In Canada
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee
Whether the summer clothe the general earth with greenness or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch smokes in the sun-thaw
Whether the eve-drops fall, heard only in the trances of the blast
Or if the secret ministry of frost shall hang them up in silent icicles
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
Frost at Midnight
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I find that I have more to say on the subject of the latest Bond opus – Skyfall.
A period of contemplation found me considering the underlying meaning of the film. This in itself represents a considerable departure for a Bond film. How many of the previous offerings – however enjoyable they might have been – could be said to have a deeper (even if not much deeper) meaning?
Skyfall – on the other hand – does so.
It is entirely apposite that, with the franchise celebrating its 50th anniversary, questions should be asked as to the continuing pertinence of the series. Skyfall chooses to do this at several levels, questioning not only the relevance of Bond to the action film genre itself, but also of Fleming’s cold war ‘blunt instrument’ in the era of cyber espionage, both as a fictional character and also – by extension – in the world of real live spooks… whatever the reality of that might actually be.
This exchange between Bond and Ben Whishaw’s Q – sitting in the National Gallery in front of Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire” – is germane:
Q: It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Grand old war ship. being ignominiously haunted away to scrap… The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?
James Bond: A bloody big ship. Excuse me.
Q: 007. I’m your new Quartermaster.
James Bond: You must be joking.
Q: Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?
James Bond: Because you still have spots.
Q: My complexion is hardly relevant.
James Bond: Your competence is.
Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency.
James Bond: And youth is no guarantee of innovation.
Q: Well, I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.
James Bond: Oh, so why do you need me?
Q: Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled.
James Bond: Or not pulled. It’s hard to know which in your pajamas. Q.
Q: 007.
The Turner is, of course, carefully chosen and there is little doubt that Sam Mendes – directing his first action movie – is to thank for bringing his erudition and intelligence to bear on what might otherwise have remained a somewhat dated format.
Mendes also no doubt had a hand in the choice of Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, the final stanza of which provides a fitting climax to M’s peroration to the select committee – immediately before all hell breaks loose. I found myself pondering the exact reasoning behind this particular choice and this naturally led me back to the poem itself.
Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ takes the form of a dramatic monologue in three parts. In the first Ulysses – having taken 10 years to return home after the Trojan wars and having eventually recovered his long abandoned wife and throne – finds himself enduring a quotidian existence, much vexed by the trivial responsibilities of power. He pines for the glory days of yore, longing once more to be able to travel and to explore.
The second part comprises a relatively brief discourse on the virtues of Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, who will rule in his stead once he is gone. The tone suggests that he sees in Telemachus an altogether less passionate, perhaps more ‘modern’ – even sedulous – approach to the business of statesmanship. His admiration verges on the grudging.
He works his work, I mine.
The third and, perhaps, most oft quoted passage comprises an invocation to his mariners (though those who accompanied him on his ‘odyssey’ are – by most readings – already dead) to engage in one final quest, one last adventure – whilst they still have the strength. The passage culminates with these stirringly elegiac lines:
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Interpretations of the poem are legion. Tennyson composed it shortly after the death of a close friend, the poet Arthur Henry Hallam, and said of it: “It gave my feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life.” There is – as a result – much debate as to what extent Tennyson’s reading of Ulysses is autobiographical. This in turn informs a debate as to the ironical (or otherwise) nature of the poem. This view makes play of the apparent inconsistencies in the character of Ulysses across the poem as a whole.
Most interpretations do, however, seem to consider the closing stanzas inspirational – an invocation of the heroic – and as a result they are much used as mottoes by schools and other similar institutions. The last three lines are engraved on a cross at Observation Hill in Antarctica to commemorate Captain Scott and his party.
My reading is somewhat different. The subject to me seems to be loss. Ulysses is in reality – as Thomas has it – ‘raging against the dying of the light’. He recognises that his long moment in the sun is behind him, and though he comes out of his corner bravely – puffing out his chest and taking on all comers – he actually knows that the game is up.
It is, of course, in the nature of a true work of genius that each of us may find in it our own truths – our own meanings. Though Skyfall is itself certainly no work of genius I am indebted to it for leading me back to these other classics – and for making me think a little…
…and that is certainly more than can be said of any number of other like films.
