THOSE film fans who pay attention to contemporary North American and European films (and there are interesting reasons for doing so) may have noticed those films’ increased focus on highly abnormal social, political, and scientific power struggles rooted in the historical past; the 20th century rise of non-Western nation states; and, perhaps most pervasive of all, the almost totally unrestrictive spread of communicative/informative technology around the globe. One look at most of those films which received top attention and awards at the recent 2013 Oscars confirms these realities as film content.

NEW BOND MATERIAL
‘Skyfall’ — the latest James Bond film, with Daniel Craig maintaining the Bond role dedicatedly –  is of course far from writer Ian Fleming’s original novels and short stories, since those have apparently been exhausted as source material. Now complimenting the central figure of Bond, the traditionally debonair secret-service hero Fleming created, is a dedication to adversaries weaned on historical, political, and personal aberrations or anomalies, which feed pockets of horrific tendencies world-wide across contemporary civilization.

The secret of Bond films as contemporary film-making lies not in duplicating historical or contemporary ‘facts’ for entertainment purposes, or even social-awareness purposes — as seems to be an emerging semi-documentary cinematic trend — but rather in its multi-faceted creative use of history; industrial and creative progress; psychology; religion; geography; and, above all, visual art, as aids to its speculative and penetrative focus on new social problems that contemporary global civilization increasingly seems to produce in its progressive wake.

THREATENED STRUCTURES
‘Skyfall’, perhaps more than all prior Bond films, is concerned with the still largely unexplored topic of contemporary civilization being threatened, or being terrorised and victimised from within, by individuals and small groups sabotaging and abusing the very structure they utilise – educationally at least – namely, Western civilization’s achievements in science, technology, and philosophical free-thought.

Left without superb writer Ian Fleming’s original hedonistic, pleasure-oriented slant to Bond’s serious social job as a security professional in England’s post-war civilization, the new writers of Bond’s cinematic adventures are free to focus on various security problems that have recently arisen with the diversely dispersed inventive changes in advancing Western civilization.

Indeed, the very freedom of Western art – whether visual, literary, musical, or cinematic – to keep abreast of these changes has resulted in numerous works of contemporary art which reflect these changes; and this art can, in turn, by its perceptive and analytical content, irritate some within Western societies and peripheral to it, who may see their mental aberrations and biased motivations reflected and exposed via the freedom of global communicative entertainment networks.

AHEAD OF THE GAME
‘Skyfall’ is the first Bond film in which the British Secret Service itself is treated like a critical work of art that is threatened by former employees who are stimulated by extreme self-pride originating both personally and socially. The title ‘Skyfall’ carries multiple references, not only to the antique estate in a barren English countryside where Bond grew up, and which he returns to in the film’s final episodes, but to the collapse of the very security secret shield protecting post-war England and even Western civilization’s distant members beyond.

The film is ahead of any game to make the sky fall on Western civilization in general, hence the Oscar-winning theme song, brilliantly performed by Adele at the 2013 Oscars, in which recurring, gloomy threats to the world’s stability and overall peace are poetically rendered in the valiant line: ‘Let the sky fall, we will stand firm.’

SKYFALL’S DIFFERENCE
At first, ‘Skyfall’ seems no different from previous action-packed Bond films, except that Craig as Bond remains quite haggard throughout, like his superior ‘M’, played out mortally by a committed Judi Dench in this one. Their stressed-out look is in keeping with the collapse of  England’s  secret service, brought on by cyberspace computer hacking (a new vulnerability in an electronic civilization), which has revealed the identities and locations of all its agents world-wide.
The film’s opening scenes of fantastic stunt chases by Bond and his female coloured assistant — played youthfully by Naomie Harris — in an Eastern nation is about capturing the villain identified as transporting that crucial list.

Perhaps it was just a reassuring opening gesture to dogged Bond action fans, who expect to see a continuation of his usual heroics because, a quarter into the film, we are quite surprisingly led into a stunning display of cinematic graphic art and psycho-Freudian behaviour, which elevates ‘Skyfall’ both visually and intellectually above all prior Bond films. This makes it far more complex and intellectually challenging than the average commercial ‘action thrillers’ which dominate movie screens today.

** PULL QUOTE: Perhaps it was just a reassuring opening gesture to dogged Bond action fans, who expect to see a continuation of his usual heroics because, a quarter into the film, we are quite surprisingly led into a stunning display of cinematic graphic art and psycho-Freudian behaviour, which elevates ‘Skyfall’ both visually and intellectually above all prior Bond films.