Spring Break
The many eras of Bond
MCT
Issue date: 11/13/08 Section: Features
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"When I write Dalgliesh now," James said, "Roy Marsden is who I see."
Who would author Ian Fleming see, were he around today and still banging out Bonds? Sean Connery? Roger Moore? Woody Allen? (Yes, Allen was one of several James Bonds in the original screen version of Casino Royale.) Fleming wrote 12 original Bond novels, which have inspired nearly twice that number of movies (as well as two short-story collections), but their author lived long enough to see only two --Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963). Fleming apparently was impressed enough with Sean Connery that he stressed Bond's Scottish heritage when he wrote On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which ironically starred George Lazenby when it was filmed in 1969. But were he around today, the onetime naval commander, who died in 1964, would likely be confused--not just by the times, but by his hero. Or, rather, heroes.
It may be that every era gets the Bond it deserves, in which case the ubiquitous advertisements for Quantum of Solace (a title even more bewildering than Synecdoche, New York) gives off a bit of bad news: The two sourpusses in the ads, Daniel Craig and co-star Olga Kurylenko, look like a pair of sullen celebrities walking the red carpet at their own movie premiere. Welcoming they are not, but, as a symptom of star-obsessed culture, they work OK, either as a branding device or an EEG.
In early reviews, Web critics have stressed that the movie, which opens tomorrow, has little besides nonstop action, which may please the video-gaming fanboy base for cinematic excess. But it hardly suggests the suavity and sophistication with which James Bond has long been synonymous.
Craig's breakout U.S. role on the big screen was as painter Francis Bacon's boyfriend in John Maybury's Love Is the Devil (1998), and he still looks like rough trade. Which is, of course, part of his appeal, and extends to both gay men and straight women. It also seems part of a cultural drift (or stampede) toward the brutish and extreme and away from the morally gray sophistication that Bond was meant to embody. Craig is built like the proverbial brick warehouse and, in this, he's far more a reflection of our times than was Fleming's original creation, who was envisioned as a glamorized version of the author--a smoker and drinker with the sexual discretion of a cage full of gerbils.
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