Best line in the latest episode of the long-running ‘Bond’ franchise – as Albert Finney’s highland gamekeeper, Kincade, greets the first two evil henchmen through the door of the Bonds’ ancestral home – Skyfall – with both barrels of his sawn-off shotgun:
‘Welcome tae Scotland’…
A considerable body of commentary has already been added to the InterWebNet on the subject of Skyfall, which Kickass Canada Girl and I saw – and enjoyed hugely – at the London IMAX over the weekend. Much of the critical reaction has been overwhelmingly positive – which pretty much reflects our view – whilst viewer comments on blogs and forums have comprised the usual baffling mixture of the amusing and the frankly bizarre. I don’t mean to cavil, but who really gets upset over minor plot holes in a Bond movie? Isn’t that rather missing the point?
I have no intention of adding to the tsunami of online reference material on the film itself – but the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the franchise does merit a little consideration. It is my contention that there has been no other franchise in movie history that even comes close to matching the record of the Bond films. I am not interested here in box office take nor profits made – only in the length and diversity of what is, after all, a single and relatively simple idea – which has been turned into a hugely successful and apparently perpetual series.
And the real gotcha? It’s British!!
Enthusiasts might point to the manner in which the franchise has been constantly refreshed – indeed ‘re-booted’, as the parlance goes – in order to retain its ‘relevance’ – though what such pertinence might actually comprise is a matter for endless debate. Again, relevance – in the sense of the films having something to say about contemporary life – is not really the point. At least – not directly…
Some would suggest that the enduring appeal of the films is based on the timeless diet of girls, guns and gadgets. There have, however, been a multitude of other action films with similar ingredients, and I would argue that that this alone can not explain such longevity. My view is that it is more than simply a question of each film beguiling its own generation. I believe that the franchise is capable of continual renewal because of its mythic nature – a nature that was integral to Fleming’s novels from the start.
Bond’s genesis was in the immediate post-war period. As the old world shivered in the embrace of the cold war, Britain – reluctantly but with typical sang froid – dismantled and handed back the constituent parts of its empire. The fact that it had little choice in the matter is barely relevant. Intended or not, few other nations have handled the transition to the post-imperial state with as little turbulence.
What was lost however – along with the empire itself – was the nation’s sustained and carefully crafted imperial mythology. Largely the work of the Victorians, and with its stiff upper lips, sun never setting, pungent whiffs of patriotism and a dashed all-round sense of fair play, this self image – though partial (in all senses) at best – had served the nation well. Whatever republicans and modernists might protest to the contrary, we are a smart enough race to recognise the importance of a national mythology, which is why so many of our myths have survived in one form or another. The loss of empire and demotion from top-nation spot had, however, left a yawning void in our psyche – a void which clearly needed to be filled.
Enter the sixties. Enter James Bond.
In Fleming’s novels – and in the subsequent movie franchise – we have found a new mythic self-image. We like the patriotism, the sense of duty, the determination to succeed against the odds and the understated suggestion of heroism. We appreciate the dry sense of humour, regardless of the situation. We like the style – the tailoring, the cars, the yachts, the luxury lifestyle – strangely (and yet not!) at odds with the purpose of the role. We also like that the films showcase much that we are proud of in our culture – the music, the writing, the acting (Daniel Craig, Dame Judy Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney, Javier Bardem – for goodness sake!), the camera work, the special effects – the pure, sophisticated, joyous class of it all!
To those critics who carp that such a brutish, womanising, unreconstructed chauvinist – Fleming’s ‘blunt instrument’ – is entirely unsuited as a mythic role model, I would simply point out that this is to misunderstand the nature of myth itself. Are not the Arthurian heroes also deeply flawed characters? Are not the North American creator figures – the Raven and the Coyote – also amoral tricksters, equally likely to steal, to gorge themselves and to fornicate their way through the firmament as they are to create the sun – the moon – mankind?
It was little surprise to me that Danny Boyle chose to foreground Bond amidst the panoply of cultural icons representing modern Britain in his definitive Olympic opening ceremony. It was only a momentary surprise that Her Majesty herself chose to sanction this choice by breaking with all tradition and appearing alongside – and thus endorsing – this fictional character.
