There is a kind of epilogue to the Bond move “Quantum of Solace” where Bond confronts some guy in a room after telling some woman from Canadian Secret Service to leave. Presumably its about Vesper, showing off a necklace she had. We don’t see what happens but he walks out of the building and M is waiting and there is an exchange:
Bond then drops the necklace in the snow. THE END.
So what the hell is going on here?
Bond has tracked the guy that turned Vesper into a double by tracking the necklace she was given. Presumably Bond tracked the guy with M’s help. He then walked in on him about to turn another girl who works for Canadian Intelligence. He told the girl to leave, but decided not to kill the guy. M was surprised by this.
M needs Bond back at full speed now, not still clinging to hurt at Vesper’s betrayal. Bond says he was always at full speed; he never left.
Bond drops the necklace in the snow - the last unfinished business tied to Vesper.
I think in Casino Royale it was unclear whether or not Vesper was a spy who was just playing Bond. The end of QoS confirmed she was.
I think. I was fuzzy on Casino Royale’s ending even when I watched it, and I haven’t seen either in months. I could be so far from the actual answer that I can’t see it from here.
So what was M right about concerning Vesper?
Bond suddenly realized that other people have interesting lives, not just MI6 agents.
(I am ignoring the movie that stole the story’s title and zero of the content.)
There was an earlier scene where Quantum (or Spectre or whomever) killed someone believed to be Vesper’s boyfriend (washed up in Ibiza? Can’t remember), and left his wallet on the body, but M was skeptical of that ID so ran a DNA check on a lock of his hair Vesper had kept in her apartment, and it wasn’t him. M then said something like “I need to know if I can trust you not to go after the killer of the girl you loved” or somesuch. Bond’s saying she was right - he did go after her / love her, but in his own way he never left MI6 and that was that.
OK, no, I don’t think any of you got it completely. It’s directly taken from the ending of Casino Royale. Basically, the sequence goes like this:
Vesper falls in love with a guy. He gives her a necklace.
Guy vanishes and Vesper is blackmailed. Behind the scenes, we know that Quantum was planning to manipulate Vesper for its own reasons. They presumably changed her mission to “get the money from Bond and wreck Le Chiffre’s day up something fierce” for their own reasons. They likely didn’t enjoy him mesing with their reputation, even indreictly.
Vesper falls in love with Bond, and may have come to believe that her former lover was surely dead by now. In order to protect Bond, she continues working for Mr. White and steals the millions.
Bond tracks down Vesper. She dies, and he’s reverting to being a cold-blooded killer, though motivated by unstoppable vengeful rage. M suggests that she was expecting to be killed and was protecting Bond.
Though it could have been explained better, at the end of Quantum of Solace, Bond tracks down Vesper’s former lover. This guy betrayed her, led her to her death, and let her think he was kindapped and tortured. He doesn’t kill him, though.
Bond admits that M was right. Bond’s been chewing himself because he just couldn’t be sure if it was all Quantum or if Vesper really did love him. He was angry at her for deceiving him (he was ready to kill her as a traitor at one point) and maybe for not trusting him. He’s come to accept that she did love him and that was seperate from Quantum controlling her.
He drops the necklace. It’s not really hers - it was the lie from the seducer jerk. So he’s symbolically laying down the burden they placed on him.
He also says that he’s doing this because of his duty, which he feels very strongly despite being something of a wild card. This is somewhat dishonest, because he was trying to leave MI6 at the end of Casino Royale, but immediately went back the second trouble started. he wanted to assure her he wasn’t going on a rampage.
Vesper was turned because she was being blackmailed with her boyfriend’s life. Ie if she didn’t help them he was dead.
In reality the boyfriend was one of their guys who insinuated himself into her life, made her fall in love and then he was sent elsewhere while they worked on the lady to get her to do what he wanted. That’s why the CSIS girl had the same necklace as Vesper, she was being targeted like Vesper.
