There are two particularly interesting moments in Spectre. They’re after the spoiler cut below.
The first is a startling moment of altruism. James Bond not being known for his overt acts of not-selfishness, when he first starts asking and then screaming for Blofeld to turn off the recording of Bond and Swan’s father earlier, I thought it was for his own selfish reasons. Maybe there had been some crucial piece of information in there that would make Madeline Swan not want to sleep with him anymore. Maybe he worried they had edited the tape to make him say or do something he didn’t. I assumed he was looking out for number one here.
But I was wrong. He loses his shit and takes a golf club to the knee solely in an effort to prevent Swan from seeing her father shoot himself. That’s it. And when he gets knocked down he starts asking her to please, please, look away. Look at him instead. Meet his eye. Don’t see it.
And she does.
I was so moved by that scene. That he’s genuinely just trying to keep her from seeing something horrific. At the same time I thought “why in hell didn’t I put this in a fic before now.” Because that look. As it happens. He gains nothing from it; it is only an act of kindness. Just wow.
So that was one scene. The other was shortly afterward, where Bond is in the chair which we correctly assume is for torture. But not, we are informed after the first drilling (perfect lighting here by the way–there is doctor’s office bright and there is I’m-on-the-chair-under-the-surgical-lamp bright, and this is the latter and it works very well), just for physical pain. We are also informed that, if the computerized drill finds the right spot, he will lose his memory too.
Bam. And suddenly all my body horror is gone and I’m paying close attention. Because as no doubt has been made too plain on this blog, Alzheimer’s runs in my family, my mother has it early, and memory has always held a high exchange rate for us. And okay, you’ve seen more and more acknowledgment of that over the years, in movies and shows, as more baby boomers grow up and into memory loss. But in a Bond movie? Memory carrying that kind of weight?
On the one hand, sure, this could merely be a function of their romantic relationship (which was more-or-less okay I guess, for a Bond relationship), and wanting “those blue eyes to recognize you” may just be a sappy way of pointing out their attachment. But I’d like to think it’s more than that. That a Bond movie, of all things, is recognizing memory loss as another, different kind of death. And it fascinates me that we’ve reached that level of cultural awareness.
It’s about time.
metaphlame 