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| Quantum of Solace (2008) |
Having viewed Quantum of Solace more than a handful of times since its release, I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the more underrated Bond films. As is usually the case, time and distance offers newer, fresher perspectives. And I, for one, believe that it is high time for Quantum of Solace to undergo a serious reevaluation. In order to do this, however, I have to break a personal rule of movie-watching. In this age of continuity obsessed "cinematic universes," or whatever we're calling them now, I have grown more and more affectionate toward an idea that has only become somewhat radical in the past decade or so: that continuity and movie "canon" is, for the most part, trivial. I think that obsessing over these things can restrict a creative endeavor. So I have resolved to stop thinking about most movies or television shows in terms of their respective "canons," and instead elected to only deal with them in their own right. However, when it comes to Quantum of Solace, I believe the only real way to understand and appreciate the subtle nuances in this movie is to view it in light of Casino Royale. More to the point, I believe Quantum should not necessarily be viewed so much as a sequel film, but as the final act of the movie that preceded it.
Casino Royale is a brilliant film that understands the Bond character as Fleming originally wrote him. The film set out to rediscover Fleming's Bond, and what resulted is, for my money, one of the best espionage action-thrillers of all time. But Casino Royale ended on a relatively quiet note. After he is betrayed by the beautiful but tragic Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the woman he had fallen in love with, James Bond (Daniel Craig) resolves to hunt down the men responsible for her death. Casino Royale ends as Bond prepares to go on the warpath, but there is no real emotional payoff. We leave Bond in a broken state, and in the film's closing moments he begins walling off his soul, hardening into a stone cold killer. This isn't a criticism. Casino Royale set out to demonstrate how Bond became an emotional train wreck, and it does exactly that. But what it doesn't show is the fallout of Bond's choice to harden himself to the world. The movie ends just as Bond makes his choice. Quantum of Solace picks up the story just moments later, and for the next 100 minutes or so proceeds to show us what Bond looks like when driven by pain and fury in an attempt to process his grief. If Casino Royale lacks the traditional bombastic final sequence common to most action movies, then Quantum more than makes up for it by acting as one long, extended climax. The only way to view these two movies is back-to-back, because together they tell one prolonged story. But it's a mistake to follow this story in terms of traditional plot beats. Instead, this is a story more concerned with spinning its yarn through emotional beats.
That's not to say the action sequences in Quantum of Solace are to be ignored. Quite the opposite, actually. I don't think I've ever seen a film with more carefully plotted action scenes. Take, for example, the fact that the four major action sequences are constructed around the traditional elements: water (the boat chase), air (the plane chase), earth (the desert sequence), and fire (the burning hotel in the film's climax). Most action films are concerned with executing action sequences well. Quantum does this, while also going a step further. Director Marc Forster also uses the action sequences to excavate Bond's psychology, an intentional move gleaned from watching behind the scenes reels of Forster discussing his creative decisions in making the film. The opening car chase is jarringly intense, perfectly introducing us to Bond's fury and rage because of Vesper's death coming out of Casino Royale. From there, a brutal hand-to-hand combat sequence sees him dispatch his targets with ruthless efficiency. The final major action sequence is set in a vast desert, meant to mirror the empty and desolate landscape of Bond's soul, before quite literally exploding in flames as Bond takes his revenge against the organization behind Vesper's betrayal. The final scene is filmed in the snow and the cold, revealing to us a Bond who has finally frozen the parts of himself necessary to do the dirty job of killing dispassionately. Director Marc Forster is something of a savant when it comes to directing the film's harrowing action scenes, using them as more than just spectacle, to actually give viewer's windows into the psychological and emotional state of the film's protagonist.
In Casino Royale, whenever Bond killed someone, we lingered with him, watching him lose a little more of his soul each time. In Quantum, he doesn't so much as blink when he shoots a man to death. This is Bond unhinged, and he doesn't want to talk about it. This movie probably has the least amount of dialogue than any other Bond film. But what little dialogue is present serves to reinforce the notion that Bond is closer than ever to losing his humanity. There's none of the traditional wooing of the primary female character, Bolivian agent Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), and you can see this especially in Bond's dynamic with his boss, M, once again played to perfection by the wonderful Dame Judi Dench. She spends a good amount of the movie wondering whether she should trust Bond, or if he's become a loose cannon going too far in his quest for vengeance. Early in Quantum, Bond insists to M that she doesn't need to worry about him, that he hasn't gone off the rails on a quest for vengeance, a statement to which M quickly snaps, "Well, it'd be a pretty cold bastard who didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved." This single line quickly becomes the movie's thesis. As Bond races to uncover the organization pulling Vesper's strings, he becomes more and more unhinged. It's hinted at different points that Bond has ceased to sleep, and his drinking habits have amplified. Cornering Bond toward the end of the film, M returns to her original prognosis, telling him, "I think you're so blinded by inconsolable rage that you don't care who you hurt." As much as Bond might try to keep himself detached, he can't help himself. He is a man singularly defined by his pain, and that pain drives him.
