SKYFALL

I was really looking forward to seeing SKYFALL, so I gathered a group of James Bond fans and spent my Saturday night in the slightly dingy seats of the Court Street multiplex.  And the verdict: like the theatre itself, it’s fine—does what it’s supposed to do—but is truly, if you really get down to it, just a little bit shitty.

Yes, light your torches and sharpen your sticks to pierce my disaffected, iconoclastic heart: did not like SKYFALL.  Or, to be more precise, I liked certain action sequences and moments but did not get into this film the way I got into, say, CASINO ROYALE—probably my favorite in the series.   I feel a little better saying it because my fellow movie going group felt similarly – worth the money maybe, but not nearly what we were expecting.  But still I’m up against what amounts to an insurmountable firewall of goodwill around the film, which top critics—including persnickety, academic, Hollywood-outsiders like Armond White—are calling the best of the series, or just merely exceptional.  That’s probably the only word I would NOT use to describe this film, which has all the hallmarks, all the gadgets, all the cars—yet lacks…what is it exactly…

For one, I think we are encountering an unexpected and unfortunate fallout from the financial success of these multi-film powerhouse franchises that seem to be bolstering the industry for the last, say, ten years—the LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTERS—where one film markets the next: they are reliably released, easily categorized, and for the benefit of an under-informed, can’t-be-bothered populace, crystal-clear on what they will deliver.  You don’t see ORDER OF THE PHOENIX if you hated GOBLET OF FIRE, although maybe you do, I don’t know. 

This ties into SKYFALL, which is not an outright sequel, because the tendency in Daniel Craig’s stint as Bond is to create what is more of a sequence of essentially unified adventures—an unfurling mythology—than what used to be the Bond series M.O.  Before, we had the same guy, same ways, same martini – but each film was stand alone and inconsequential towards the greater universe of the Franchise.  We get Halle Berrie or the latest flavor of the week—they live, they die, it doesn’t matter.  There’s always next time, and by then the tears will be dried up, the wounds will heal, the faces we know may even change.  This is the engine by which runs a franchise that has seen some seven or eight leading men take on the titular role.  This is one of the singular joys of James Bond—we know how this guy works: he’s sexy, he’s smooth, he’s a killing machine, and more than anything else—he’s replaceable. 

SKYFALL—and in hindsight the entire Craig trilogy of Bond films--doesn’t trust this formula.   Now Bond needs to be vulnerable as well as stoic, loving as well as lustful.  He needs to be mortal.  Worst of all, he needs a past.  SKYFALL offers a glimpse at Bond’s upbringing, the fate of his parents, his recruitment by Judi Dench as ‘M’.  Craig’s is a Bond not interchangeable; a covalent bond—bound as much by audience’s shared understanding of what it is to be a person (the lonely, misunderstood spy) as the awe they feel for his awesome, jetsetter lifestyle.  For all his chiseled granite features, his dead eyes, he is in many ways the “softest” Bond we’ve seen.

So I resent in a way New Bond’s tendency to mythologize, which somehow subtracts from the pure jouissance of these loveable tropes.  Fine.  But even if you disagree with me that this compulsion does some sort of existential damage to the capital-C Character of James Bond, surely you’ll agree to this: the fact that Skyfall, a buzz word teased throughout the film as meaningful to Bond, turns out to be the name of his childhood home—his Xanadu if you will—is just plain silly.  Come on.  How facile a place for this whirligig plot to land?  I was hoping Bond would be somehow tied into Silva’s (Javier Bardem) past, complicating the plot a bit, asking us to keep focused on connecting dots.    But it never happened.  Towards the end of the second hour of SKYFALL my feelings were uncomplicated: boredom.  The bobby-trapping, HOME ALONE antics of the fifth act (Bond at Skyfall) seemed to underline the point: since we’ve thrown just about everything into this film, why not this too?  Perhaps it was an overreaction to the last film QUANTUM OF SOLACE, which apparently many people found to be overplotted (I admittedly haven’t seen it).  But this film just seemed reductionist in a very bad way.  It had no surprises.  It had little real thrills.  Like every Sam Mendes movie, as my perceptive boss described, it’s little more than a “slow plod towards death.”  If you don’t see M dying by act two, you haven’t seen AMERICAN BEAUTY, ROAD TO PERDITION, or REVOLUTIONARY ROAD.

But what about Javier Bardem?  I think he is the most overrated part of this overrated film.  And I’m a huge Bardem fan—he’s fucking brilliant time and time again.  He’s also “good” in this—creepy, nonchalant, sibilant.   But allowed to inhabit the space of his character in any way he wants, Bardem take it to a place so familiar, so cliché, that it occasions a bit of social deconstruction to think about it.  He is, the gay bad guy.

“Another addition to the annals of gay villains”  a friend remarked.  And it’s true.  It’s left me not quite offended, but exasperated.  Building on Anthony Perkin’s psycho or THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS sexual deviant, there is no shortage of characters out there that equate being a little flaming with being a whole lotta evil.    I’ve done some research on the matter now, and it’s a well established concept (check out this amazing website, which I can’t believe exists – “TV Tropes”.  What PhD student put this together?: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SissyVillain)

The “Sissy Villain” isn’t necessarily homosexual but embodies the degendered confusions of homosexual panic.  His potency isn’t the physical prowess of James Bond—who can survive falls, fuck the girl, chase the chase, and keep going with a bullet in his shoulder.  Bardem’s is the power of backdoor cyber assault, computer buggery, techno-buttsex.  You’re ports aren’t safe from a guy like him.

Because there’s something fishy about a guy like him, isn’t there?  Not gay, but not right.  You can’t throw a stone in popular culture without hitting a similar example, from blockbuster cinema, to Professional Wrestling, even cartoons (Adam sent me this truly funny link to a standup that exposes the Care Bears villain as the ultimate homo.  It’s true.  So is the Strawberry Shortcake villain, Inspector Gadget’s Dr. Claw (fondness for Persian Cats-much), or essentially anyone with a mustache in all of toondom.      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TamBV00kVLA)




Then again, unlike every example I can think of, Bardem takes it a step further—Silva is actually gay (Right?  I’m not 100%.  He does pretty much feel Daniel Craig up, but he doesn’t call himself gay and the characters essentially ignore it).  If you accept this, then Bardem would be the first openly gay villain – which in itself would be interesting, if his homosexuality didn’t so inartfully resemble so much winkwink-psychosis in so many other films.  If Silva could match Bond physically, that would be a more transgressive, progressive, and exciting character.

But who am I to account for tastes?  The critics love it.  Audiences love it.  It made some 80 million dollars and will be around a while yet.  So SKYFALL may be a bit of a Chicken Little scenario—the sky is falling, right?  RIGHT?  RIGHT?  Who is anyone to say no.