Casino Royale: not a review, mostly just kvetching
Last night, Steve and I saw the new James Bond flick.
By the way, I have an emotional resistance to watching movies. Here's why.
I don't know why, but watching movies usually makes me depressed. It's been like that since my teenage years. After watching a movie I would feel down for the rest of the day. It didn't have anything to do with my appreciation of the film -- I could find it very good, culturally enriching, definitely worth seeing, and still feel down. It didn't matter if it was happy or sad, if it was comedy, action, or drama; a thoughtful, complex, symbolism-heavy art movie, or the dumbest, cliche-ridden Hollywood blockbuster. For many years I could not acknowledge this even to myself, because it didn't seem normal. Movies are supposed to be entertaining! And a big part of friendships, relationships, and group camaraderie revolves around staring at flickering images together. To give it up would be so... unwholesome. But at some point I acknowledged, to myself if not to others, that watching movies makes me feel mentally and emotionally drained, and there is little reason for me to continue.
I still don't know why that is. All I can say is that serious movies make me feel (regardless of their content or their mood) that my life is empty and meaningless, while most escapist movies fill me up with righteous indignation: you expect me to believe this? (Books don't make me feel that way, though. So I don't know, it may have to do with the sensory overload that movies inflict on my psyche. The images in them, unlike in books, may be too persuasive, too vivid for me to put a mental distance between me and them. (And there is a nice story that indirectly touches this topic, "Liking What You See" by Ted Chiang.) Of course, most people learn this skill around the age of 10-12, but... oh well. :-))
But for some reason James Bond movies don't affect me the same way. I have been able to enjoy them without any bad or empty feeling afterwards. Probably because the escapist aspect in them is so over-the-top -- there is no way you would ever believe they are based in reality -- I don't feel they are insulting my intelligence, and am able to see them for the fairy tales that they are. I also felt the same way about Harry Potter. And about the last 3 Star Wars movies. Basically, for the last few years I have grown to been able to enjoy, while not serious movies, then at least the movies that are very far removed from reality.
Sure enough, as many people have already said, "Casino Royale" parts ways with the Bond canon in places, in that it shows James Bond vulnerable and making mistakes. And why is there only one Bond babe, instead of the usual two, a good girl and a bad girl? (Well, the ending answers this question. But still, one less piece of eye candy! :-)) But as much as I heard people praising this installment for its supposed realism, I can't say I saw much of that. Instead of being outrageously, ridiculously over the top, Bond's adventures this time are merely over the top. :-) They still strain credulity way past the breaking point. Yet, disappointingly, the bad guys were not as evil as they were in the previous movies; they did not attempt world domination, limiting themselves to financing terrorist groups and manipulating the stock market.
I also miss the science-fictional gadgets.
And, as long as I am allowed to kwetch, two things that made this movie doubly difficult to understand was (1) some plot twists revolved around a card game, and (2) actors spoke with a British accent. Of course, they always do. But damn, British accent is hard to understand. I can handle it when it is enunciated with a BBC World Service-like crispness, but not when muttered out of the corner of a mouth transfixed by a permanently glued-on wry smirk. (Makes it hard to lip-read.) As for cards, I never found ard games interesting, and I didn't even know the name of the game they were playing; not that it would help me much. So, all those "ta-da" moments when the players revealed their cards and the audience was supposed to gasp in horror or excitement, I would go "whatever". How am I supposed to know if the revealed combination is good or bad? How would I guess that two cards that add up to a lower numerical value beat the two cards revealed by the previous player, that were of a higher total value? But, unable to follow the exchange of rapid-fire Brittish-accented one-liners, I had nothing better to do than to try and entertain myself by puzzling over the rules of the card game. For a while it seemed as if the cards revealed by each player were added to a common pool, and the value of the pool was determined (in a rather arbitrary way) by the configuration of the cards in it, and the player whose cards maximized the value of the configuration won. Or not. Whatever, dude. Get on with the car chases and explosions already. :-)
By the way, I have an emotional resistance to watching movies. Here's why.
