The Final Chapter

 

"One of the jobs of a father is to get out of the way." 

Christopher Hitchens (b. 1949, d. 2011) 

I might not have associated the name - or the work of - old Hitch, now about to see his first ten-year anniversary (I'm sorry to say, for many reasons) with his greater and perhaps more outrageous contemporary James Bond - but apart from the subjects of booze, empire, masculinity and the unrestrained self struggling against a wanton world steadfastly revolving around me. His own father's sentiment, that sinking a Nazi convoy was the best thing - if not the only thing - he'd felt certainly and positively good about, echoes as well with a forceful and somber tone. 

Both these anecdotes, and not only because of the upcoming decennial, came back to me in the much-delayed (or perhaps too early to mark yet another decennial, even as we hold our hands and quake that the box office will not be too governing, or even appointing in itself) premiere of the long-awaited "next" Bond film, the longest-parted from its preceding one and in this case without a change of actor, a tightly connected to its fault prequel, the end of the Cold War (and, for a time, history) or the echoing debate, apart from that heralding our time, if our audiences need or should identify with the gritty, post-Second World War British agent, if somewhat boosted by the "merely" untimely and global release of a viral agent both echoing the themes and parodying them, 

The plot, again heralding the times, displays an intense meditation on the personal and greater-than-geopolitical: A hero grounded to pulps and groans and only the superhuman instincts and talents best put to the test by daring adventures, his once promise of family life and oblivion thrown against and fed into a chemise of the grand work - a Heracles for our time, if you will - but never, and here I grant my first praise, with the opening sequence, even as that downbeat ending of the misnamed Quantum of Solace suggested, overcome. His moment now salvaged and again afforded, as presented in the previous Spectre (without a cat-wielding Mr. Gardell, even if the cat, alongside many tokens and attitudes) a future with a potential mate for life juxtaposed to an enemy,