WORLDVIEW

Milos Stehlik's Commentaries

Bond

(Transcript)
Originally broadcast November 17, 2006

	Milos Stehlik

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I saw two very dissimilar films a day apart this week: Iraq in Fragments and the new James Bond film, Casino Royale. One film cost tens of millions and was shot in exotic locations like Venice, Lake Como, the Bahamas and Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, substituting for Montenegro. The other was shot in the disquieting chaos of modern-day Iraq.

Of course you will hear much more about Casino Royale than Iraq in Fragments. Daniel Craig is a talented actor and a wonderful new Bond. This is also the most psychological of recent Bond films, given a slight existential twist, a tinge of fatalism and a much heavier dose of romance. James Bond falls in love.

In location, Iraq in Fragments is a universe apart from the world of Bond. The three stories which make up the “fragments” of the film are set in Bagdad, Najaf, and in the northern Kurdish region, near Erbil. In the Bagdad episode, an 11-year-old boy works in his uncle’s auto mechanic shop and is not much good in school. He has not learned to read or write after repeating 1st grade four times. The last episode focuses on the friendship of two boys from neighboring farms and their fathers. But it is the central, longest sequence set in Najaf, the capital of Shia Islam in Iraq, stronghold of Moqtada Sadr, that is the most arresting. James Longley, who directed Iraq in Fragments was given unprecedented access, and it’s as close to the center of the believers, as we can get. Longley films political strategy meetings, marches, rallies, a raid on the local market by the Mehdi army to confiscate alcohol, religious ceremonies and lots of speeches to the faithful.

The whole look of Iraq in Fragments is impressionistic, visual and visceral. Because we are the outside observers of this very foreign, almost exotic and intense land, the feeling is one of disorientation. We have to figure out our bearings in the oddly beautiful but dangerous landscape. There are touching moments, as when a man recollects the beauty of the Tigris River that runs through Bagdad.

The landscape of Casino Royale, by contrast, is familiar. These are the perceived playgrounds of the rich and the chic. “M”, Bond’s chief, is once again coolly played by Judi Dench. The villain, a bleeding-eye terrorist financier, is nicknamed Le Chiffre and portrayed by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.

But one element is common to both films: our insecurity. In the Bond film, the terrorist network that threatens us is vast, sophisticated, global. Yet it can be thwarted by one man of unbelievable guts, energy, street smarts, technology, charm and sex appeal—James Bond. Except for the slower-paced and sometimes dramatically confusing center section of the film, when Bond plays the high stakes card game against his nemesis, it is a film on speed, in which the body count escalates even faster than it does in Iraq.

When we catch a glimpse of the fighters against terror in Iraq—the American soldiers—they are in their humvees or tanks, or defensively clutching their machine guns. Iraq for them is like a space mission: they seem like aliens from another planet. The texture, the craziness, fanaticism and madness of Iraq doesn’t touch them, eludes them. All they can really do is kill.

The brilliantly choreographed, staged and executed fighting action in Casino Royale is an adrenaline rush. It is in sharp contrast to the fanatical rants and the opacity of day-to-day life in Iraq. This life, as we see it, is punctuated only by smoke rising in the distance from what we presume a fire or a bombing.

The terrorist plot which is at the root of James Bond’s mission in Casino Royale is deliberately obscure. We start out in Africa where a terrorist leader entrusts Le Chiffre with several hundred millions to invest in the stock market. Bond’s love interest, Vesper Lynd, turns out to be also implicated with terrorists. But none of this is very clear or well-plotted. It is as if who the terrorists are doesn’t matter, as long as we know they are out there and men like James Bond go out and get them for us. This is fiction, after all.

Undoubtedly audiences will feel safer after watching Casino Royale. After all, James Bond wins. The only problem is the almost certain guarantee that the terrorists will return, if for no other reason that there has to be a sequel.

This is Milos Stehlik for Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview.

“Worldview” film contributor Milos Stehlik is the director of Facets Multimedia.

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