Bond and Mr White

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  • jake24jake24 Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
    edited June 2016 Posts: 10,586
    It looks like Madeleine receiving some kind of diploma.

    "How does one train at Oxford, and the Sorbonne..."
  • I think the L'American hotel room is one of the best scenes in the uneven Spectre. It's shame it has to follow the dodgy plane chase.

    The film is awkwardly packaged. The plane chase is a nonsense action sequence, it's good fun but it makes no logical sense. Meanwhile, the Morrocan portion is melancholic and soulful. They're almost scenes from two different movies.....

    The hotel is a perfect combination of beautiful cinematography, fantastic scoring and great acting. Mendes should have stuck to this template.
  • Posts: 14,800
    My only issue with L'Américain room scene is: how did White get in every time? Or was it sealed when he retired?
  • Posts: 632
    I love the replay of White's suicide. Most movies seem to just use the same footage from the film and pass it off as security footage, but here it actually is from the angle of a security camera in the corner. The alternate perspective adds some freshness to it, but really the important part to me is how Madeline and Bond react to it and each other. I love her flinch at the horrible sound of the gunshot and whilst I'm on the fence with Newman's score, particularly the reuse of some cues without deviation, the ominous droning in the background heightened the eeriness of the scene for me.
  • jake24jake24 Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
    Posts: 10,586
    JET007 wrote: »
    I love the replay of White's suicide. Most movies seem to just use the same footage from the film and pass it off as security footage, but here it actually is from the angle of a security camera in the corner. The alternate perspective adds some freshness to it, but really the important part to me is how Madeline and Bond react to it and each other. I love her flinch at the horrible sound of the gunshot and whilst I'm on the fence with Newman's score, particularly the reuse of some cues without deviation, the ominous droning in the background heightened the eeriness of the scene for me.
    It's a fantastic, powerful scene. I hate it when films do that. It's one of my pet peeves.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Newman's music does help to build up the ominous feeling SP carries for the vast majority of it. He's an atmospheric composer more than anything, and I think a big reason why he fails to impress at times (amongst Bond fan circles) is because he's not interested in following the Barry formula and using big banging orchestras. He likes the score to play in the background of the background, not drawing attention to itself and simply helping the movie express its feeling efficiently, whereas Barry's stuff called you to attention and let you know it was arriving from 1,000 miles away.

    Different approaches, and I have to cut Newman some slack.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    It's Newman's "Action" music that fails miserably for me. Everything else is just passable.
  • Posts: 632
    It's the reuse of action music that I took some issue with. I actually came to love the score for Skyfall very much, and there are some great new cues in Spectre, but Barry and Arnold would reuse themes, but with a twist or change. Some of Spectre's seemed to be just cut and pasted as others on this board have said.

    Getting back slightly on topic, I rewatched CR for the millionth time last week and I love watching it with the perspective of how their paths will cross over the next films.
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    edited October 2016 Posts: 3,157
    JET007 wrote: »
    I love the replay of White's suicide. Most movies seem to just use the same footage from the film and pass it off as security footage, but here it actually is from the angle of a security camera in the corner. The alternate perspective adds some freshness to it, but really the important part to me is how Madeline and Bond react to it and each other. I love her flinch at the horrible sound of the gunshot and whilst I'm on the fence with Newman's score, particularly the reuse of some cues without deviation, the ominous droning in the background heightened the eeriness of the scene for me.
    JET007 wrote: »
    It's the reuse of action music that I took some issue with. I actually came to love the score for Skyfall very much, and there are some great new cues in Spectre, but Barry and Arnold would reuse themes, but with a twist or change. Some of Spectre's seemed to be just cut and pasted as others on this board have said.

    Getting back slightly on topic, I rewatched CR for the millionth time last week and I love watching it with the perspective of how their paths will cross over the next films.

    I completely agree with both of your posts.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    It's a shame we didn't get more of White, but in the time he had he cemented himself as a damn good character, one of the best we've had. Resourceful and willing to do what others wouldn't if pressed, but as we see in SP, he's got his limitations and places he won't go as well.