Bond is now a key ingredient of the new mythical self-image that we have constructed for ourselves. And we like what we see…
There are days when I feel particularly like the grumpy old man that I fear I am rapidly evolving into. Dour grey November mornings don’t help much with this, even at the weekend when what lies ahead are a pleasant few days of relaxing with the Kickass Canada Girl, eating and drinking well, going for brisk – if damp – walks, and watching the TV coverage of the home nations being beaten to a pulp on the rugger field by the strapping demi-gods of the southern hemisphere.
At my previous school – with just such grim days in mind – they practiced a rather splendid custom. A former member of the teaching staff had left a bequest to the common room with particular instructions for its use. On one grey miserable Monday morning each November – to be chosen on the hoof by the common room secretary – the bequest would pay for Madiera and Bath Oliver biscuits to be served at the daily mid-morning staff meeting held in the school hall. The date was never revealed in advance so each year on one dank Monday morning at least there would be a pleasant surprise.
However, I digress…
My mood this morning was not ameliorated by my running up against one of those irritations that the InterWebNet provides as a counterbalance to the many benefits it extends. Let me be uncharacteristically direct:
I wished to make a risotto. This is something that I do frequently and at which I have acquired a certain skill. However, the last few times that I have done so I have been disappointed with the chicken stock that I have used.
Now – let’s get this straight. I have at the moment neither the time nor the inclination to make stock from scratch. I know that to do so would yield better results, but on this occasion I intended to use a store-bought product. It quickly occured to me that the InterWebNet might be able to assist me in tracking down a superior comestible, so I fired up the Girl’s iThing and Googled (which is clearly now a verb!) “best store-bought chicken stock”.
You can probably imagine the results. Eleventy-gazillion items all advising me that there is no conceivable alternative to doing the job the hard way – that I am somehow lacking as a man if I do not already have to hand a considerable quantity of chicken detritus and that if I think I stand even the remotest chance of making a decent stock with less than two days hard sweat and toil – then I had jolly well better think again!
It is at such times – when the doubtless worthy denizens of the InterWebNet take it upon themselves to decide that I actually needed an answer to a completely different question to the one that I had asked – that I begin to doubt the efficacy of the entire enterprise, and the unconnected world seems like an increasingly good idea after all.
See what I mean? Grumpy old man!
It was a very good risotto – even though I did not make the stock…
Limbo (noun)
1 – the supposed abode of the souls of unbaptized infants, and of the just who died before Christ’s coming.
2 – an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition.
Origin: late Middle English: from the medieval Latin phrase in limbo, from limbus ‘hem, border, limbo’
‘Limbo’ has of course an alternative meaning, not – naturally – from the same Latin root but probably derived from ‘limber’ and dating only to the 1950s.
The older usage first appears in the 14th century and, as suggested above, takes two common forms – the ‘Limbo of the Patriarchs’ and the ‘Limbo of Infants’. Both commonly associated with the Catholic Church the former refers to the temporary state of those who, regardless of any sins they may have committed, have died in the sight of god but cannot enter Heaven until redeemed by Jesus Christ – whilst the latter concerns the permanent status of the unbaptized who, dying in infancy, are too young to have committed personal sins but are still tainted by original sin.
In common with a number of other religious terms the word limbo does not itself actually appear in the bible. Neither is the concept of limbo directly spelled out in the scriptures, though some argue that it is implicit in a number of references therein. Though widely used from the middle ages onward the Catholic Church has in recent times rather distanced itself from the conceit – the current Pope being amongst those who have raised questions as to the efficacy of the concept.
Let us not, however, get bogged down here on the subject of pensile lost souls lurking on the border between this life and… whatever may (or may not) follow. Let us in this instance hold fast to the here and now and concentrate instead on the second definition above.
The astute reader will by this point have deduced that I have allowed myself to get sidetracked into this somewhat arcane rumination because I cannot yet – for legal reasons (and I have always wanted to find an opportunity to utilise that particular idiom!) – write about what I really want to write about.
Soon, however… Soon!
Some more images from the far east. We were really rather taken with Hong Kong…
Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong Kong.
Vita Sackville-West
Mindful of the above I certainly have no intention of boring. Here instead are just a few images from our hectic but most enjoyable wedding trip…
Every so often I feel the urge to listen to some ‘new’ music.
