James Bond: Skyfall part 2
Skyfall is easily the most elegantly directed Bond movie. Bond movies date back to the early ’60s, the tail end of the “big producer” era, and EON Productions, which has produced Bond from the beginning, retains its hold on the stylistic choices made. No actor, no director is a bigger “star” than James Bond. It’s rare to see any kind of point of view from behind the camera. Bond movies are generally directed by skilled journeymen, directors who can organize a complicated set, deal well with actors, juggle egos, make their days and not go over budget. I remember watching Die Another Day with James Urbaniak, and him mentioning that he couldn’t remember seeing a less-intentional directorial style, and I feel like Die Another Day is actually one of the more stylish of Bond movies. Skyfall‘s direction is not merely skillful and elegant, but has a specific point of view. Spielberg, Scorsese and Tarantino have all mentioned wanting to make a Bond movie, and while I think the ship has sailed for those guys, I wonder if perhaps we’re approaching the point where a genuine stylist might be invited to put their stamp on the biggest franchise in history.
(Skyfall benefits not only from Sam Mendes’s direction, but also from the Coenesque team of Roger Deakins as DP and Dennis Gassner as production designer, surely the greatest artists working in those jobs today. Indeed, apart from Ken Adam, I can’t identify more talented people to have ever worked on a Bond movie.)
The “Bond title sequence” has been a feature of that franchise from the very beginning. Maurice Binder, who constructed all the titles from Dr. No to License to Kill, has to be counted as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Here we are, fifty years later, still trying to top him at the game he invented. Skyfall‘s titles acquit themselves very well — lush, evocative, thematically dense, telling the story of the movie in dream symbols. One of my readers suggested yesterday that Skyfall is perhaps all in Bond’s mind as he plunges to the bottom of the river in Turkey, and the titles certainly suggest it. The swirling hole that swallows Bond up at the top of the sequence suggests the rifled gun barrel that has been Bond’s logo from the beginning, suggesting that Bond isn’t merely drowning in a river, but drowning in his past. “The past” has haunted James Bond at least since Diamonds Are Forever, and Bond movies have been referring to themselves since From Russia With Love. Bond has been trotting around the world for fifty years now, aging, then becoming young again, then aging again, sometimes keeping in touch with past selves, sometimes throwing those past selves. To me, it’s weird enough that Daniel Craig shares an M with Pierce Brosnan, since Craig is a definite reboot, but the repeating M only scratches the surface of the weird temporality that Bond inhabits.
But we’re here to talk about the screenplay.