Bond with a complex and mommy issues

Released in London recently, Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, is expected in India later this month. The film sees Daniel Craig playing Bond for the fourth time and Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), among the more unusual directors of a 007 adventure, make his second Bond film. If the film is worth looking forward to, it is because both Craig and Mendes have proved inspired choices.

While this may appear sacrilege to generations that have grown up worshipping Sean Connery, it is this writer’s belief that Craig is the best Bond ever, beating not just Connery but even Pierce Brosnan. In a sense, Connery had it lucky. The flat Bond formula of guns, gals and gadgets was lapped up unquestioningly in the 1960s and early 1970s. With him, and with Roger Moore, the second long-standing Bond, the enemy was easy to identify during the Cold War.

Brosnan brought his talent to the table, and took on a series of post-Cold War, post-modern villains, from mad media tycoons to sundry megalomaniacs trying to monopolise everything from conflict diamonds to energy resources. The films were slick and Brosnan was impressive, but the plots were becoming that much less gripping.

Craig has reinvented Bond. His first 007 film, Casino Royale (2006), commenced a new timeline and freed the MI-6 agent from the legacy of the Cold War. Unlike many of his predecessors, Craig is not conventionally good looking. He is probably a better actor than most of them, though, and has brought an edgy, gritty flavour to his role. He has done what would have been unthinkable for 007 in an earlier age: he has cried on screen.

At various points in his three earlier Bond films, Craig has reminded this writer of Steve McQueen in Bullitt and Robert De Niro in Heat, two iconic films made a quarter-century apart. Ironically, McQueen played a police officer and De Niro a criminal. Yet, Craig brought out shades of both, indicating the layered and textured characteristics that are required of the contemporary James Bond, as opposed to the smug, black and white simplicity of another time.

In Mendes, Craig has found an appropriate collaborator. Skyfall (2012), Mendes’ first rendition of 007, was a polarising work. Bond fans either loved it or hated it; there were few who were indifferent to the film. Mendes’ treatment of Bond, his introduction of a deeper psychology, the relationship between Bond and M — Judi Dench, who is killed in the film — Bond’s longing for his parents who died young, the conflict with a villain who was a former colleague and fellow secret agent but who went rogue, and who seeks, in own way, validation from M as much as Bond does: this was a complex film.

With the contest of two men for approbation from a senior maternal figure, some saw shades of Deewaar in Skyfall. It is worth noting that in at least one previous film, GoldenEye (1995), Brosnan’s first Bond role, 007 took on an old mate, 006, who has been presumed dead but comes back as a menacing villain. The former 006 is actually of Cossack stock, still angry at the manner in which Britain betrayed his people and his parents at the end of World War II and left them to Stalin. Decades later, he wants revenge by using a satellite to destroy London as a financial centre.

It’s a wild caper, enjoyable as all Bond films are, but very different from the treatment given to the game between Bond and a rogue agent in Skyfall. It tells you how Mendes believes the Bond series needs to evolve. Indeed, many saw Skyfall as a “very Indian” film, either liking it or loathing it for the same reason.

What does “very Indian” mean in this context For an answer it may be pertinent to consider what social scientist Ashis Nandy told this writer in an interview some years ago. “Hindi cinema,” Mr Nandy said, “deals with stereotypes and caricatures and emotions that have been banished from serious cinema and books and art, especially in the West. But these emotions haven’t vanished from society.”

“Melodrama,” Mr Nandy continued, “has been banished from serious art and creativity. But it survives, perhaps solely, in Hindi films. Portraying a mother-son relationship in a serious work is not possible; people will read a complex into it. Coincidences have been banished. But all of these are there in people’s minds. Goldsmith and Shakespeare were melodramatic and used coincidences. Great art has included them in the past, but current literary fashions don’t. Popular cinema bypasses that.”

To his credit, Mr Nandy made these observations well before Skyfall was released — the conversation was not even remotely about James Bond — but nevertheless anticipated the debate and opposite responses that Mendes’ first 007 film provoked. This makes Spectre worth waiting for, not simply as the next location of the Bond pilgrimage, but to see how the director has gone about it this time.

Unconventional names have been associated with Bond films in the past. Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. George MacDonald Fraser, creator of the well-researched and extremely funny Flashman books, contributed to the script of Octopussy. These were passing fancies and left no deep mark on the Bond series. It is likely, however, that Mendes and Craig have shaken and stirred the Bond genre for good.

Already, Spectre has made news for starring the oldest Bond girl of all time, Monica Bellucci, who is past 50 and four years older than Craig in real life. In his customary dry manner, Craig responded to a recent question on “succumbing to the charms of an older woman” with a forthright and unambiguous answer: “I think you mean the charms of a woman his own age. We’re talking about Monica Bellucci, for heaven’s sake. When someone like that wants to be a Bond girl, you just count yourself lucky.”If only for that clarity, Spectre deserves the purchase of a ticket.

The author is senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com