Film: Skyfall
Nov. 12th, 2012 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livReasons for watching it: There really wasn't anything else of any interest at the cinema. I thought, if I'm going to watch a dumb action movie, at least let it be one with high calibre actors and decent production values.
Circumstances of watching it:jack managed to arrange to come and stay with me for a week. We wanted to spend an evening together out of the house, so we did the obvious thing of going out for a meal and a film. I almost never make it to the cinema, because a lot of the time I resent committing myself to nearly £10 and nearly four hours of my life. On my own, I'd rather stay in and read the internet, and with friends I'd rather a social event that encourages chatting. But with the luxury of a week-long visit, I didn't feel the need to spend every possible minute in conversation, so the cinema seemed attractive for once.
So we went to Peaches, the lovely Chinese restaurant where they do an all-you-can-eat menu, but not a buffet, dishes freshly prepared to order. Which is really a lot more fun when you're not on your own. And we'd booked the late screening because the mid-evening one would have meant being too rushed to enjoy dinner, so we filled the awkward 25 minute gap with cocktails at Hector Garcia's. They had a special which was basically like an upmarket White Russian: vodka, Tia Maria, amaretto and milk. It was a very happy-making drink!
This all meant that I was in a very mellow sort of mood by the time we got into the cinema. I was perfectly happy to take the film as it came and not nitpick too much. Then there were lots of adverts, pretty much all for tie-in stuff, which made me slightly feel as if the whole film was about to be a three-hour-long advert for stuff marketed at young men with too much money and not enough self-esteem. Also cinemas are very LOUD; in some ways I almost needed the half hour of pre-film guff in order to acclimatize myself to the bombardment of sound.
Verdict:Skyfall is emotionally gripping, and visually pretty, but makes little sense if you start to think about it.
Bear in mind that I am pretty unfamiliar with the Bond franchise. I kind of know the general outline of what sort of things it's about, in as far as it's pretty much an integral part of popular culture by now. But I haven't ever seen more than an odd half an hour of some of the old films when there happened to be reruns on TV and I was channel-surfing.jack says he likes watching films with me, because I'm not jaded, I don't really know any of the tropes or conventions, so I'm just prepared to be carried along by the drama.
In fact I was pretty much sucked in from the opening sequence. I enjoyed the chase scene, it was exciting and occasionally comic and set the tone of completely unrealistic action. By the time of the shooting scene, I was enough invested in Bond to care when he took the bullet. So at the opening credits, I was both emotionally engaged and curious to see where they were going to go with the protagonist killed in the prologue. It turns out Bond didn't actually die, in spite of being shot and falling off a moving train and down a canyon and over a waterfall and down to the bottom of some very deep water, and in spite of the long sequence with Adele singing a sad song and lots of images of blood and skulls and graves... I never figured out how that worked, either in terms of physics and biology or in terms of cinematic convention. But I really truly believed he was dead, so when he showed up again I was more confused than emotionally moved.
But anyway, once I got over that, I got sucked in to the story again. It was exciting! And dramatic! And the plot made no sense, but there were lots of great scenes, with high octane action and awesome visuals. I really liked all the beautiful shots of different parts of the world, and I was on the edge of my seat for much of the first half. Even though it didn't quite hang together, it did help to drive the plot to have Bond out of shape and struggling, so that he wasn't just invincible. After Silva's capture, I think the film started to drag a bit. Yes, it was cool having scenes in London and on the Tube, and I enjoyed the portrayal of the young geek incarnation of Q. But I wasn't really invested in the stupid conflict between the politicians and MI6, and although I love Dench as an actress I thought she was mostly kind of wasted on a rather sparse role, and the really contrived scene where they had her recite Tennyson just because she comes from a stage background was more annoying than anything else. Also the computer security plot was laughably bad, and again, far too slow-paced.
The final section at Skyfall had all the ingredients of returning to the high level of drama, but it never really regained my interest after the slow bit in the middle. my immersion was disrupted enough that I started asking questions like, where did Silva get a military helicopter and an army? And somehow all the bombardment of the gothic family seat was never as exciting as it should have been, no matter how many huge explosions and fireballs and narrow escapes were portrayed. And the final confrontation between Bond and Silva just seemed an anticlimax more than than anything else.