Looking back at Casino Royale, I noted that the Bond character is inherently tragic. This dimension of his character is more fully fleshed out in Quantum. It's no coincidence that the final moments of this film unfold in wintry Russia, directly correlating with Bond's frozen emotional and psychological state. In Casino Royale, Bond learned his lesson the hard way. In the dirty business of taking lives, no one is to be trusted, and emotional vulnerability is just another way to get oneself killed. There's only one problem: Bond is human. The human element, the part of him ruled by emotions, demands some form of justice, some balm for the pain of betrayal and lost love. This film is about how Bond toes the line between making everything personal, and keeping things detached. In the desert, Bond taking his revenge against the organization is a moment of catharsis and release. So when Bond finally corners the man Vesper used to love in Russia, he has frozen himself. He has become detached. And when faced with the choice of killing the man for his hand in Vesper's death or sparing him, Bond elects to spare him, much to the approval of M. He comes to see things dispassionately. He sees the man as an asset, a means to an end. What the man knows becomes more important than how Bond feels about the whole affair. Though Bond has finally become the cold, ruthless man necessary to carry out death sentences without letting his emotions get in the way, he also becomes capable of detaching himself to the point of making the hard choice of knowing when to not pull the trigger.
It would be a mistake to label this as a victory. Yes, Bond learns that levelheadedness is a crucial component to life, that a man ruled by his emotions can easily lose sight of the bigger picture and let his ego into the equation. But his response to this realization is where he goes wrong. Rather than dealing with his emotions, he resorts to freezing himself in his pain. He closes himself off, crippling himself emotionally so that he will not form attachments like the one he formed with Vesper. He becomes detached, aloof. There will always be an air of mystery about him, a hint of danger, something that will entice many women to fall for him. The problem is, of course, that Bond isn't really a mystery. And the truth is that there isn't a mystery at all—only emptiness. He becomes a shell of a man, who indulges his many vices to keep himself on life support, to feel something. Bond wears a compelling mask. He appears strong in one sense, unflappable in the face of hardships that would cripple any weaker man. But in the sense of true masculinity, the opposite is true. Bond isn't unflappable at all. He's a man who, like most of us, has been crippled by trauma and refuses to deal with it. Perhaps the strongest decision Bond could have made would have been to leave his gun there in the snow alongside Vesper's necklace, to walk away from M and this life altogether. But instead he chooses to stay, because at this point the detachment the job requires is the only thing keeping him from dealing with his pain. The job becomes his life support.
Taken on its own merits, Quantum of Solace is a perfectly serviceable action-thriller. But when viewed as the conclusion of the emotional arc begun in Casino Royale, the film transcends its own shortcomings to become something greater than the sum of its parts. When taken together, both films imbue the Bond character with a depth not seen since Fleming's original novels. They offer a surprisingly thoughtful reflection on how men, especially, deal with emotional trauma. There is a long-standing sentiment that says James Bond is the symbol of what every man wishes he could be. But perhaps the more profound realization sees Bond as the symbol for the choices every man makes to numb himself to the pain that inevitably comes with living in a fallen world, choices that invariably bring about death to feeling. Perhaps Bond is a great moral teacher, warning against the temptation to jettison true masculinity in favor of stunting oneself emotionally in an effort to remain alive, refusing to see that love requires one to be vulnerable, open to the point that one stands the very real chance of being hurt. After all, if love is patient, and love is kind, neither jealous nor arrogant, nor seeking its own fulfillment, then the truth is that love allows the other the power of determination, and with that power comes the possibility of rejection. And even if that rejection comes, true love bears all things, endures all things. If these things are true, perhaps Bond is actually the symbol of what every man who chooses not to feel, who chooses not to love or let himself be loved, is in danger of becoming: a walking shell of a human being leaving nothing but destruction in his wake.
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