I have loved the James Bond movies since I was seven: the lone man fighting for a just cause, willing to sacrifice himself for what he believes; the distant and exotic foreign worlds, filled with mountain peaks and tropical forests; the deadly animals and deadlier villains; the even more exotic women – my goodness; and the humour, dry and understated – shaken not stirred. Which young boy wouldn’t want to be him?
How far away it seemed from my suburban Bournemouth home, from white bread and margarine and catching the yellow double-decker bus to school, or kicking footballs at rusty goalposts down the rec. Yet the Bond movies were not just escapism. Something connected with me, something in what the stories are really about beyond the stunts and the chases and the last second escapes from a bizarre convoluted death. Yet it was only when watching Skyfall, many years beyond my boyhood fantasies, that I understood the resonance.
Before I go any further, I should make clear I am not claiming the films are life changing events or high art. Goldfinger is not Macbeth. Yet in the most recent release there is enough depth, not only to carry a great story, but to allow the audience their own interpretation of what it means. There is sound reason to suggest Skyfall is about loyalty and betrayal; about the changing nature of strategic threats; about time and ageing; about the Bond franchise itself; or about parent-child relationships, even that it’s oedipal.
But for me, at least in part, it was about Britain and who we are in the 21st century. The film portrayed the UK not only as a white heterosexual and ageing middle-class society, but showed its diversity. Bond’s accomplice is coloured, Q is a young IT genius, and Bond hints wryly he may have had sex with another man. A crowd of commuters coexist with the empty beauty of Glen Coe.
More fundamentally it is about our values. Integrity – Bond is offered the chance at sharing incredible unchecked power, which he rejects. Sacrifice – he removes shrapnel from his own chest, almost drowns in icy water, and watches his childhood home burn. Stubbornness – M quotes Tennyson’s Ulysses “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” And understatement – when Bond arrives, as usual in the nick of time and after a great ordeal, he is asked what took him so long. We bring these traits to our trade as to our friendships.
This may all sound like an idealised rambling. Of course there are challenges in the UK, and I suspect still some quarters of confusion about our character (if any country can truly be said to have one). We neither control an Empire nor seek to do so, and to accuse the British of behaving this way now is a cheap shot; one for which it is as easy to pull the trigger as it is wayward in its aim. But integrity, sacrifice, stubbornness (suitably applied) and under-statement are still a measure of our character and reasons to be proud.
Finally, if you still aren’t convinced as my closing credits roll, or if you think this is all over-interpreted claptrap, I should end by adding that Skyfall is also great fun to watch. So I suggest simply going along, enjoying, and making of it whatever you will.