    The relationship he and Bond had was interesting. It started naturally from a place of anger on Bond's side for White's involvement with stringing Vesper along, which he pays for with a bullet to the leg. I love that the last time Bond sees White he's hurting and tied to an I.V., which is exactly how White appears when they reunite all those years later in SP. In some ways, nothing has changed, while in others, everything has.

    It's great to have a scene with Bond and White post-Vesper and Quantum that really pulls on their past history to really make the moment momentous feeling as it unfolds. It's great poetry to have Bond see in White a warning of what his life could turn into if he stays the course he's traveled. I don't think Bond would have ever believed at the end of CR that the man crawling helplessly on the ground at his feet would be the same man he'd learn one of his greatest lessons from years later.

    People that expected or wanted Bond to kill White in that scene don't get it, I'm afraid. It's a moment of humanity and understanding between two killers who get who each other are, and despite their troubled past with one another, each needs the other for something they see as valuable. Bond needs Blofeld on a platter, and White needs his daughter secure. The deal is made, and before the ink dries, White shows himself mercy.

    It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment later on in the film, but I love that Bond finds Vesper's interrogation tape in White's hidden room, and how Bond chooses to let it go, despite the obvious temptation to linger on its contents. The reason White's characterization in the film and this little detail of the tape creates ripples is because SP doesn't treat him like a sudden and noble hero, fully redeemed. For all the bravery he had to stand up to Blofeld and turn his back on SPECTRE for the vile acts they were perpetrating, inviting certain death, White still has Vesper's blood on his hands, and it'll never-can't ever-wash off in Bond's eyes. When he finds the tape, he's reminded of the evil that also existed inside White, even for all the good he tried to do at the end of his life-too late, one could rightly argue.

    I find White's use in SP to be quite masterful and deep, and I love how they treated him like a real man with complexities and didn't try to sell him to audiences as a good man who had earned penance. Mendes and co. gave White a gray morality, true to reality. We're not good or bad people generally; we have our good and bad wrestling inside us, and because of this approach, White is a very human character. I nearly get choked up seeing Madeleine look at the photos White kept of her as a kid when his room in the hotel is unearthed. Along with Bond we're uncovering the kind of person White was behind the veil of viciousness he needed to put on to guard himself and do his job with efficiency, as Bond himself does-which may be one of the biggest reasons why he's so understanding of White as he is when he finds him. When that armor is ripped from White and his private life is shown to us, we finally discover just as Bond does who else White was underneath it all: a loving father, a man of principle and a romantic in the finest sense, who tried to keep his family together when all signs told him it was impossible.

    It's one of the greatest tragedies in the Bond series that such a man with such good intentions and a truly caring heart was so eroded by his work and destroyed by a man who was like a brother to him, and that he ended up losing everything that had any meaning to him and all that he loved, including his wife and daughter. For all White was and all the bad he tried to make good on in his last days to repent on his sins, his death was cruel, lonesome and unredeemed and the last image we get of him is that of his head blown back in a look of raving agony, with ravens pecking out his eyes.

    Christ.
  • Posts: 1,680
    I think it would have been better to have Oberhauser play Vespers interrogation tape, it would have fit perfectly with Bond going furious about turning the tape off.
  • jake24jake24 Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
    edited October 2016 Posts: 10,586
    @Brady Cracking post. I agree with all of it.

    @Tuck91 I think Blofeld playing Vesper's interrogation to taunt Bond would be meaningless to Madeleine, which counteracts Blofeld's goal to torment the both of them. The two characters have a direct connection to Mr. White, so it made sense for Blofeld to play the footage from that particular moment rather than to play Vesper's tape, someone who Madeleine knows virtually nothing about.

