WE HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD-NO TIME TO DIE

In February 2020, Akhila and I saw "Little Women" in Jaipur. Then the pandemic struck, cinema halls were forced to close down and an about-to-be released "No Time To Die", the latest James Bond movie, had to wait as, quite rightly, such a movie had to be seen in a theatre and not on the telly screen. After 18 months, picture halls have opened up again and James Bond is back. So we plucked up courage and went to see it back in Jaipur as that is where we are now. In a hall of 400 capacity, I counted 14 viewers including us. That would meet the approval of Mr. Modi as far as sosal distancing or 'do gaj ki doori' is concerned.

In an extraordinary coincidence as the movie well-preceded the outbreak of Covid, the story revolves around the theft of an engineered DNA through which the villain wants to develop a weapon of mass destruction. Talk of the theory propounded by many that Covid broke out of a Chinese lab!

The movie is typical modern James Bond stuff: technical brilliance, exquisite cinematography with a lot of scenic Italy and icescape, breathtaking car sequences, innovative gadgets developed by Q and almost non-stop action portraying the apparent invincibility of Bond though with a little more than usual emotional scenes of love, trust and family on the part of the normally stoic 007. Lasting over two and three quarter hours, it sets a record for being the longest Bond movie. Largely, critics have praised it as a fitting finale to Daniel Craig as he has declared that this is the last Bond movie he is doing. Remains to be seen if like Sean Connery he may be reminded in future "Never Say Never Again"!

Frankly, we did not think that highly of the movie. Maybe we are a bit old for this kind of stuff and prefer something simple and romantic like "The Last Letter From Your Lover", for me the best movie I have seen in recent times. But I did love Bond movies of old made even more enjoyable with the music of my top favourite movie music composer, John Barry. Again, I guess age comes into play for I know that my daughter and grandchildren love Billie Eilish's rendition of the theme song "No Time To Die". But for the life of me, I cannot imagine it merits comparison with Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever", Tom Jones' "Thunderball", Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice" or "Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World".

Even the makers of the latest movie have harked back to the past by reviving the last named song. Not only is the song played in full during the final credits but is referred to a number of times in the dialogues. For instance, Bond's love interest Madeleine asks him in a car drive to go faster eliciting his reply, "We have all the time in the world". In another scene, Madeleine says, "We need more time" only to be told by James, "You have all the time in the world".

That is the big irony of it: in the end, neither James Bond nor Daniel Craig playing his last Bond film has time on his side! This irony has its origin in the movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" in 1969 with Louis Armstrong singing the song while a tearful Bond cradles his dying young wife in his arms. "We have all the time in the world" are also Bond's final words both in the book and the movie.

But the biggest irony was in real life. John Barry homed in on Louis Armstrong because he felt that only the latter could deliver the lines with the required irony. By that time, Satchmo was very ill and the song had to be recorded in a single session. Satchmo was too weak to pick up his trumpet which was then played by a substitute in an enchanting refrain. Satchmo was running out of time and this was his last recording session as he died shortly after. John Barry fondly recalled the pleasure of working with Satchmo and himself considered it the finest piece of music he wrote for a Bond movie.  

So tell me, do we really have all the time in the world or is it just a self-delusion?

P.S. A dear friend told me after one of my blogs, "Ravi, I now know what you are; you are a romantic." Careful not to hurt my feelings, a qualifying adjective like 'pseudo' was conveniently omitted!