November 15, 2012

105 - Skyfall: The IMAX Experience (2012)



From the outset let me stress, Skyfall is my favorite James Bond film. I have seen all of them and although I am a great fan of the early Sean Connery films, I have always felt that Daniel Craig came closer to the Bond I envisioned when reading the books. Connery feels a little too perfect, never rumpled, never harmed—even when he found himself in deadly situations. Craig’s sense of physicality with the part makes him a much more believable action hero. Here is a Bond who can be injured and hurt. Craig’s first turn as Bond in Casino Royale seemed an auspicious start (2006), but the second film, Quantum of Solace (2008) felt tired and rather unimaginative, so although I was anxious to see the film, I was also prepared to be disappointed.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The opening chase at the beginning of Skyfall follows Bond chasing his assassin through a market, down streets, across rooftops, via motorcycles [which I must admit felt a little like déjà vu from the major chase in The Bourne Legacy (2012)]. The ending of the chase, however, with Bond and his nemesis fighting on the moving train, and Bond manipulating the CAT shovel to stop the train from pulling apart, put me on the edge of my seat. When M demands his colleague shoot at him, the adrenaline was fully pumping.  I saw the film on a 6-story high and wide IMAX theatre screen and watching Bond plunge 6 stories in high detail was an incredible experience. [If you can see the film on IMAX, do it… it is worth the money and the experience.] 
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As Bond appears to die in his fall, we pick up one of the best title sequences since the work of Saul Bass on such pictures as Vertigo or Man with the Golden Arm or Psycho. The only thing you need to know about the title sequence is that it is made of all the important symbols from the film. It does not tell the story of the film as much as do theme and variation of the main images.



I have tried to figure out why we are all so attracted to the Bond character. One of my FB friends, a former student of mine, suggests “Why wouldn’t we be? He’s handsome, he drives great cars, he beds beautiful women, and he always defeats the bad guy.”
I have been reading Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Made Us Human. He talks about how we dream and stresses that the major of our dreamtime is spent in anxiety resolution—we are chased, we run, people put us in peril. He quotes J. Allan Hobson who says “Fight or flight is the rule in dreaming consciousness, and it goes on and on, night after night, with all too rare respites in the glorious lull of fictive elation.” Does perhaps Bond become our surrogate, constantly pursued or having to fight, bedding beautiful women without fear of commitment since we know, of course, that by the last reel they will not be around to cloud his bedding another woman in the next film, offering us unique technology which gives us that “ah-ha” moment when we could be stunned and amused. We get great effects with humor and often tongue-in-cheek wit. Bond has generally functioned without a back-story. We know the kind of car he likes driving, what he thinks of M, what his preference for martini preparation is, but generally there is little more. Where does he come from? How was he raised? Does he have any opinions about anything? In the first Craig-Bond film we had Bond falling love, losing the woman and eventually mourning her loss. As the Bond film ends, the nightmare resolves itself and we are able to leave having experienced our dream fantasies without feeling ourselves in peril.

Just as the Batman of the 1960s has become a brooding dark character, the suave unflappable Bond has become someone who can wear a great suit but suffers and must face the dark side of his life. He has become the image which reflects our times.

Bond says he is all about Resurrection. The franchise in the hands of Daniel Craig is alive and well.

Skyfall (2012) *****

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