrast black-and-white frames of Casino Royale, to the “real” emotional landscape of the new Bond himself, to the film’s straight-up lifts from the visceral Bourne franchise, the message was clear: The ante had been upped. This new Bond was a thinking-person’s Bond — or at least, a Bond that art cinephiles and action lovers might be able to agree upon — and as a result, the cheap plot devices, sexism, and abominable dialogue that could have been glossed over in the past were less than excusable here.
Royale was doubtlessly a step up, if marred by the participation of one of the screenwriting world’s worst perpetrators of abominable, ham-fisted dialogue, Academy Award-winner Paul Haggis. (The moral of his film Crash is expressed more economically and entertainingly in Avenue Q’s “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”)
Naturally, though, Haggis was invited to write Royale’s sequel, Quantum of Solace, and this time he and his writing partners have ramped up his signature element: forced kumbaya bullshit. The baddie is Dominic Greene, a businessman buying up the world’s water to turn for a profit under the guise of environmentalism. Truth be told, if said baddie wasn’t played by Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), it’s unlikely I would have made it back to the theater for this second round. (Yes, I do try to avoid gushing in this way, but in the interest of journalistic transparency: Do you suppose he fancies tall women?)
Quantum, directed by Marc Forster, commences moments after Casino Royale left off, in the midst of an indecipherable car chase (nope, the shots just don’t add up). The plot that unfolds from there is equally indecipherable. We know that Bond is still ailing over his deceased lover, Vesper Lynd, who — though she had been deceiving him — died in Royale to ensure his survival. Against the will of M (Judi Dench), Bond identifies the group that ultimately put Lynd in such a nasty, double-crossing spot and goes rogue-r than Sarah Palin on the campaign trail. Along the way he teams up with another revenge-seeker (the vacant Olga Kurylenko), and together they realize Greene’s greedy plan.
On the whole the film is well-acted — I’m thinking specifically of a scene where Dench is indulging in the careful beauty ritual of applying face cream while barking orders at her subordinates. What ultimately irks me into disliking Quantum of Solace is not the badly directed action (Forster, after all, is known for helming more dramatic fare, such as Finding Neverland), or even the muddled storyline (I don’t expect to understand everything the first time), but the cheated resolution that the writers allow our supposedly realistic motivation-driven Bond to find at the end. If it’s possible to get over someone you loved by merely killing people — often not even the right ones — have we really moved beyond the Bond of yesteryear?
Another Way to Die
Pardon the mental picture, but I can’t have been the only person holding back from grinding into her theater seat during the opening-credits sequence of Quantum of Solace, which is set to the song “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White. And let it be known that I’m not just giving White a pass on anything these days.
Perhaps mere low expectations are to blame for my enthusiasm. New York mag’s David Edelstein expressed hopeless dislike for ”Another Way to Die” in his Quantum review, and The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott called the song “an abysmal cacophony of incompatible musical idioms.” (Just say that last part out loud — it feels fantastic.)
After a few re-listens this evening, I’ve decided to stick to my guns. One man’s cacophony, it seems, is another woman’s raw, bluesy, postmodern, clashy, collaborative, wiggle-worthy track.
Nice look for Jack, yeah? More thoughts on the film itself tomorrow.
