“He [Safin] offers the possibility to Bond to stay alive, but being unable to near the people he loves which is ultimately a checkmate of cosmic proportions.” - Academy-Award winning director Guillermo del Toro on the ending of “No Time to Die”
Appears my earlier post got a little bit of a reaction! Specifically, the bit in which “No Time to Die” cinematographer Linus Sandgren refers to Madeleine Swann as “the love of his life”. This provides a good opportunity to talk about on this platform what I think the logic is across the five-film CraigBond story and how Swann fits into this narrative.
“What are they burning?”
“Secrets, wishes, letting go of the past. Getting rid of the old, in comes the new.“
When we’re introduced to the character in “Casino Royale”, we see James Bond commit the first two kills that make him a 00. This doesn’t have its origins in the novels, so I think that number of two bears particular note. You can’t just kill one person, you have to kill two. Every time you hurt someone you are hurting two people: the other person, and you.
Now, there’s a through-line across all five movies — it is impossible to live a life if your life is killing people. We don’t need to look any further than the opening stanza to Chris Cornell’s “You know My Name”, the opening song to “Casino Royale”:
If you take a life do you know what you'll give?
Odds are you won't like what it is
There are two people who exist: “James Bond” and “007″. One is a killer, one is not. Every time “007″ kills, it pushes “James Bond” further away from his humanity. I’m reminded of a line from “A Boy Like That” from “West Side Story” (A boy who kills cannot love/A boy who kills has no heart) that seems quite applicable to the character of James Bond, be it the literary or the film Bond. And the unfortunate curse of his profession is his licence to kill ends up being a double-edged sword. Or, as Dominic Greene says in “Quantum of Solace”:
The tragedy at the core of “Casino Royale” is this fundamental divide within the character — if he holds onto his power over death, then everything he loves is doomed to die. James Bond’s identity is murder and death. But he yearns, so desperately, for connection. He is the Dangerous Lover fully. When he meets Vesper, he immediately falls for her and is willing to give up his everything for her but it is of no use. Vesper betrays him out of her own past attachment — honeypotted into a romance used to blackmail her — and she kills herself to spare Bond’s life. Yet, in pure irony, by saving Bond’s physical life she killed his humanity.
It is fitting in “Casino Royale” that the iconic line of the cinematic Bond (”Bond, James Bond”) doesn’t appear until right at the end of the film when Bond shoots the man responsible for the decision Vesper made. We are linking his identity to this act, that the choice Vesper made to save him drove him into being who we (the audience) know him as — a killer. His heart is sealed off when he uses that nasty, five-letter word in reference to Vesper.
If the ending of “Casino Royale” positions the character at his lowest — a totally heartless killer devoid of any humanity — then everything subsequent shows some kind of transformation out of that place. Drama is movement, after all. Stagnation is the enemy of functional storytelling.
“Quantum of Solace” features Bond wandering through the desert and restoring water to a thirsty people. The symbolism of this plot-beat is fairly straightforward — despite all his best intentions, there is a capacity for this killer to give life instead of just taking life. That bargain he made at the beginning of “Casino Royale” is not permanent (powers over death in exchange for your humanity/soul). He can emerge out of the desert and find rebirth. Transform into something new, restore what was lost.
The ending shot of “Quantum of Solace” — featuring Vesper’s jewel given to her by the honeypotter (is that word?) — is such a powerful image. It’s as if Bond is separating himself from his feeling, from his humanity. Committing to the life of a killer.
I have a whole thing about the use of silhouette in “Skyfall” and how Silva exists as a shadow-self of Bond’s anger towards M (which, I think, projects onto the death of his biological mother as every mythic hero has two sets of parents). Silva and Sévérine are a perverted mirror of Bond’s metatextual legacy, with the ending of the film arguing that there is something salvageable within this character with such a misogynistic legacy:
M, the surrogate mother, dies and gives Bond this last word — “I did get one thing right.” The goal of every parent, one imagines, is to not completely fuck up their child. M did fuck up Tiago Rodriquez (birthing Silva) but did not do the same to Bond. James Bond had every opportunity to end up like Tiago Rodriquez (literally “dying” and ending up with a clean slate to do whatever he wants with), but he returned when he found out MI6 (M, his “mother”) was in danger and worked to protect her. Because he loves her — despite sealing his heart off all those years ago, he still does love. That’s what she got right, maintain that humanity within Bond that so many others in this profession lose when they exist within death.
That man Bond shot at the end of “Casino Royale”, Mr. White, returns in “Spectre” — the key to Bond unraveling the mysterious organization that threatens global stability. Only this Mr. White is not the master assassin we last saw him as in “Quantum of Solace”, now he is frail and weak. Isolated. Mr. White abandoned the cause after the organization started targeting women and children, and now he waits for death to come for him as penance for what he has done in life. White recognizes how he and Bond are basically the same person — men who bring death upon the world, which ends up drawing distance between them and humanity at large.
But Mr. White has one thing keeping him alive:
Madeleine Swann is among the more fascinating characters in any popular, brand-name movie I’ve come across. The basic conceit of her character is “What if Death had a daughter, and she was the force of Life?”. She is a doctor who worked with international organizations that travel around the world healing people. This is, obviously, the equal opposite of Bond’s “licence to kill”. How could something so healing come from a man of total destruction? Mr. White is a particularly nasty guy, yet out from him emerged her. What a beautiful, hopeful message — the spark of life will always emerge no matter how bleak its circumstances are in existence.
