Skyfall at 10: How James Bond Helped Me Learn to Live with Loss
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The post Skyfall at 10: How James Bond Helped Me Learn to Live with Loss appeared first on Consequence.
Ten years ago this month, the James Bond franchise threw a 50th-anniversary party for itself in the form of 2012’s Skyfall. As was my ritual since 1997, I was there on opening day in a packed theater, and watching the film was a pretty dope time. But I felt funny when it ended, which is probably why I uttered the words I never thought I’d say in a million years, when I walked to my car that cold November night:
“Oh, fuck you, James Bond.”
At that point, I had seen five new Bond flicks in the theater and, for every single one of them, I normally felt some type of jubilation in my stomach when the credits rolled. Even after Die Another Day, a movie that’s aged worse than warm milk, the initial feeling was positive. It was a new James Bond movie, so what’s not to like?
Skyfall was different. Skyfall put me on the defensive because I wasn’t ready for it. Yeah, there are bullets, women, weapons, and wanton destruction as per usual, but when you strip the movie down to its essentials, much like the movie does of its lead character, it’s all about a guy losing his mom.
Bond finds himself in a situation where the world is crumbling down around him and he’s trying to find his place in it as it dissolves. At his side is his surrogate mother, M (Judi Dench), the woman who looks after him and who enables him to do what he needs to do. His emotional state for that movie reflected mine at that time: Lost, angry at the world, ready to go to an island just to get away from it all to “lend perspective” to everything.
I was an angry dude but hid it well, which is probably why Daniel Craig’s Bond resonates so much with me. As a character, Bond always concealed his pain well and a few movies touch on his excessive drinking possibly being a form of self-medication. However, Craig’s Bond shows that pain.
Skyfall is pretty blunt in its assessment of the guy, indicating he’s only held together by “booze and pills.” But, whenever the pain comes out to play, he tucks it back in because he’s got a job to do. There’s a certain type of pain that cuts deep, and anyone familiar with it knows it’s worse than a scrapped knee or a broken limb. No matter what you do to fix it or how many times you try, it feels like there aren’t enough Band-Aids in the world to stop the bleeding.
This iteration of Bond watched the woman he loved drown, go on a revenge mission in her name, and then listened to his surrogate mother willingly choose to sacrifice his life for Her Majesty’s government. That sounds like a lot for one year, but to carry that around for several years? No human shoulders can handle that.
Skyfall made me realize that I was still grieving my mother three years after her passing. Apparently, I did this thing where I buried my pain after a period of time because being vulnerable was a lot harder. So rather than own my pain, I leased it until the time I deemed necessary. The last thing I ever expected going into a freaking James Bond movie was a confrontation with that pain, the instant all the puzzle pieces came into play.
Skyfall’s third act is all about M and Bond on the run together; a son going to dramatic lengths to keep his mother safe. One of the movie’s thematic elements is the effect parents have on their kids: Silva (Javier Bardem), the movie’s resident bad guy, believes he and Bond are M’s last two children and products of her mistakes.
The way Silva sees it, as a guy who was at the top of his spy game, his former boss owed him more loyalty. But she discarded him when he went rogue behind her back and outlived his usefulness. So, like any good Cain and Abel story, he implores Bond to join his team and warns him of a similar fate. His logic not only builds on what occurred in Skyfall prior to Bond and Silva meeting, but also the Craig era’s first two movies. While M was never outright cold to Bond, she sees dispassion as a virtue. But even with that in mind, she shows her true feelings for Bond on several occasions, even if she does her best to hide them for the sake of the job.
I can’t count the number of times I saw my mom hide her feelings because there was something larger at stake. Whether it was bills, her job, or making sure her spoiled kid remained just that, there was always something else worth focusing on more than her own pain. Maybe after all those years of watching her do it, I adopted her coping mechanism.
Our parents leave us a lot of legacy, but I’m not sure if we ever focus on the subconscious traits we learn from them as much as we do the money — or lack thereof — or the hairline, or the color of our eyes. You can make more money, which can lead to you restoring your hairline, or buy contacts to change your eye color if you really want a pair of baby blues.
Skyfall (MGM)
But wiping out years of learned behavior is tough. My mom was my measure of strength so, in turn, some of her habits are my habits. Thinking my shoulders are broader than any mere mortal just so happens to be one of the particularly faulty ones.