    I've heard fans suggest that the "Algerian love knot" should have taken the tape's place, but how exactly would White get ahold of it, and for what purpose? Unless he was willing travel around Kazan, Russia with his metal detector through the snow.
  • edited October 2016 Posts: 632
    @jake24, I assume he had multiples to give to each successive girlfriend. In fact, I think Bond says as much as the end. Perhaps Spectre is the manufacturer!
  • jake24jake24 Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
    Posts: 10,586
    That's a good point.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Yusef was the only one with the necklaces. We find out at the end of QoS that while Yusef is getting women of high government positions to fall for him, he will at some point purchase an algerian love knot for them as a romantic gesture to further solidify their connection until the time is ripe to make them think he's being tortured, at which point their love for him makes the women do anything to help him.

    Yusef has given Corrine a love knot when we find him in Kazan at the end of QoS, and Bond outs him by saying he gave the same necklace to a friend of his.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    edited October 2016 Posts: 5,921
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    I think it would have been better to have Oberhauser play Vespers interrogation tape, it would have fit perfectly with Bond going furious about turning the tape off.

    I respectfully disagree. We had an entire film+ about Bond coming to terms with Vesper's death, so to get furious in SP would have felt like an unnecessary retread. Craig lingers on the Vesper tape just long enough before casting it aside, the memory of a love lost.
  • Posts: 632
    echo wrote: »
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    I think it would have been better to have Oberhauser play Vespers interrogation tape, it would have fit perfectly with Bond going furious about turning the tape off.

    I respectfully disagree. We had an entire film+ about Bond coming to terms with Vesper's death, so to get furious in SP would have felt like an unnecessary retread. Craig lingers on the Vesper tape just long enough before casting it aside, the memory of a love lost.

    "Anyway, I don't stop to think about it."
  • Posts: 12,243
    I'm really going to miss Mr. White. He's most certainly one of my favorite villains in the entire series. That being said, I'm very grateful his arc was tied up in SP, rather than never getting to know what happened to him, like I was afraid of. Wonderful character.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    FoxRox wrote: »
    I'm really going to miss Mr. White. He's most certainly one of my favorite villains in the entire series. That being said, I'm very grateful his arc was tied up in SP, rather than never getting to know what happened to him, like I was afraid of. Wonderful character.

    @FoxRox, absolutely. Mr. White's return was the biggest item on my Bond 24 wishlist, and when I heard his voice in the reveal trailer, I screamed so loud my housemates came to ask what was the matter. I couldn't have asked for much more.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    That was also my biggest B24 wish as well. I was desperate to see White and Quantum mentioned again. I got the closure I've been wanting with them.
  • Posts: 12,243
    It was pretty awesome. Honestly my favorite aspect of SP; I like the movie just fine, but that was the main thing I needed as well! Pretty great. I kept on asking post QoS "What about Quantum??? Mr. White???" and I was rewarded 7 years later :P
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    edited November 2016 Posts: 16,328
    Had neither of them been mentioned, I don't think I would have liked the film as much as I did.
  • Posts: 12,243
    I wouldn't have either. It really gave it the boost it needed though IMO. SF is very comparable to GF how they take a break from the recurring villain Spectre. In retrospect, despite Silva's ties to Spectre, I find SF very much to be like the standalone entry in the Craig series. Close enough anyway.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    The ties to SP made me enjoy SF even more.
  • edited November 2016 Posts: 12,243
    Murdock wrote: »
    The ties to SP made me enjoy SF even more.

    Eh I was so-so about it. Silva seemed like a guy with his own, individual plans to me though, but it could be as simple as Spectre helped bankroll him, and since he and them had the common interest of getting after M, he joined with them. I like to think Quantum and Silva are still quite separate in a way. Spectre being behind Quantum clicked with me 100% anyway.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    I agree that Silva had his own agenda but ultimately I think SP gave him some incentive.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    And explained his resources.
  • Posts: 12,243
    That's true at least. I don't mind it that much; Silva just doesn't seem like much of a team player. But it was a common goal after all. I'm really going to miss the Craig era; I've enjoyed all 4 of his outings a lot...
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    Unlike others who say otherwise, I firmly believe there will be one more Craig era film. :)
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Craig's tenure is the only one where I adore all the films in it (besides Dalton who never got a chance to have a proper tenure). I can't even say that for Connery.
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