The BOND NOUVEAU: SKYFALL

I had not seen the latest BOND. Since Jet Blue offers nothing but chips and viewing (on condition that the monitor works)I ended up watching the latest Bond movie. Reluctant at first I became spellbound. We are all familiar with the usual casino/femme-fatale/villain trilogy. They were all there, as could have been expected. What is different is the mood, the political pendulum. In the older Bond movies the irony, the booze, the women, the adversary were more cartoonlike. Now the mood has shifted, the nonchalance disappeared, the familiar world of a little cheating,a little boozing and a little hurting has made suddenly room for something more ominous and perverse. Bond is no longer cynically funny. He has become a hunted, haunted being, more in awe and love with his aging female boss than with the sexy girl next door. The glamour is no longer a thing of the West but a thing lost and delocalized elsewhere. The "pivot" is slowly becoming more than political, and takes on the disguise of a competing sophistication and culture. The death of the head of M16--a great performance by Dame Judith Dench, who overtakes the movie--is writing on the wall. The West makes room for the rest. Strange how the prototype of entertainment can catch a mood. Gone are the good old days when an occasional death or mishap made one an accomplice. In this funeral, the spectator is left to his own devices, and so is Bond. He risks joining the forgotten tribe of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and Co. with a major difference. We will miss the gentleman who symbolized for 50 years the rise of the West. I wonder how long Daniel Craig can go on. I am also sure that Bond will have no heirs. He is ours only.