Part of Skyfall’s deconstruction of its hero lies in having not many people believe in him. To be fair, at the beginning of the film, the guy looks like two pounds of monkey crap and can barely shoot straight. But a lack of faith from most of the British government is a new position for him. We saw him go rogue, withstand torture, and get on his boss’ bad side, but never actually get counted out. So, when M tells him he’s fit for active duty and ready to hunt the bad guy, I hit her with the side eye.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very sweet moment. And yes, he is the last line of defense since all the other double-0 agents are dead. But we learn she lied to him and her boss since he wasn’t even anywhere remotely ready for field work. Within the context of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall, M made that move as a result of trust. Through trial and error, Bond earned her trust and belief. Even operating at 50 percent, he gets the job done.
Put simply, she’s a mom, and moms believe. The world counts you out nine times out of 10 and, depending on who you are and the world you’re in, it may be 10 times out of 10. But if she’s doing it right, your mother is the one person who always believes you can scale any building and slay any dragon. Bond wasn’t in great shape, and he knew it. But a bit of his confidence returns when M gives him that support and stands up for him in the face of opposition, which clearly means the world to him.
My mom always had my back, but it’s her support that even to this day gets me a little teary-eyed. Even as it relates to the James Bond franchise, of which she wasn’t the biggest fan, she supported my obsession every step of the way. She bought the movies for me, sat through Tomorrow Never Dies with me, and let me take control of the TV every Thanksgiving to watch a Bond marathon. It’s the little things our parents do, right?
When I was 17, I made it my mission one summer to collect every original James Bond novel and hit a bit of a wall. This was before digital books were even a thing, so going to Amazon wasn’t an option. So, while in Colorado on business, my mother hunted down the missing titles and unloaded them from her suitcase when she came home. I never asked her to do it, and it’s something I wouldn’t have even thought to ask. But that was her. Support isn’t always making sure we’ve got money to spend, showing up at basketball games, or being your biggest cheerleader. Sometimes, it really is that simple.
The little things, right?
Skyfall (MGM)
During Skyfall’s third act, when Bond blows up his childhood home for her protection, a stray bullet fatally wounds M. The bullet didn’t even come from Silva but rather one of his underlings — the movie doesn’t even think to give the assailant a name. Once Bond dispatches him in the most flippant way possible, M hides her wound and keeps moving. Mothers protect their children, even if it means hiding things from them they maybe shouldn’t hide.
Bond believes nothing is wrong and that they’re almost out of the woods. They escape the house, he has one final showdown with the bad guy, cracks one more joke, and M collapses in his arms. She knew death was inevitable but needed Bond focused and uncompromised. She admits she wasn’t perfect but says her faith in him is the one thing she got right.
I was the last one in the family who knew my mom had breast cancer. She didn’t want me distracted during the first month of my senior year at college. She helped me move into a new apartment, made trips back and forth from Maryland to Jamaica, Queens, and did whatever else I needed in late summer 2007. And she did it all while not knowing her immediate future.
Of course, when I found out, I didn’t go to class for a week and a half, barely left my apartment, and got a little beside myself — I reacted exactly the way she predicted. But I got myself together and helped her get through the initial storm. She did the chemo and the necessary surgeries, and, for a while, it looked like the worst was over. But then the tsunami hit and two years later, she was gone.
Skyfall shows us the beating heart under the cold facade of a guy whose job requires dispassion and objectivity. It shows him broken and reborn, fully at peace with his past and a better man because of his “mother.” But it comes in the James Bond package, which makes it a tad richer. It’s a cathartic movie for both our main character and also me: It’s a reminder of how broken I was and how, ironically, the only person who ever would know the extent of that pain was no longer around.
But it also reminds me of the good times and the woman who would go to hell and back for me if need be, without a second’s hesitation. The woman who never quite understood my love for Her Majesty’s most famous fictional spy helped fuel my love for him, and solidified the character’s 50th anniversary as one near and dear to my heart.
Thanks, Mom.
Skyfall is streaming now on Prime Video and Netflix.
Skyfall at 10: How James Bond Helped Me Learn to Live with Loss
Marcus Shorter
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