Daily Mail: 'The Bond we women have been waiting for'
emtiem
SurreyPosts: 5,948MI6 Agent
An amusing turn around from the Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=415190&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=323
So, as well as all the 'he won't be able to play Bond' stuff being blown out of the water, the 'he won't be attractive to women' stuff is looking pretty shakey too. It's not particularly grown up to say it, but I feel this is one circumstance where I feel fine saying: 'told you so'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=415190&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=323
Alison Pearson – 8th November 2006.
The Bond we women have been waiting for.
WHEN the Queen attends the Royal Film Performance on Tuesday, she may be distressed to see one of her most loyal servants stark naked and being tortured in a way that will have every man in the cinema crossing his legs. We can't predict whether Her Majesty will shut her eyes at this point or bite hard on a toffee Revel.
One thing is certain: the Queen should be well pleased with her new James Bond. Daniel Craig, the sixth actor to play 007, proves he has balls, especially when he is being lightly flayed by a foreign bad die apparently following a particularly macho Gordon Ramsay recipe.
But Craig also reveals a part of the agent's anatomy so shocking that it's probably still classified as a national secret. Hold the front page: James Bond has a heart.
The most amazing scene in the new Casino Royale is not the palazzo dissolving into the Grand Canal like a sugar cube in a mug of tea. No, the truly jaw-dropping moment comes after Bond has throttled an assassin in the presence of Vesper Lynd, a beautiful Treasury adviser.
A numbed Vesper sits in the shower where she is joined by Bond, who cradles her head in his arms as the purifying water cascades over them. Then he - and I can barely write this for excitement - tenderly nibbles her fingers. Good grief, what is this - a moment of reflection about the dehumanising effect of violence? Furthermore, a shower scene where the girl keeps her kit on?
007 is traditionally described as a 'ladies' man'. That's a polite way of saying he gets more oats than Mr Quaker and never sticks around to wash up the pan. But I don't believe that Bond has ever been so thrillingly and truly a woman's man (without being a pasty New Man). At least not since Bean Connery wrestled his burly torso into a dinner jacket for Dr No and took an oxyacetylene torch to female libidos the world over.
In Dr No, it was Ursula Andress who came out of the sea in a bikini. Forty-four years later, the fit blond emerging from the waves is Daniel Craig in a pair of trunks so tight you can see his fins. This is a film that has a playful sense of how relations between the sexes have shifted.
I should confess I was among those who couldn't believe that Daniel Craig was the new Bond. Built like a hod-carrier, with shoulders that start at his ears, he was more Transit Van than Aston Martin. 'Maybe I'm not the prettiest Bond,' Craig admitted, 'but I'm not going to foul this movie up.'
And he certainly doesn't. The playboy kitsch of a smirking superhero who can defeat evil masterminds with a raised Roger Moore eyebrow or a jokey gizmo is replaced by something more raw and altogether more compelling. If you hit this Bond, he bleeds.
When a national icon radically reinvents itself, the way it changes can tell us something both about that nation and about the times it finds itself in. The new Bond has put away childish things. There are bad people out there, and they aren't funny any more.
CASINO Royale had its first preview in a week when a Muslim convert appeared in a London court charged with a plan to detonate a dirty bomb which could have killed thousands.
In an email, the accused imagined the destruction that 'would be caused if a powerful explosion were to actually rupture the river [Thames] itself. That would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc'. Try defeating that lot with a raised eyebrow.
I love the new Bond because I loathe the disconnection in movies between violence and suffering. Daniel Craig's 007 is not some caped crusader moving effortlessly from one brutish cartoon encounter to another. He's like the best kind of squaddie: a brave bloke going where he's told to serve his Queen.
As Vesper Lynd says to him: 'If all that was left of you was your smile and little finger, you'd still be more of a man than anyone I've ever met.' Welcome back, Mr Bond. Your country needs you.
So, as well as all the 'he won't be able to play Bond' stuff being blown out of the water, the 'he won't be attractive to women' stuff is looking pretty shakey too. It's not particularly grown up to say it, but I feel this is one circumstance where I feel fine saying: 'told you so'
Comments
Some will no doubt complain that Craig has turned "Casino Royale" into a "chick flick."
Seriously, great column, and I'm not surprised at the sentiment. In the run up to the film, when it was leaked that CR would have Bond falling in love, I was really pleased because as amusing as the "handsome rake" schtick may have been, it was wearing thin and it was time to show Bond -- and maybe even more importantly, the Bond girl -- as real human beings. All that playboy stuff is as old and creaky as the magazine that bears (or is it bares?) the same name. It may have been risque 40 years ago, but the idea of sexual freedom is not as tittilating as it used to be. Society caught up to Bond years ago. Besides, Fleming's hero was always a bit of a romantic with women, in spite of his reservations about getting involved.
And I knew that women would appreciate the love story angle, as well, which would raise Craig's stock considerably among the female set, whatever his perceived physical shortcomings. Why do you think "Titanic" was such a hit, or that Leonardo DiCaprio became such a huge star? Because it looked cool when the boat sank and Leonardo is the cutest guy in Hollywood? Of course not. It was women going back again and again to see the love story.
And quite a few guys as well, I suspect, although, like Bond, they might not want to admit they're suckers for a love story, too (lots of blood-letting and bone-crunching between kisses helps, of course). I certainly am, especially one with a Tracy-Hepburn vibe like CR.
You bet he was. In fact, I would say that, if anything, romanticism is a more defining characteristic of the literary 007's relationships with women than "womanizing." I recall a passage in FRWL when they're discussing how Bond's relationship with Tiffany Case (which, according to Bond, could have ended in marriage) fell through, in which Fleming is describing how M considers him a womanizer, a notion that Bond himself rejects. Of course, there's lots of sex in the Fleming novels, but it often carries some romantic meaning with Bond.
The best relationships in Bond films, I have found, are the ones that reflect Bond's nature as a romantic in the novels, in that he falls for them in some sense or shows some level of deep caring for them, and doesn't just use them for pleasure. DN, FRWL, YOLT, OHMSS, LALD, TSWLM, FYEO, OP, TLD, LTK, GE, TWINE: all of these work very well because Bond displays some deeply-held admiration or caring for the woman at question. (Include TND, if you count the affair with Paris)