“Spectre” shapes like a fairy tale: this dark knight (Bond) travels to the Pale King (Mr. White) thanks to a magical ring (the Spectre Ring), and the dying King tasks him to go save the Princess (Madeleine Swann) from the wizard who killed him. But the only way the knight can save the Princess is if he throws down his sword — because what really hurts her is killing. Or, as Swann says:
From the moment they meet, there is something different about Dr. Swann. She doesn’t just know Bond’s world — she *is* Bond’s world. She came from the same World of Death that he navigates in, yet emerged out of that a being of Life. A Doctor, the opposite of a Killer. Madeleine Swann serves as the total antithesis to the cruel belief Bond resigned himself to at the end of “Casino Royale” — life can emerge out of the underworld.
Going back to “Skyfall” for a moment, all of the stag imagery associated with Bond’s family in the film seems important — the stags antlers regrow each year. Out of the death of winter comes the rebirth of spring. New life from death
And there’s a line Silva tells Bond in his monologue where he talks about the psychological transformation MI6 makes agents go under through a parable of his childhood:
The default nature, “Skyfall” proposes, isn’t hurting but helping. We aren’t programmed to kill from birth, someone has to teach us to do that. Silva believes this is irreversible, but as we see through Bond’s journey in the film one can change their nature again back to a helper. Back to healing. Nothing is set in stone. The daughter of an assassin can become a force for life.
As the world’s biggest fan of “Spectre”, I’ll admit I was a bit concerned when I saw Daniel Craig was returning for one last Bond film and that Léa Seydoux was also coming back with him. I loved the ending of “Spectre” — the hero rejects the power of death (think the magical ending of “Return of the Jedi”) and embraces the love of life/life of love. He finds rebirth in this heart. His journey was complete! What more was there to tell?
The trick about “No Time to Die”, dramatically, is it as much the story of Madeleine Swann is the story of James Bond. But more than anything, it is a meta-analysis of James Bond.
In “No Time to Die”, we return to Vesper’s grave (a beat taken from the novel “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, to the silly people I’ve seen on the MI6 forums or Reddit argue that the literary character wouldn’t do this).Vesper represents all of the death associated with Bond, and Swann tasks him to go to her grave to “let go”. They cannot have a future together if he cannot let go of his past. His past of killing will deny them a future. For Swann harbors a secret...
When Del Toro refers to the ending of “No Time to Die” as a cosmic checkmate, this is what he means — the base cosmological forces of life and death are in Bond’s hands, and he gets to choose which will emerge victorious. All of these films have featured him journeying to regain the humanity he lost in “Casino Royale”, the soul he loses every time he pulls the trigger of his Walther PPK. But the choice of him isn’t to throw down the weapon, the choice is for him to make the same choice M made in “Skyfall” or Vesper made in “Casino Royale” — die for love.
Madeleine Swann, as someone born of this same dark world of death, is the only one equipped to handle the psychological weight of James Bond — because they have this same pain. The first pre-title sequence of “No Time to Die”, where we see Madeleine’s mother (or Mr. White’s lover) die like the archetypal “Bond Girl” dies, grounds this in such a harrowing way. Both have seen their lives dramatically altered by betrayal of those who they loved, and because of this is betrayal it reduced the possibility of them finding restoration.
Broken in the same way. Fitting together perfectly because of it. Isn’t that love? She is life coming from death, and he is death coming from life. Equal opposites that form a perfect circle.
The inescapable irony of human existence is our attachments power us to exist but they also give us so much distress. A melted heart (good) and a broken heart (bad) are both destructive. Or, as Léa Seydoux (Madeleine Swann) described it in the marketing for “No Time to Die” — love is the promise of suffering. The love potion is the poison. That which save, kills. That which kills, saves.
At the end of “No Time to Die”, Bond could walk away and live with the knowledge that he would one day kill Madeleine Swann. His touch would one day kill her. But instead, he chooses death. He becomes a mortal man through love. He gives up everything for her. He dies *into* the relationship. As Deborah Lutz writes in “The Dangerous Lover” (40):
“The poignancy of love in romance comes from the sense that, once the full presence of love arrives, the characters will be gone; they will die in their narrative; there will be nothing left to say. Love becomes a fantasy of dying, a liebestod”.
The plotting of “No Time to Die” involves nanobots that kills on contact. Basically, it is literalizing that metaphor from “Quantum of Solace” — a literal Midas touch of death. What’s the only way for Bond to get out of this situation when he is poisoned with something that can kill the only person he loves? Let go. The only way he can have a future is if he lets go.
This is the magic of “No Time to Die”, and by extension the character of Madeleine Swann — cinema’s most famous killer has been transformed through her love into a life creator. The bleeding gun barrel has turned into one of light. The iconic line of the character has turned into something else entirely. Not the calling card of a killer it was in “Casino Royale”, but one of a life-giver.
Because much as this being of life-energy could come from Mr. White, so to could something beautiful come from Bond. His eyes (eyes=soul) could pass on into something new. New life could grow from his old death. Out of love we find redemption and rebirth.
No wonder the last face we see in the CraigBond films isn’t his own, but his daughter’s. A smiling girl. With his blue eyes staring back at us...
“I got one thing right.”
This is why Madeleine Swann is the love of his life. Because she *is* his life. She is the proof he can change his nature and finish his journey to find his ocean-eyed soul once again. All the cosmologic power of the divine in his hand, and James Bond lets it all go to save her. Which, by extension, saves himself.
No longer a murder. Now a man. The only thing he ever wanted to be.
