M is for Mother

It hits the ground running—and driving, and riding, and leaping and pummeling—this 23^rd entry into the James Bond franchise, currently celebrating its 50^th anniversary. Throughout the Turkey-set opening sequence, Bond (Daniel Craig) and fellow MI6 agent Eve (Naomie Harris) chase a murderous mercenary in possession of a stolen hard drive loaded with the names of NATO agents in terrorist organizations. Bond pursues his target—mostly on motorbike—through a busy marketplace, along the rattling spine of tiled roofs, over a bridge’s edge and onto a moving train, where the dudes duke it out until Eve fires a rifle and brings the melee to a sudden halt. It’s an absorbing aperitif, superbly executed and generic in the best sense of the word—evidence that perhaps director Sam Mendes should stop trying to plumb domestic dismay for pseudo-profundities (see American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) and stick to highbrow actioners. (Collaborating with cinematographic genius Roger Deakins doesn’t hurt.)

But here’s the thing about Skyfall’s opening: fast-paced and gripping as it is, the whole time I kept thinking, How can these agents possibly do their job properly with the voice of M (Judi Dench) constantly beaming into their skulls the whole time, checking up on them, demanding details, issuing commands from the safety of an office a continent away? Let’s not forget that M stands for Mum, among other things, and it seems to me that this Mum’s not granting her grown children the anonymity they deserve or even require, given the unfathomable pressure they’re under. Even in the case of Bond—an archetype of sophisticated, lone wolf machismo if ever there was one—the man’s actions are still conditioned by the boy’s need for mom’s permission. That Bond was orphaned at an early age—something that will play a pivotal role in Skyfall’s final act—only makes this condition more acute. M is Bond’s surrogate mother, a chosen mother, both loved and loathed, and all the more dominant because of it.

This isn’t just me applying amateur psychology to the minutia of an otherwise straightforward entertainment; the surrogate mother/surrogate son dynamic will gradually shift from subtext to foreground. Skyfall’s is a very sly script, written by Bond veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and playwright-turned screenwriter John Logan, probably most famous for The Last Samurai, his Scorsese collaborations and for Red, his play about Mark Rothko. As Skyfall clips along he mother-son dynamic will be expanded and then doubled with the entrance of the film’s shamelessly campy but very entertaining villain, one Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem, perhaps channeling Udo Kier), a former MI6 agent exacting improbable and elaborate revenge on M. Silva’s got some colossal abandonment issues, and if he has to decimate vast chunks of London to have it out with his neglectful Mum and the man he perhaps deems to be her favoured son, so what? Empathy for innocent bystanders isn’t high on the list of values imparted upon Her Majesty’s killer minions.

By the time the smoke clears, Bond—or to be precise, Craig’s refreshingly complex, damaged Bond—will have been rendered at once more vulnerable and more invincible than ever before, having endured new heights of physical and psychic scrutiny. He emerges older but stronger, more traumatized and more alone. All in all not the worst state to be in when you’re turning 50. 

   

Church and state of uncertainty

If, like me, you’ve never seen John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, you may want to avoid learning too much about Doubt, the new film version adapted and directed by Shanley himself. Set strictly within the confines of a Bronx Catholic School in 1964, it’s a dramatic meditation on the dichotomy of ambiguity and faith, or as two characters put it, proof and certainty. There’s pleasure to be had in watching the events unfold blind, learning the facts to be debated only as they arise, piece by carefully doled-out piece.

Having said that, many of you will catch on to where this is heading from the outset, in a scene where each of the central players are present and the conflict, in its way, is spelled right out for us. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) gives a sermon on the theme of doubt and how it might bring us together rather than leave us in lonely despair. As Flynn gives examples of internal sources of unease, little things “no one knows” about us, Shanley cuts to individuals in the congregation, listening with rapt attention and recognition. It’s as though Flynn’s speaking directly to them, as though he’s somehow looked into their souls and diagnosed their unspoken suffering. But when Flynn offers his last example of secret turmoil—“No one knows I’ve done something wrong”—the camera rests firmly on Flynn himself. The moment is not exactly subtle, but it is elegant.

The evidence against Flynn, in a superbly amiable, layered performance from Hoffman, racks up swiftly. Flynn smiles a lot, and offers physical affection to his kids. He takes an unseemly amount of sugar in his tea, makes unseemly jokes with his fellow priests. He likes his nails kinda long. He keeps little flowers in his Bible. Most importantly, he singles out Donald Miller (Joseph Foster, perfect), the school’s only black student, and an alter boy, for special attention. He becomes, in the words of one character, Donald’s “protector.” When Sister James (Amy Adams) eventually sees something that suggests an “unhealthy” bond being forged between Flynn and Donald, she brings the issue to the attention of Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), the fearsome, ultra-stern school principal half-jokingly referred to by Flynn as a dragon. Very quietly and methodically, a campaign’s undertaken to get rid of Father Flynn, preferably following a full confession.

Much has been made about Shanley’s tip-toeing around the truth with regards to what unfolds behind closed doors in Doubt, but in all honestly I think the truth’s pretty damned clear, though more time with Donald, who’s conspicuously absent for much of the movie, might have shifted our reading of the scenario either way. The exact actions Flynn is guilty of are not so important to the story as the disturbing polarities of entitlement and genuine compassion he exudes. Admittedly, my reading probably says as much about my regard for the priesthood as it does Shanley’s intended subtext.

Personally, I’m more than fine with ambiguity—hell, Rashomon’s one of my favourite movies—if it yields something resonant or provocative about the subject being considered, and Doubt is absolutely engaging in this sense, thick with portent, psychological struggle, dynamic characterizations, uncomfortable questions. Yet, if anything, Shanley’s directorial style isn’t ambiguous enough. His is a strained sort of classicism, with ostentatiously skewed angles in moments fraught with paranoia. (A chamber drama about spiritual unease and all-too earthly temptations that relies on tight shots of faces negotiating how much can or cannot be reveled: we are very much in Ingmar Bergman territory here, and there were moments while watching Doubt that I really missed the late master.) Shanley’s approach is an odd mix of conservatism and flamboyance, and feels neither here not here. Still, the dialogues really grab you, the silences chill you, the photography, courtesy of Roger Deakins, is crisp, contained and magnificent. And the actors are most often brilliantly nuanced, even if one in particular, for better of for worse, really stands out from the others.

Streep’s is a fussed-over performance, featuring the broadest accent and most severe facial mask of the ensemble, a pale pinched pout under red-rimmed eyes that peers out from under that black bonnet in a way that renders Aloysius a spinster sucking on some holy lemon that she proudly refuses to reject. Yet I don’t think Streep’s detractors are going to convince anyone who’s actually seen this movie that her performance is anything less than riveting, driving every scene right to its precipice of tension—you can call her affected, but every affectation is loaded with purpose, and nothing is wasted.

The sole moment where Streep genuinely falters would have to be the film’s final one, a brief, sudden emotional thaw pitched to function as the sort of transcendental release perfected by Robert Bresson in Pickpocket (1959), and emulated in numerous movies since, most notably, and most effectively, in American Gigolo (80) and L’Enfant (05). But I think Shanley should probably be the one to ultimately take the heat for this limpid finale. Where he could have left us with a devastating whisper and fade, with another disarming close-up, he’s opted for weepy collapse, rising music and crane shot. Instead of drawing us in he casts out of the emotion, giving us no room to feel anything on our own. He may argue that he’s simply giving the audience the sort of big closing uplift they need, but what can I say? I have my doubts.