I don't know why, but watching movies usually makes me depressed. It's been like that since my teenage years. After watching a movie I would feel down for the rest of the day. It didn't have anything to do with my appreciation of the film -- I could find it very good, culturally enriching, definitely worth seeing, and still feel down. It didn't matter if it was happy or sad, if it was comedy, action, or drama; a thoughtful, complex, symbolism-heavy art movie, or the dumbest, cliche-ridden Hollywood blockbuster. For many years I could not acknowledge this even to myself, because it didn't seem normal. Movies are supposed to be entertaining! And a big part of friendships, relationships, and group camaraderie revolves around staring at flickering images together. To give it up would be so... unwholesome. But at some point I acknowledged, to myself if not to others, that watching movies makes me feel mentally and emotionally drained, and there is little reason for me to continue.
I still don't know why that is. All I can say is that serious movies make me feel (regardless of their content or their mood) that my life is empty and meaningless, while most escapist movies fill me up with righteous indignation: you expect me to believe this? (Books don't make me feel that way, though. So I don't know, it may have to do with the sensory overload that movies inflict on my psyche. The images in them, unlike in books, may be too persuasive, too vivid for me to put a mental distance between me and them. (And there is a nice story that indirectly touches this topic, "Liking What You See" by Ted Chiang.) Of course, most people learn this skill around the age of 10-12, but... oh well. :-))
But for some reason James Bond movies don't affect me the same way. I have been able to enjoy them without any bad or empty feeling afterwards. Probably because the escapist aspect in them is so over-the-top -- there is no way you would ever believe they are based in reality -- I don't feel they are insulting my intelligence, and am able to see them for the fairy tales that they are. I also felt the same way about Harry Potter. And about the last 3 Star Wars movies. Basically, for the last few years I have grown to been able to enjoy, while not serious movies, then at least the movies that are very far removed from reality.
Sure enough, as many people have already said, "Casino Royale" parts ways with the Bond canon in places, in that it shows James Bond vulnerable and making mistakes. And why is there only one Bond babe, instead of the usual two, a good girl and a bad girl? (Well, the ending answers this question. But still, one less piece of eye candy! :-)) But as much as I heard people praising this installment for its supposed realism, I can't say I saw much of that. Instead of being outrageously, ridiculously over the top, Bond's adventures this time are merely over the top. :-) They still strain credulity way past the breaking point. Yet, disappointingly, the bad guys were not as evil as they were in the previous movies; they did not attempt world domination, limiting themselves to financing terrorist groups and manipulating the stock market.
I also miss the science-fictional gadgets.
And, as long as I am allowed to kwetch, two things that made this movie doubly difficult to understand was (1) some plot twists revolved around a card game, and (2) actors spoke with a British accent. Of course, they always do. But damn, British accent is hard to understand. I can handle it when it is enunciated with a BBC World Service-like crispness, but not when muttered out of the corner of a mouth transfixed by a permanently glued-on wry smirk. (Makes it hard to lip-read.) As for cards, I never found ard games interesting, and I didn't even know the name of the game they were playing; not that it would help me much. So, all those "ta-da" moments when the players revealed their cards and the audience was supposed to gasp in horror or excitement, I would go "whatever". How am I supposed to know if the revealed combination is good or bad? How would I guess that two cards that add up to a lower numerical value beat the two cards revealed by the previous player, that were of a higher total value? But, unable to follow the exchange of rapid-fire Brittish-accented one-liners, I had nothing better to do than to try and entertain myself by puzzling over the rules of the card game. For a while it seemed as if the cards revealed by each player were added to a common pool, and the value of the pool was determined (in a rather arbitrary way) by the configuration of the cards in it, and the player whose cards maximized the value of the configuration won. Or not. Whatever, dude. Get on with the car chases and explosions already. :-)