A New Age Bond

All the critics said Casino Royale was a new type of James Bond film. They may have been more right than they knew. Although the film has many of the trappings of earlier entries in the series, it also carries an unusual subtext with distinctly unBondlike overtones.

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Anyway, here's what I saw. (Warning: a couple of specific though relatively minor plot spoilers follow.)

Bond is introduced as a raw agent earning his license to kill. Much is made of his inexperience and his lack of refinement. He is, as M indelicately puts it, "a blunt instrument." Both M and Bond girl Vesper Lynd tell Bond explicitly that he must lose his ego - advice he is too cocksure to accept. His impetuousness and arrogance lead him to commit several costly blunders.

And then things change.

Bond dies.

Well, he dies for a few seconds, anyway - his heart flat-lining until a defibrillator revives him.

When this happened, I had a cheeky thought: I wonder if Bond had a near-death experience. This idle fancy took on more significance when, in a later scene (unrelated to the defibrillator episode), Bond regains consciousness to see hazy, ghostly, possibly angelic figures against a field of bright white light.

We now have been exposed to two of the iconic images of the NDE - the resuscitated patient and the appearance of spirits in bright light. And what is the most commonly reported aftereffect of an NDE, other than a diminished fear of death? It's a change in personality, an evolution  toward a more mature, less ego-driven mindset. Which is exactly what we see in Bond.

After his reawakening he is mellow, serene, even loving. His "armor" has been stripped away, he says. He even quits his job. He wants to get out of the business of killing in order to preserve ''what little soul I have left." This may be the only time in any Bond film when the word soul is mentioned, and certainly the only time when it's meant to be taken seriously.

Needless to say, Bond does not remain permanently in his newly enlightened state. Circumstances intervene. The armor is strapped back on - never, we suspect, to be removed again. And yet briefly we did see the real man - the real soul - beneath the facade of the ego and the armor of the killing machine.

As I said, I may be reading too much into a slick, globe-trotting action film. But I suspect that someone - writer, producer, director? - slyly slipped a New Age subtext into this movie, investing it with a layer of meaning unexpected in a film of this type.

If so, it was a high-stakes but ultimately winning gamble - exactly what one would hope for in Casino Royale.

Comments

[Ellis]

Hi Michael,
Perhaps, as I haven't seen the film, I'm not qualified to comment on it but I do think that your perception is very likely to be correct. Letter'M' has always been a cipher for the Goddess (Mary for instance - a triple Goddess). Vesper Lynd repeats the Goddess theme. Vesper and Lynd give 'evening serpent' - the Magdalene (Venus as the Evening Star). The Goddess represents intuition and imagination; the means by which we communicate with the Great Unconscious.
Regarding this it is highly synchronistic that the actress chosen to play this character is called Eva Green, which also connects to Venus, the evening star. Green is the esoteric colour for Venus.

Very much enjoy your blog, by the way - especially the metaphysical topics.

[Michael Prescott]

>Letter'M' has always been a cipher for the Goddess

In the film, Bond reveals that he has learned M's name, but before he can utter it, M tells him sharply that if he says it aloud, she will have him killed.

[Ellis]

Sounds like she might be Kali or the Cailleach then - the dark goddess.

For Bond, read Gwydion ???!

[Ellis]

Which are the same goddess as the Morrigan.

"Which are the same goddess as the Morrigan"
Ellis, who's comment were you replying to ?

Gwydion guessed the name (why he 'assumes' power) and then changed it - the lapwing and the roebuck....7 for 8....R. Graves [The White Goddess]

Bond dies - NDE/Zero Point Energy - then comes back to life to play the same game of matter.
Strip away, completely, the EGO to get out of the game !!