February 20: Skyfall (2012 -- Sam Mendes)

★★★★★

After the rebooted Bond franchise took a bad detour with  Quantum of Solace, Sam Mendes brings it firmly back into place with Skyfall.  This film is a sure return to what made Casino Royale so effective: updating and intensifying the classic elements of Bond while giving us a central character that’s more than a cliché.

Mendes brings an complex double track to Skyfall.  On the thematic level, we start with a Bond who is tired and outdated.  Photographed by Roger Deakins, Daniel Craig's face shows us an aging spy who is scruffy, worn and wrinkled, a look emphasized by frequent low-key lighting.  And more than appearing spent, the character feels tired and has much less agility and strength than a virile Bond would.  Skyfall follows this Bond as he becomes reinvigorated by the challenges that come his way until, by the time he’s a captive of Silva, his white stubble is gone and high-key light has eased his wrinkles.  Bond’s arc in this film is from tired and worn to competent and effective.  That issue of datedness is the central concern of the film.  Bond and Q parry about the old vs the new, Moneypenny teases about age, and M battles her ministerial supervision over whether old-style, flesh-and-blood spies are even needed anymore.   Skyfall questions the past ways of doing things and finds it still has a very important role today.

And while the plot and characters are developing this them of old vs new, on another level entirely, Mendes is giving us a film that is renewing the old Bond conventions and showing how they work in our contemporary moment.  Fifty years old, these conventions can still touch us today if updated.  Moneypenny is no longer just a secretary but also a field agent who proves her worth to Bond, and she isn’t white.  Q is a skinny computer nerd instead of a middle-aged engineer, and M is an older woman.  In addition to these updates, Agent 007 himself is not a flat caricature in this film but has psychology, feelings and vulnerabilities; he even hints that his vaunted heterosexuality might not be consistent.  And the indomitable Bond twice experiences defeat in Skyfall, first in failing to get the computer drive and dying while trying, and the second time in failing at his ultimate goal, to protect M.  Mendes effectively melds theme, character and genre into a tight-knit whole in this Bond outing.

Other elements of Skyfall also bring this Bond into our moment.  The style and imagery of the opening credits use recognizable Bond imagery, but in Skyfall, they creatively segue into the action and even become part of the narrative.  Bond is shot and falls into a river in the film's opening sequence, and the credits end that sequence and continue with images of water and death.  Also, Adele’s strong, sleek theme song, “Skyfall,” recalls Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger theme, but Adele’s arrangement, melody and rhythm are all 2012.  And Deacon’s cinematography is eye-grabbing and profoundly contemporary.  His nighttime helicopter shots weave among illuminated Shanghai towers, and an assassination scene and ensuing struggle are boldly set on the upper floors of a skyscraper with a dark foreground against a garish video display of jellyfish swimming.  And this huge space is compressed when the glass walls break and Bond and Severine stare at each other across the few meters of space between the buildings.   Deakins also uses mist and fog effectively, as when Bond comes into Severin’s shower and we see them through condensation on the glass.  Deakins also has Bond frequently assume a feet-apart posture facing away from the camera and into some future challenge off into the frame.  This cinematographer brings  a thoroughly modern look to Skyfall.

At the 50-year mark of the Bond franchise, Mendes brings us a film about renewal of a man and renewal of a franchise.  And he does both while talking about renewal.  Skyfall is a sophisticated, self-reflexive use of the 007 film language, and it brings viewer pleasure back into the films is wonderful, contemporary way.  With so many new characters established and old ones gone, Mendes leave 007 with a bright, original future.