Skyfall: Scene by Scene

In the next scene, Mendes cuts to a series of establishing of the Shanghai skyline. Towards the beginning of the Shanghai sequence, Mendes uses editing to structure time. There is a full shot of Bond sitting at a hotel bar, the camera slowly dollies in as his telephone rings. Mendes cuts to a close up of the phone, then to a mid shot of Bond who picks it up. An extreme close up of the screen reveals the words “EWA FLIGHT 226 9PM”. Mendes cuts to a shot of Bond, thinking, and the diegetic sound of a plane landing can be heard before he cuts to a shot of the airport.

Throughout the film director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins use lighting as a motif for the shadowy world of espionage. When talking about Raoul Silva (javier Bardem), M says: “He comes from the same place as Bond, a place you say doesn’t exist: the shadows.” Midway through the film, during her testimony to an inquiry about the stolen data, M also mentions the shadowy world where covert operatives exist: “I’m frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They’re not nations, they’re individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No! Our world is not more transparent now, it’s more opaque! It’s in the shadows. That’s where we must do battle.” Throughout the film, this shadowy world is reflected through Medes and Deakin’s use of lighting. During the fight between Bond and Patrice, they are silhouetted by large digital displays.

When Bond arrives in Macau, there is a brief dialogue scene with Eve. During this conversation, the character of Gareth Mallory is developed further.

Eve: My official directive was to help…”in any way I can.”
Bond: Like spying for Mallory.
Eve: You know, Mallory’s not as bad as you think.
Bond: He’s a bureaucrat.
Eve: You should do your homework. Gareth Mallory was a Lieutenant Colonel…
Bond: Lieutenant Colonel in Northern Ireland, Hereford Regiment. Spent three months at the hands of the IRA.
Eve: So there’s more to him than meets the eye.

In this scene, director Mendes uses a “gentle tracking” from side to side to create sexual tension between Bond and Eve, nothing that there’s “something sexy about the way the camera is moving”. Acting contributes to this sense as well, Mendes noting that there’s a “kind of lovemaking in the shaving itself and the movement of it and how close they are and how still they are.”

When Eve and Bond arrive at the Macau casino, Mendes uses dialogue to help establish the film’s antagonist Raoul Silva. Before he appears onscreen, his cold-bloodedness is hinted at through a conversation with Séverine (Bérénice Marlohe). “You belonged to one of the houses,” Bond says. “What were you? Twelve? Thirteen? I’m guessing he was your way out. Perhaps you thought you were in love. But that was a long time ago.” Bond suggests that he knows everything about fear. “Not like this,” Séverine responds. “Not like him.”

When she delivers this line, Bérénice Marlohe gives a nervous smile before the corner of her lips turn down slightly to convey a sense of unease. In his commentary for the film, director Sam Mendes talks about the “wonderful, neurotic edge” and “trembling tension” of her performance. During their conversation, music is also used to develop the character of Séverine. In an interview with Empire magazine, composer Thomas Newman spoke about the leitmotif for this character. The music features alternating minor and major chords as well as a harp which creates a “sense of darkness and exquisiteness and sexiness all at the same time.”

After Bond seduces Séverine, Mendes cuts back to London where Mallory and M learn that one of their operatives has been captured.

Newsreader: Captain Husein, an MI6 operative embedded in the Middle East, was one of the five agents exposed in what is now being considered the greatest internal security breach in modern British history. The Prime Minister continues to express public support for MI6 while the opposition has taken the position…
Mallory: …has taken the position we’re a bunch of antiquated bloody idiots fighting a war we don’t understand and can’t possibly win.
M: Look, three of my agents are dead already. Don’t embroil me in politics now.
Mallory: The Prime Minister’s ordered an inquiry. You’ll have to appear.
M: Oh, standing in the stocks at midday? Who’s antiquated now?
Mallory: For Christ’s sake, listen to yourself. We’re a democracy, accountable to the people we’re trying to defend. We can’t keep working in the shadows. There are no more shadows.
M: You don’t get this, do you? Whoever’s behind this, whoever’s doing he knows us. He’s one of us. He comes from the same place as Bond. The place you say doesn’t exist. The shadows.

When M says the word ‘shadows’, Mendes cuts to bright sunlight reflecting off the ocean as Séverine’s yacht sails towards the island. Bond emerges from the yacht and Mendes cuts to a close up as he activates the radio transmitter given to him by Q earlier in the film.

In the subsequent scene, Bond meets Raoul Silva. Silva is established using a number of production elements, notably acting and sound. The character is introduced with a long shot. He slowly walks towards Bond who is tied to a chair in the foreground. This use of this shot size focuses audience attention on his words: “My grandmother had an island. Nothing to boast of. You could walk around it in an hour, but still it was, it was a paradise for us. One summer, we went for a visit and discovered the place had been infested with rats. They’d come on a fishing boat and gorged themselves on coconut. So how do you get rats off an island? Hmm? My grandmother showed me. We buried an oil drum and hinged the lid. Then we wired coconut to the lid as bait and the rats would come for the coconut and… they would fall into the drum. And after a month, you have trapped all the rats, but what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it and they begin to get hungry. And one by one…they start eating each other until there are only two left. The two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees, but now they don’t eat coconut anymore. Now, they only eat rat. You have changed their nature. The two survivors. This is what she made us.”