Bond Goes Home
Putting a bold spin on an old trope, Silva poses a sexual threat to Bond that’s uniquely direct, as it’s never outright said, but heavily implied that he has an erotic interest in James, one that’s either natural, or meant as a power play. Now, this is where Skyfall could have gotten lazy, and made Bond’s reconciliation with history merely a matter of slaying the personification of his campy past, but to do so would be to whitewash the series’ demons, not accept them. Besides, having Bond kill a gay version of himself would be a criminal disservice to his status as a sex symbol to both women and men, and Skyfall pulls no punches with its representation of Silva. Despite his more metrosexual mannerisms, Silva is a chilling, extremely capable nemesis, an effeminate Satan-figure meant to test Bond. In one of the film’s most brilliant strokes, Bond doesn’t evade Silva’s advances, he challenges them, openly proving that, in this day and age, Bond can be a general sexual icon, not just a strictly heterosexual one.
It’s a move of such progressive maturity, that it makes Skyfall’s failure in its treatment of female characters all the more baffling. Of the four women shown to have any real importance in film, two are killed, one is a shrill harpy (an opposition minister who haughtily chews out M), and the most promising Bond girl in ages, the tough as nails MI6 agent played by Naomie Harris, winds up behind a desk, so that Miss Moneypenny can be folded back into the refurbished Bond tapestry. Moneypenny is a brilliant match for Bond (her shooting of him actually being a perfect parallel to how Craig’s Bond fails more often than he succeeds), and the disappointment of sidelining her for the sake of harmonizing the continuity is only tempered by the hope that she will return, and get the chance to fire off some bullets, instead of just emails.
Silva’s warpath eventually forces Bond to hide M, using his vintage Aston Martin DB5 as an impromptu DeLorean that takes them back in time, “where we’ll have the advantage.” Holed up in the decrepit Skyfall Manor, Bond, M, and gamekeeper Kincaid prep a last stand meant to draw out Silva. Setting a Western showdown in a Scottish moor (the alpha Bond’s homeland) makes for an inspired finale, breaking tradition with the bombast of most Bond climaxes. It’s an intimate environment, made all the more so because of Bond’s childhood connection to it, and Skyfall becomes the stage for Bond’s true rise from the ashes.
Fittingly, Bond works through his unresolved familial issues (the source of his disdain for authority, according to the MI6 shrink) in a firefight, aided by both the woman who has been a surrogate mother to him, and Skyfall’s resident man of the house. The process is one of utter destruction: Silva tries to smoke them out of the house with a helicopter and incendiary grenades (unaware of a secret tunnel system), but Bond turns the tables by intentionally blowing up the last real trace of his original identity. He bristles at the annihilation of his Aston Martin (another first), yet bids farewell to the place he grew up in as callously as if it were Blofeld.
But shouldn’t Bond want to return home? Isn’t that the crux of the kind of character-based storytelling that Skyfall is attempting, and why the writers felt the need to include M quoting “Ulysses?” If we consider Bond the everlasting icon, instead of Bond the man, then he’s really more of a Sisyphean figure than a Homeric one; the home he’s trying to return to isn’t a place, it’s an identity. James Bond, the true, legendary James Bond, has no home other than England. He has no parents or origin, he simply exists, saving the world, getting the girl, and looking damn good doing it, whenever we need him to, for as long as we need him to. It’s that ascension to the immortal status of a true 007 that Bond has been working towards all film. In destroying his personal history, Craig’s Bond has nearly come full circle.
Silva is the last loose end, his victory proven a hallow one, because even though M lays dying in the Bond family crypt, it’s because of some random goon’s bullet, not his own. A first for Craig, Bond personally kills the main villain, using a dagger deeply embedded in Silva’s back to prove that sometimes the old ways are the best. As Silva breathes his last, Bond stares at him a moment, searching for something to say, and you can practically see the light bulb go off in his head before he delivers a tart kiss-off: “last rat standing.” After stretching his comedic legs a little further with another glib remark, Bond cradles the fading M, as flashes of Diana Rigg pass through the minds of older viewers, giving Craig license to shed a few tears. Seeing what Craig has turned into, she passes away peacefully, knowing she “got one thing right,” having picked the right man to be James Bond. In defeating Silva, Bond proves he’s not afraid of the legacy that comes with his name, learning from the franchises’ past, instead of ignoring it. Transformation: complete.
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