Writing this so that I can write my explanation for my
top ten films of the year. That and friend L wishes to
complain about my illogic some more, despite him having heard it all at the
time.
First, a note - the Picturehouse cinema in London is
lovely. Its over-the-phone booking
system is less so. As in accepted
payments but did not provide tickets.
The cinema staff sorted it, but take this as a warning.
Spectre, which I keep putting in all capitals
because I am old.
My problems are all with the writing and directing, the
acting is uniformly solid.
I’m still not sold on the theme song, but I liked the evil
Spectre-pus opening credits.
Comments in more or less chronological
order (spoilers throughout):
My main objection to the directing is how Mendes has made
large parts of it looks like he ran it through an Instagram filter, you know
the one, the one that makes things look like a 50s photograph. It's distracting. It also makes it look like the main actors
are standing in front of a green screen, which cheapens some of the action
shots, which is a shame, because I know how difficult they are to do,
particularly the helicopter loop-the-loop.
The distracting filter continues on to Rome, a section redeemed
by the awesome car chase. And the Mickey
Mouse joke. And let down by only having
Monica Bellucci in two scenes. Why would
you only use Monica Bellucci in two scenes if you've got her (including one of
the worst not-quite sex scenes in a Bond film)?
I do start to suspect the only reason they got her in was because they
needed an Italian actress for Italian funding and needed an older actress as a
Bond girl to counteract exactly how screamingly young Lea Seydoux is.
I know I shouldn't be shocked that Batista is good after
Guardians of the Galaxy, but he really is good as Mr. Hinx. (He's also remarkably precious about the
whole acting thing, which is strangely adorable.) I also like whoever did his suits. I know Tom Ford did Bond's suits but I don't
know if he was also Hinx's tailor.
After Rome we lose the stupid filter for a while, because
Austria is obviously not warm and Latin and therefore needs no filter (just
assume my sarcasm is heavy and my contempt for the director is great). I'll give them this, even before I saw the
end bit saying it was filmed in Austria because the plane had an Austrian
registration, and it pleases me more than I can say.
But those are not the symptoms of thallium poisoning. Yes, I am being pernickety, but it's not like
thallium’s symptoms are hard to research or all that mistakable (see also
Agatha Christie's descriptions of it being good enough to save lives).
The stupid filter returns for Tangiers and Morocco (until we
reach Blofeld's lair). And again it
cheeses me off. This bit also included
my favourite scene, which we shall call Bond vs the Mouse, which gives Daniel
Craig something to do other than look bleak.
Now he does a fine 'looking bleak' but he's a much better actor that
just the one mood. And there's an uneasy
borderline hysteria in that scene which fits the film perfectly. Fantastic scene.
Part of the problem with the film, for me, was that
everything after Morocco felt tacked on.
Particularly Dr. Swann being trapped in MI5's old headquarters.
Bits of the film not working with another was one of my
other main problems. Bond vs Blofeld,
while I might not like what they do with Blofeld, works. Bond vs the encroaching intelligence complex,
is oddly time-sensitive for a Bond film, something I generally agree with and
not something I think Bond would agree with.
Bond vs the encroaching intelligence complex doesn't quite
work (certainly not as well as it worked in Mission Impossible: the new one),
but I don't mind it because it gives Q, Moneypenny et al something to do. (Dear villains, do not threaten Q, any Q, I
disapprove.) My main problem with the
Bond vs Big Brother bit was the terrible dialogue they gave new! M. If Ralph Fiennes can't make something work, I
can be reasonably sure that it cannot work.
At the beginning we need a reason to believe that C is a well, the word
that the film keeps calling him, and we don't, other than him being played by
Andrew Scott (who actually does a good good guy when he needs to).
As I said, I'm not sure I like what they did with
Blofeld. I like my evil impersonal and
precise. Although I do love that he
wouldn't stoop to poisoning the champagne.
I did have one moment of complete, uncontrollable giggle
fit, which I don't think was intentional.
It's just that normally Blofeld wears a Mao-jacket variant but what this
Blofeld wears looks like a modernised Tiroler jacke (Tyrolean jacket) and my
brain went 'you can take the boy out of Tyrol but not the Tyrol out of the boy'
and I had a giggle fit in the middle of a very serious scene. Sorry about that, people in the screening.
Now onto my actual problems with the
film:
I think I see Bond completely differently to how the writers
see him.
Partly it's because I don't believe what he does is
something that requires redemption (in the sense of all killing requires it but
not Bond in particular out of all secret agents), and I don't think love can
redeem in quite the way the film thinks it can.
(And that's before we get onto more theoretical discussions on the
nature of redemption and sacrifice, which shall be skipped for time.)
The film doesn't seem to be very clear in re: redemption, because
it seems to be saying that Bond's job is necessary, and cannot be replaced by
drones, but that means that someone has to do it, and M seems to have an almost
split-personality on the topic not wanting Bond to do it, but needing someone
for the job. If the film had gone into
that a little more, or even at all, I think I could have lived with it better.
The love redeems thing seems very cheap. As does the 'only a killer (or relative of
one) can understand a killer'. What
happens if someone out of Bond's past decides that they want revenge and kill
Madeline? What does Bond do next? Does his redemption stick or was he doing it
just for Madeline, which suggests that 'love redeems' is as bunk as I think it
is. It doesn't even have to be an international
assassin, the number 49 bus does the job just as well. And I don't think redemption can be due to
external things, I think it has to be internal for it to be
"redemption".
It feels even weirder because the post-Hinx's death
not-actually-a-sex-scene is, I think, held up to be a mirror to the Vesper
shower scene in Casino Royal, where Vesper's response to someone's death was
utter revulsion while Madeline's response is getting every bit as aroused as
Bond, and therefore she's a much better match (according to the film) and yet
... the scene just feels really awkward in a way that the Vesper scene didn't.
The whole 'understanding + sex = redemption' thing feels
awkward.
I also think that they're believers in
the Many Bonds theory:
Because they've just salted the Earth for following Bonds if
we're pretending that all the Bonds are the same guy. Because why does Bond come back or do we just
have to ignore Madeline and everything in Spectre for the next film. I know it's one of the problems of having
films with closer internal continuity but this one has pretty much broken the
line for anything following. I think
that the next film is going to have a different Bond might help that somewhat,
but it does mean the Craig Bond-films are pretty much shut into their own
cul-de-sac.
Edited to add: I've been told I ought to tell people that I haven't seen Skyfall yet, and that my problems with the film might be due to that. To me that's still a failure on the writers's part.
Books set in the UK still heavily outnumber everything else, and the vast majority of those are set in England.
