That the theme song was sung by Adele should have been enough to tip me off. And maybe, just maybe, I would have fought harder not to fall asleep while watching the latest James Bond film, only to find out the next day that it was, at least according to the resident experts on my Facebook news feed, the best James Bond film ever.
So, this weekend, I finally saw Skyfall again, wide awake this time. I wouldn't know if it is, indeed, the best James Bond film ever, since I've really only known the James Bond as portrayed by -- don't judge me -- Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. But I do know it's the best James Bond film I've ever seen. I also know it’s the only James Bond film that made me cry.
In Skyfall, a struggle between the new and the old is played out throughout the entire movie. The past is catching up with M (Judi Dench) who is constantly fighting as MI6 director to keep up with the times. James Bond wants out of his old life and finds it hard to carve a new one. New people are coming into MI6, shaking up old things. Old methods are exposed to not have been as efficient as expected. Questions are raised: Is terrorism a matter of mouse clicks and computer geeks now? Is MI6 still relevant? Is James Bond?
It helped the questioning, too, that the movie wasn't like any of its precursors. At some point, I found myself asking, "Am I watching a James Bond movie?" I thought I was going to get an à la Dark Knight back story. In fact, when Bond and M go to the old Bond estate and they are greeted by the Bond family's old gamekeeper Kincade, for a split second there I was like, "Oh, he has an Alfred!" I don't mean this in a bad way; I mean that this was how the movie played with the expectations set in my brain.
Uninitiated to the pre-Brosnan James Bond movies that I am, it took me a while to see that Skyfall was sort of regrouping the whole Bond universe, taking it back from the clutches of the influence of the Tom Cruise action genre.
We see the gadgets pared down to just a high-tech gun and a radio transmitter. Bond has only those and brains and brawn. Well, those and his standard issue of oodles of sex appeal plus the bonus of a vintage Aston Martin, which doesn't even try to be the star of the show.
We see James Bond “dying” and then resurrecting himself. And, ultimately, completely cutting off -- blasting away would be more apt -- that part of him that had always seemed haunted, the burden of the past.
This is what Skyfall leaves me with: the feeling of something heavy that was let go or the feeling of life being breathed into something. And bravely, gamely, even defiantly so. When Kincade meets M, he shows her a tunnel in the house and tells her of the tragic day that the child James went into the tunnel, stayed there for two days, and came out a man. Bond goes back in history and rewrites it: He enters the tunnel once again and comes out a different man.
The movie is almost poetic in its exploration of the theme of resurrection. The antagonist, Silva (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem), has his own resurrection story, but it brought him to a darker side. There's Ms. Moneypenny who “fails” at being a field agent and finds a calling behind a desk. There's M who faces a dying MI6 and manages, ultimately, to bring it back to life. Then there's Bond who becomes more Bond than ever.
Somehow, everything was messed up, and then made right again. Just like the James Bond franchise. Where Quantum of Solace was a big disappointment, Skyfall is the franchise redeeming itself. I'd say the James Bond has resurrected itself.
I can't wait for the next installments.
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