Adds a layer of poignancy, did Vesper ever care for James or was she pretending so she could save her boyfriend? And what does that do to James… is she the reason he womanizes, not just cover? (Broken heart?) Is he doing it (going after these people) for M16 and country or as revenge for Vesper? He claims not revenge (in that conversation with M) but are we really sure? It can be both. And didn’t M warn him about Vesper somehow? I should go watch these again, it’s been awhile.
Well that’s what I was trying to say, but I guess I didn’t say it very well.
Thanks guys, that helps.
BTW, something that annoys me about that film is Strawberry Fields (played by the gorgeous Gemma Arterton), she ends up dead, of course and M says she works a desk at MI6 and her job was filing reports. Why on earth would MI6 send someone like that to try and bring Bond in? Or is M lying and trying to prove a point to Bond?
WELL played!
I just finished listening to the audiobook of QoS, so appreciated your deconstructed reply.
And I cannot imagine a more boring movie than a “faithful adaptation” of Quantum.
In the movie , no idea.
In real life she may have been the only one available at that particular moment, she may have been a no name that other agencies would not recognize, she may have been an up and comer and this was her time to step up to the plate…
Declan
The answer to all questions is “yes”. Despite his protestations, it is clear that Bond’s initial motivation is revenge for the death of Vesper. (He makes this much clear in his discussion with Camille after they’ve parachuted into the karst fissure.) Vesper’s initial motivation for her betrayal was her love for Yusef Kabira (the “French Algerian boyfriend” whose body “washed up on shore on a beach in Morocco,” later determined to be a fraud). Vesper ended up falling in love–or at least demonstrating loyalty to Bond, who pledged his love to her–and at least left him with the information to track down Mr. White, who was obviously a single-digit player in the Quantum organization. Vesper may be the only woman Bond has ever loved–his response to her in the dining car in Casino Royale, and his later comment that she doesn’t have a “tell” makes that clear–but she utterly betrayed him, playing him like a sucker. Psychologically, the vengeance aspect probably has less to do with avenging Vesper, and more with asserting that Bond isn’t to be trifled with.
Remember, they’re in Bolivia, a low ranking interest in British intelligence (as Leiter’s superior mentions, it has no oil or any other resources worth taking…except, of course, for water, which Mr. Greene rightly points out is the world’s most valuable commodity) so it’s only expected that they have no experienced field officers. As a result, they end up with some low-level clerk serving duty, enter Ms. Fields. The reality, of course, is that Fields follows the tradition of fictional MI-6 station staffers of being beautiful, easily wooed by Bond, and ultimately disposable.
It is best not to take these films–and especially Quantum of Solace, which came off as a bit half-baked, although tinged with greatness, especially in the knife fight in the hotel room in Haiti, and the fight scene at the Tosca production in Austria–too seriously. It clearly isn’t falling in the tradition of grubbily realistic espionage in the tradition of Graham Greene or John le Carre, but rather a fantastical version of reality populated by conspiratorial organizations that overthrow governments for industry with a degree of efficacy only dreamed about by the Dulles-era CIA. In the end, Bond is about beautiful girls, gorgeous settings, crisp production design, and phenomenal action set pieces. Casino Royale did all of this, but at the same time with a subtext of just how fucked up Bond really is (there is a hint of this in a few of the Fleming novels as well). Quantum of Solace failed to carry this on except in passing.
The film begs for a third installment which explores the depths to which Quantum has penetrated world governments (presumably influencing both American and Chinese interests) and how Bond will vigorously pursued dismantling their organization regardless of the degree of personal sacrifice. Unfortunately, Sony decided that two of the highest grossing films produced by MGM in this decade can’t justify a profitable sequel, and we’re unlikely to see a third film starring Craig as Bond, and like Dalton, he’ll end up as a two film footnote in the franchise, despite revitalizing it to a degree unfathomable during the unmemorable Brosnan era.
Stranger
That’s not the reason at all. MGM had a third Bond movie with Craig in the works, but production stopped at the script stage because MGM is effectively bankrupt.
But there are rumors that MGM has gotten a reprieve from some of their creditors and are going to start filming next year:
http://movies.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=154687539