This isn't a completely naive first reaction any more, because I've been poking around for reviews online since I saw the film last week, including Abigail Nussbaum's trademark intelligently acerbic feminist take. I suppose I had fairly low expectations going in, but in some ways I thought the film was less sexist than it might have been. I really enjoyed the relationship between Eve and Bond; yes, the whole point of her role is to adore him, but I liked the banter between them, I got the impression of someone strongly attracted to Bond, who felt confident in expressing her sexuality in her own way. The acting and characterization were strong enough that I was able to relate to her as a person and empathize with her feelings for the hero, rather than her just being eye-candy. I really hope this film boosts Harris' acting career; she deserves better roles than that awful Tia from the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. It's a minor thing, but I also liked the scene where Silva was delivering his set-piece evil villain speech to the captured Bond for acknowledging that men are not completely impervious to predatory sexual behaviour. Against that, I found the whole arc with Sévérine absolutely dreadful; I suppose the glamourously evil sidekick who falls for Bond is sort of a stock theme of the franchise, but she was just every awful cliché. I agree with Nussbaum that the shower scene just looked gratuitously rapey (a few moments of eye contact before Bond came up behind her in the shower would have made a lot of difference), and her murder is just bizarre. The opposite way round to Bond's death: the characters had so little emotional reaction to Silva shooting her that I honestly had no idea she was dead until I read Nussbaum's review, I thought she had just slumped forward in relief at not being killed after having guns pointed at her.
And then there's M. I'm really in two minds about her arc. On first impression, I kind of bought the film's line that she wanted to end her career fighting rather than being quietly retired, and saw her as a kind of noble hero. Butjack pointed out that the whole purpose of the mission was to save her, which makes the supposed "happy" ending ring a bit false. And yes, there are elements of the damsel-in-distress trope in the Skyfall scenes, which doesn't seem worthy of a character like M. In fact, once I drew back from the immediacy of the experience, Bond was kind of useless in this film; he did a lot of standing around being handsome and manly, but repeatedly got people killed he was supposed to be protecting, and he gets the plaudits because he eventually manages to kill the bad guy, but like pretty much all his other actions throughout the film, far too late.
Anyway, I'm glad I saw the film, it made for a good evening's entertainment, and it's great to be able to join in the discussions that are going on around it. Oh, and thanks toantisoppist and vatine for tracking down why my Swedish friends keep sniggering about the title...
Circumstances of watching it:
jack managed to arrange to come and stay with me for a week. We wanted to spend an evening together out of the house, so we did the obvious thing of going out for a meal and a film. I almost never make it to the cinema, because a lot of the time I resent committing myself to nearly £10 and nearly four hours of my life. On my own, I'd rather stay in and read the internet, and with friends I'd rather a social event that encourages chatting. But with the luxury of a week-long visit, I didn't feel the need to spend every possible minute in conversation, so the cinema seemed attractive for once. So we went to Peaches, the lovely Chinese restaurant where they do an all-you-can-eat menu, but not a buffet, dishes freshly prepared to order. Which is really a lot more fun when you're not on your own. And we'd booked the late screening because the mid-evening one would have meant being too rushed to enjoy dinner, so we filled the awkward 25 minute gap with cocktails at Hector Garcia's. They had a special which was basically like an upmarket White Russian: vodka, Tia Maria, amaretto and milk. It was a very happy-making drink!
This all meant that I was in a very mellow sort of mood by the time we got into the cinema. I was perfectly happy to take the film as it came and not nitpick too much. Then there were lots of adverts, pretty much all for tie-in stuff, which made me slightly feel as if the whole film was about to be a three-hour-long advert for stuff marketed at young men with too much money and not enough self-esteem. Also cinemas are very LOUD; in some ways I almost needed the half hour of pre-film guff in order to acclimatize myself to the bombardment of sound.
Verdict:Skyfall is emotionally gripping, and visually pretty, but makes little sense if you start to think about it.
Bear in mind that I am pretty unfamiliar with the Bond franchise. I kind of know the general outline of what sort of things it's about, in as far as it's pretty much an integral part of popular culture by now. But I haven't ever seen more than an odd half an hour of some of the old films when there happened to be reruns on TV and I was channel-surfing.
jack says he likes watching films with me, because I'm not jaded, I don't really know any of the tropes or conventions, so I'm just prepared to be carried along by the drama. In fact I was pretty much sucked in from the opening sequence. I enjoyed the chase scene, it was exciting and occasionally comic and set the tone of completely unrealistic action. By the time of the shooting scene, I was enough invested in Bond to care when he took the bullet. So at the opening credits, I was both emotionally engaged and curious to see where they were going to go with the protagonist killed in the prologue. It turns out Bond didn't actually die, in spite of being shot and falling off a moving train and down a canyon and over a waterfall and down to the bottom of some very deep water, and in spite of the long sequence with Adele singing a sad song and lots of images of blood and skulls and graves... I never figured out how that worked, either in terms of physics and biology or in terms of cinematic convention. But I really truly believed he was dead, so when he showed up again I was more confused than emotionally moved.