One of the drawbacks of growing older – at least where listening to ‘popular’ music is concerned – is that it is all too easy to lose touch with recent trends, persisting instead with that which one already knows. The reasons for this are pretty obvious. Much new music is aimed at the young – both in terms of content and in the way it is marketed. This should come as no surprise of course, since the young comprise the main market for it, but the result can be that the rest of us – and our money – are left out in the cold.
We make up for it in many cases by buying new versions (or just new copies) of the music that we listened to in our own youth. Many of us believe in any case that the music scene has steadily gone downhill since whenever that was, and that what remains is but a pale shadow of those glory years. Much recent music seems artificial – driven by the wants of TV ‘talent’ shows – and the rest has steadily become more and more self-referential (pop indeed eating itself) as the same pool of material is repeatedly re-mined, re-sampled and re-used in ever more dilute proportions. It is worryingly difficult to distinguish much sign of the creativity and imagination that pervaded the music of my youth – though it is, of course, pretty difficult to see anything at all through these rose-tinted shades!
I am – naturally – making far too much of this. There is plenty of interesting music around, but with the decline of the once accepted methods of production and dissemination – record companies, record stores, radio playlists and so forth – and the rise of the InterWebNet as a tool for publishing, acquisition and the discovery of music, it is surely much less likely that any gems out there would these days be discovered by chance.
I used to listen to music on the radio a great deal. I no longer do so, as I find most of the UK music stations pretty intolerable. I fear I have reached the age when I prefer to listen to the spoken word – or at least I prefer to listen to the BBC’s radio 4 – which is much the same thing. Oddly I find music radio in Canada to be considerably more agreeable. There seems to be less ‘ghettoisation’ of music into apparently irreconcilably disconnected genres.
Still – as I said at the very top – I felt the need to discover something with which I was not yet familiar. I knew the broad type of music that I hoped to find and – armed with a couple of suitable examples from my existing catalog – I ventured into the digital world. Now – this is something that the InterWebNet is good at, though one has (quite rightly) to work pretty hard to get the desired results. What did we do in the days before we could ask the oracle questions such as “What else is a bit like this, that I might like”?
“Cut the crap”, you say “and just tell us what you found!” Now, now – don’t be impatient…
OK – ladies and gentlemen – I give to you – the ‘Poets of the Fall’.
This Finnish band (yes, really!) – who are pretty much unknown in the UK and Canada as far as I can tell – create a splendidly melodic blend of old and new. They seem to be big in Germany and India (!) where they tour extensively, but they don’t appear as yet to have played in the UK and they have certainly not made it to Canada.
I like them. They may not be your bag, but why not give them a listen? Here are some clips:
Enjoy!
The November edition of GQ magazine (British edition – which I purchased because it contains a number of Bond related features) details the winners of the GQ 2012 ‘Men of the Year’ awards. The Bond link is a tie-in with the (very) imminent release of the new Bond opus – ‘Skyfall’- which marks the 50th anniversary of the franchise. You can all rest safe in the knowledge that I will be returning to the subject of Bond (if not of Daniel Craig!) in the not too distant future. For now, though, I want to focus on one particular man of the year…
It is 23 years since ‘A Few Good Men’ premiered on Broadway and kick-started Aaron Sorkin’s writing career. Sorkin – who sold the film rights to the script before it had even opened – was subsequently engaged to write the screenplay for the 1992 movie version, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination later the same year.
Sorkin’s career highlights have been rehearsed often enough that there is no need for me to repeat them here. It is a testament to his talent and longevity that adding the 2012 GQ ‘Men of the Year’ award for best writer to his trophy cabinet comes as no surprise, and indeed as something of a relief to those who hanker after the sort of high quality writing that – Stoppard and a few others excepted – seems sadly in short supply in this day and age.
For those unfamiliar with Sorkin’s oeuvre, however, I feel compelled to give just one example – from the first series of the multi-award winning ‘The West Wing’ – by way of an illustration and encouragement to all budding playwrights and screen writers.
