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And the top left picture (from what I can make out) doesn't look too removed from the Bentley Bond had in the books.
Bond is Fleming's mind so its Bond ..exactly,Dr...
Hahaha. He does.
https://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Casino-Royale/pages/Casino-Royale-0016.htm
"You'll never be Bond...Turner."
It doesn't help that the dialogue had to be redone in ADR, making the line sound as unorganic as it was. Even still, the most reluctant and melancholic, "Okay" would make that a really weird response to have when someone mentions the death of an associate.
That ,unfortunately in a film I champion,is a bad piece of dialogue and acting.
In SP:
When Bond confronts White, he's standing and leaning on the table between them; not once does he sit down, right??
BUT:
When Blofeld shows this meeting on the recording, Bond IS sitting down...
This film has so many layers of lazy...
It looks like I never noticed Bond siting down in this scene before.
My bad.
Or, as Domino would say: what sharp little eyes you've got.
You've lost me completely here, @peter. ;) Of course Bond is sitting down, the height he's at when speaking to White could only be managed if he was.
Upon closer inspection, there's a shadowy shot of Bond actually sitting.
I was so out of the film, by this point, I didn't notice.
My fault, my friend. And I do love Mr. White. And I wanted him as Blofeld as far back as QoS, but;
and I am in a majority; I dislike this scene. Personally, to me, it's two great characters yelling at each other...
But ends with a nice suicide.
@peter, didn't really care about your feelings as to the quality of the scene, just found it odd that you were getting so worked up over whether Bond was standing or not, and felt that was somehow a sign that everyone involved was lazy. I've heard some wacky criticisms of SP in the past two years, but that's a top 10 contender!
I didn't buy, at all, how Mr. White had suddenly seen the light, since Blofeld was sooo dark and terrifying (he's everywhere); especially when we do meet Blofeld, he's anything but-- so, of course, this makes repeated viewings, for me, even more critical of this meeting, of the script (I DID want to see this Blofeld he was talking about), and of two strong actors, in a pretty static scene (one sitting, one mainly standing), just kinda yelling at each other.
What coulda been great, turned out, for me, to be a shrug and a meh...
But while we're on it...
I for one think the scene is very well crafted. We see White the same as we see him in QoS's start, hooked up to an IV, making Bond's reunion with him seem like nothing had ever really changed. I like the visual linkage there.
One thing I always see people get up in arms about is their perception of White turning to "see the light" or go to the "good side," but I think the film is smart to not make it about this. The movie isn't expecting you to side with White or think he's suddenly a good man. The White character was crafted to be closer to how we are in real life (a theme of the Craig era's characters) in that we can do good and bad things as people; it's human nature. White has a part of himself that doesn't like what he sees in Blofeld and his actions, and I think that's largely because he sees the limits to which the madman was willing to go. No matter what White may've done for Blofeld in the past, we don't have any history of him killing women or children (so it's not readily hypocritical for him to be so affected), and it's very easy to imagine that, when watching the video of the terrorism, White sees a young Madeleine and his ex-wife dead, as he's projecting his situation on what he sees. His view on his situation and job changes through that personal angle because he realizes when he has no time left the value of life and how much he wished he'd made different decisions in his life. He only sees this when he knows his time is limited, and because of that White speaks to how humans often really are: we only change or attempt to change when we don't have time left.
White attempting to get in contact with Madeleine, and his agreement to have Bond save her, isn't meant to cause a parade of tribute to him or make us think he's a good man; we're supposed to question his morality and if redemption is ever possible. The movie doesn't dress him up or glorify him, because through Bond's character we know everything he did and we know his history with Quantum through the past films. We get to see the good he's capable of doing, and the care he has for his daughter, but we also see the bad he's done at the same time uncensored. There's a reason that the Vesper interrogation tape is written into the film and why the camera pauses on it when Bond finds it; not only is Bond confronting the bad of White mixed with the good he managed to do in his last minutes during that moment, we as the audience are also confronting those bad sides of him at the same time.
I think the picture we get of White is then pretty even-handed, with the movie neither vilifying or glorifying and ennobling him. Like the mature film SP is, it simply presents him to us and we make our own judgments without anything manipulating us or leading us to one conclusion over the other. Part of what makes the hotel room scene one of the best I've seen in the franchise is how it takes a very human experience of grief and depicts Bond and Madeleine both responding uniquely to White's death and how he lived through their different experiences with him. Bond was able to see the good in White at the end, but in finding the tape in the room he's reminded of the bad he could do too and how he helped take Vesper from him, and Madeleine wrote her father off as a dangerous man until she found his collection of photos and in spite of her anger she is reminded that he was her father and that he did care for her in the end. The emotions are confused and messy, and we see Bond and Madeleine trying to manage their feelings over White and those two sides of himself, the good and the bad.
I think it's beautifully crafted, quietly played and somewhat haunting. Bond and Madeleine's reactions also feel like how those feelings would really pour out, and the moral ambiguity of White that the film upholds again keeps in touch with how real life is; there are no moral absolutes, just the decisions we make that are relative depending on who you are.
Just to quickly touch on Blofeld, I also think that the one we got lived up to the fear and hatred White seemed to hold for him. Any man that orders a monopoly on medicine to force money out of the sick, sells women into the leisure sector like cattle, lobotomizes people in his drill chair and is willing to blow up cities and villages of innocents just to justify a global surveillance initiative is one bastard I'd not want to meet, for sure. None of the other Blofelds we've gotten have anything on this madman.
It really is!
It's possibly the thing in Connery-Bond's apartment that's most noticeable – or telling, of the character. That, and the certain luxurious style of the interior. Although, the interior doesn't reveal that much.
I've read a few interior magazines at the dentist's waiting room, if anything! :D
Interior design can be very interesting, though. Especially if it has personality.
I like it from a film perspective, and have an interest in the study of how a production design department can use a set to tell us something about the character that inhabits it.
M even comments on his past advice. ;-)
Agreed! That reminds me to get one or a few of the Ken Adam-books!
Don't think the first two Bond apartments tell that much. If they wanted to, they could have done more. In DN, the apartment seems spacious and luxurious – but at the same time, a bit anonymous? There's some nice interior details, but it could have been any film character's apartment.
The LALD apartment is even more excessive, perhaps – and very 70's, which tells us that this Bond keeps up with current trends. Suitable to Moore's Bond, really. But again, that's about it. SP is a different thing entirely.
I'm not quite sure but isn't it the same time as when Playboy Magazine had articles about the ultimate bachelor's suite with Bond as an example? I recall such an article.