But anyway, once I got over that, I got sucked in to the story again. It was exciting! And dramatic! And the plot made no sense, but there were lots of great scenes, with high octane action and awesome visuals. I really liked all the beautiful shots of different parts of the world, and I was on the edge of my seat for much of the first half. Even though it didn't quite hang together, it did help to drive the plot to have Bond out of shape and struggling, so that he wasn't just invincible. After Silva's capture, I think the film started to drag a bit. Yes, it was cool having scenes in London and on the Tube, and I enjoyed the portrayal of the young geek incarnation of Q. But I wasn't really invested in the stupid conflict between the politicians and MI6, and although I love Dench as an actress I thought she was mostly kind of wasted on a rather sparse role, and the really contrived scene where they had her recite Tennyson just because she comes from a stage background was more annoying than anything else. Also the computer security plot was laughably bad, and again, far too slow-paced.
The final section at Skyfall had all the ingredients of returning to the high level of drama, but it never really regained my interest after the slow bit in the middle. my immersion was disrupted enough that I started asking questions like, where did Silva get a military helicopter and an army? And somehow all the bombardment of the gothic family seat was never as exciting as it should have been, no matter how many huge explosions and fireballs and narrow escapes were portrayed. And the final confrontation between Bond and Silva just seemed an anticlimax more than than anything else.
This isn't a completely naive first reaction any more, because I've been poking around for reviews online since I saw the film last week, including Abigail Nussbaum's trademark intelligently acerbic feminist take. I suppose I had fairly low expectations going in, but in some ways I thought the film was less sexist than it might have been. I really enjoyed the relationship between Eve and Bond; yes, the whole point of her role is to adore him, but I liked the banter between them, I got the impression of someone strongly attracted to Bond, who felt confident in expressing her sexuality in her own way. The acting and characterization were strong enough that I was able to relate to her as a person and empathize with her feelings for the hero, rather than her just being eye-candy. I really hope this film boosts Harris' acting career; she deserves better roles than that awful Tia from the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. It's a minor thing, but I also liked the scene where Silva was delivering his set-piece evil villain speech to the captured Bond for acknowledging that men are not completely impervious to predatory sexual behaviour. Against that, I found the whole arc with Sévérine absolutely dreadful; I suppose the glamourously evil sidekick who falls for Bond is sort of a stock theme of the franchise, but she was just every awful cliché. I agree with Nussbaum that the shower scene just looked gratuitously rapey (a few moments of eye contact before Bond came up behind her in the shower would have made a lot of difference), and her murder is just bizarre. The opposite way round to Bond's death: the characters had so little emotional reaction to Silva shooting her that I honestly had no idea she was dead until I read Nussbaum's review, I thought she had just slumped forward in relief at not being killed after having guns pointed at her.
And then there's M. I'm really in two minds about her arc. On first impression, I kind of bought the film's line that she wanted to end her career fighting rather than being quietly retired, and saw her as a kind of noble hero. But
jack pointed out that the whole purpose of the mission was to save her, which makes the supposed "happy" ending ring a bit false. And yes, there are elements of the damsel-in-distress trope in the Skyfall scenes, which doesn't seem worthy of a character like M. In fact, once I drew back from the immediacy of the experience, Bond was kind of useless in this film; he did a lot of standing around being handsome and manly, but repeatedly got people killed he was supposed to be protecting, and he gets the plaudits because he eventually manages to kill the bad guy, but like pretty much all his other actions throughout the film, far too late.Anyway, I'm glad I saw the film, it made for a good evening's entertainment, and it's great to be able to join in the discussions that are going on around it. Oh, and thanks to
antisoppist and vatine for tracking down why my Swedish friends keep sniggering about the title...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 05:53 pm (UTC)After thinking about it a little more, I may have been too harsh on the gender equality: even though they seemed to lose the plot at the last minute, it may in fact be better than many Bond films :)
And I thought of a description of what's missing, the Joss Whedon factor, by which I mean the tendency for otherwise standard scenes to "pop" with good or witty dialogue, unexpected happenings, etc. Often, but not always, humour. The Avengers had a fair amount of this (say 7-8/10) which is why it was so much better than most action films. Firefly was basically 9-10/10 all the time because usually even all the individual scenes were always compelling. Skyfall had some good pop moments, especially in the opening scene, including the moment where Bond was shot (which wasn't funny but was tense), but I felt the middle was rather lacking in them.
The Chinese scenes would have been a good opportunity to show Bond's potential weaknesses a bit more tongue-in-cheek, and we could have had the Bond/Severine dialogue be sexy and funny rather than sexy and grim. The chase scene in the underground had a bit of this, with Q's commentary, Bond jumping onto a train, Silva/Bond interplay and "oh shit, subway train!" moments, but it could have been a good romp that broke the tension a bit, before going serious again afterwards, and given us a chance to recharge our angst supplies before the ending, so it seemed less drawn out.