As is the norm for ‘The West Wing’, in this episode – ‘The State Dinner’ – a number of plot threads evolve simultaneously. The main strands are as follows:
As ever in Sorkin’s scripts the narrative development of these major issues of the day is seamlessly blended with a multitude of personal involvements, by which means the richness of each character is revealed and developed. The whole creates a multi-layered tapestry woven through with many detailed threads… much like life itself!
The underlying theme of the episode is that of the powerlessness of those in high office in the face of events. Martin Sheen’s President Bartlett eventually mounts a feisty intervention in the truckers’ dispute precisely because – as the Stockard Channing’s First Lady explains to one of the other dinner guests – he is powerless to influence the Idaho hostage negotiations and he cannot stop the hurricane!
It is in the nature of such drama series that – to achieve maximum emotional or philosophical effect – each episode will most likely culminate with one of the featured storylines proving to be the ‘doozy’. Part of Sorkin’s genius lies in his adding to the impact by keeping us guessing as to which it will be. In ‘The State Dinner’ each of the themes builds inexorably to a series of climaxes, each out-doing the one before.
Finally – having been sold a dummy on hearing that the hurricane has changed course and will no longer make landfall – it is revealed instead that the naval carrier group that has previously been diverted to avoid the storm – is now directly in its path and cannot escape. Surrounded by a silent tableau of horrified aides the President tries to make radio contact with the commanders of the group – the scene rendered all the more powerful because we only see the White House end of the connection.
The radios on the carriers have been knocked out by the storm. The only contact that can be made is with a small auxiliary supply vessel, which has already been badly damaged by the huge waves. The captain has been summoned to the radio room but does not appear – leaving the President on the line to the terrified youth who is the radio operator. Knowing the inevitable fate of those concerned the President promises to stay on the line as long as it is open…
Pure class!
For English chaps of a certain age – those who were in their mid-teens at the turn of the decade from the 60s to the 70s – memories of those inevitable teenage romantic ‘crushes’ on the unobtainable will more than likely number amongst them some such pertaining to that most English of actresses – Jenny Agutter.
I was sixteen in 1970 when Lionel Jeffries’ adaption of E. Nesbit’s classic – ‘The Railway Children’ – premiered before Christmas and I and countless others fell immediately in love with this luminous young lady. The following year’s ‘Walkabout’ (actually filmed before ‘The Railway Children’) showed us Ms Agutter in an altogether different light and we were smitten afresh – though this time in an markedly more adult manner!
‘The Railway Children’ is one of those films that I am happy to watch time and time again, admiring not just the radiant Ms Agutter but also the beautiful evocation of Haworth, the Yorkshire village whose parsonage was home to the Bronte sisters. The film’s ending still packs the same emotion punch as ever and I – naturally – still dissolve in time-honoured fashion. The film was shown again last weekend on one of the myriad Freesat stations by which we are routinely teased with the illusory prospect of there being something worth watching on TV. I stopped – I sat – I watched – I blubbed!
It was not, however, my intention that this post should be merely a eulogy for the lady. As it happened I had thought that I would catch another showing of the film a couple of months before, only to find – once so engaged – that I was watching a wholly different movie. It seems that ‘The Railway Children’ was ‘remade’ in 2000. This new version also featured Ms Agutter, but this time playing the mother of the character that she played in the original.
What interested me about the remake was that though much of the script was almost exactly as before – not surprising given that a significant proportion had been extracted directly from the dialogue of the novel – this film was no-where near as good. Familiar scenes seemed to lack the sparkle – the detail – of the original, and even Ms Agutter had lost some of the quality that shone through in Jeffries’ version. I fell to wondering why they had gone to the trouble – and expense – of remaking a film for which a perfectly good rendition already existed.
This, naturally, set me thinking about remakes in general. I know why they are made, of course – for the money! – but it seems to me a great shame to produce an inferior remake of a much loved – even iconic – film rather than trying something fresh. How many remakes can you think of that could complete with – let alone better – the originals? Yes there are a few – but then again…
Please do feel free to nominate remakes of your choosing, either as complete turkeys or – perhaps rather more rare – the occasional hit. For what its worth I consider the remake of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ to at least be able to hold up its head in the presence of the McQueen/Dunaway version, but when it comes to ‘The Italian Job’ – I shudder! What were they thinking? The original is nothing if not a tongue in cheek examination of the death of deference in the swinging sixties. The remake is – well – nothing!