After watching the new Casino Royale for the 2nd time, I tried to decide why I enjoyed this particular film so much. I am no longer an avid movie fan, having become averse to much of the content that takes place in contemporary film including violence, sex humor, profanity, excessive special effects, and generally liberal themes. Yet, for some reason, I still occasionally find particular movies entertaining or especially rich in content or, in this instance, demonstrating a philosophy of which I find profound and imminently significant. You see, James Bond is relentless.
In the 2nd scene of the movie, Bond is completely committed to acquiring a cell phone that contains a phone number he needs to decipher who or what is behind the latest espionage situation, the latest potential world dominance, the bad guy doing bad things, the evil lurking in the in the foreground, the meaning and human behind the activity. Bond sets out to discover the truth, and he does so relentlessly and spares no part of himself in doing so, he appears willing to sacrifice his own life as he dedicates himself to the quest for the cell phone. By the same token, the antagonist is equally determined to prevent Bond from having the phone. What follows is a scene of cat and mouse that ends with the phone in the hands of James Bond.
In another scene, Bond again shows the same relentless determinacy to prevent a bomb from destroying a new state of the art airplane. Bond's ingenuity, intellect, and remarkable physical prowess is put to the limit as he runs, jumps, strikes, falls, and never hesitates to reach his goal of stopping the bomb. He may have had moments of insecurity or self-doubt but he did not let that deter his purpose nor did he allow his own human frailty to prevent him from doing what was right. He was intentional, proactive, and relentless in pursuing excellence, which, in this case, was preventing the explosion of the airplane.
But this essay is not about Casino Royale or even James Bond. It certainly is not a movie review and I do not consider myself any kind of film critic in any sense of the word. What we glean from James Bond is the value of being relentless in the quest for truth and for arriving at our stated objective. I once asked a choir director whose choirs were consistently precise, expressive, and known for their musical and emotional content, choirs that embodied excellence in every sense, choirs that made other choirs pale in comparison, how he achieved such magnificent musical results. He answered that he imagines hearing the finest choir on the planet and then teaches relentlessly to that goal. He allows nothing to stand in the way of that monumental dream.
When Beethoven composed his 5th symphony, he had trouble deciding how to end the 1st movement, and wrote three different ideas before settling on the one we hear today. Each ending was appropriate and each ending worked, but Beethoven could not settle for average, for passable, for unexceptional, or common, instead, he relentlessly sought the perfect ending to his remarkably powerful work.
In Hemingway's rich novel of human spirit and strength of will, The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago fights to land the Marlin amid overwhelming odds including his own weakening body in a strong testament of personal dedication to a difficult or seemingly impossible goal. In the book of Exodus, we find Moses, after resisting leadership, becoming committed to his God-ordained task of leading and delivering the Israelites to the promised land. Nothing will stop him as he encounters one challenge after another.
It is the attitude and practice of relentlessness that leads to excellence in achievement. In Plato's oddly nebulous but pointedly urbane allegory The Cave, we find a group of people whose concept of truth is the shadow upon the wall, people who are comfortable not knowing the cause of the shadow, and whose world-view is narrowly discerned from their limited experience. Sadly, they only know what they see and almost prefer the existence of the shadows with an acceptance of their delectation of life being based on their own myopic and falsely understood world, resulting in contentment to live in a state of mediocrity, ignorance, and darkness.
In returning to the James Bond example, his pursuit of justice was unmarred by his own personal restrictions, and he did not allow himself to be governed by those many self-imposed weaknesses that tend to affect all of us. It may be just a movie, and it may have little to nothing to do with reality, but there is hidden philosophy to which I wish to subscribe: to be relentless in pursuing excellence to the best of my ability and, unlike James Bond, I furthermore wish to honor God in all my efforts.
3 comments:
As a man currently residing in England, home of 007, I want you to know that all English men and women are relentless. We have to be. All 12 million of us live on an island only a little larger than Minnesota and Iowa. Thus, we relentlessly pursue excellence and leisure; especially leisure. We relentlessly make sure that we get off work on time; we relentlessly pursue our time at the pub and, we relentlessly pursue our maidens in distress. We are relentless about those things. Have a jolly good day.
HEY MAN, I'M SPEAKING IN ALL CAPS; WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET A NEW BLOG? HAVE YOU SAID ALL THAT THERE IS TO SAY? ARE THERE NO MORE 'TIDBITS' FOR THE REST OF US? I HAVE GIVEN UP REAING "THE DAILY MAIL" BECAUSE I THINK TUCKER WILL HAVE A NEW TIDBIT!!! SO WHAT GIVES?
Obituary: Tucker's Tidbits died today for lack of attention. It's as if someone failed to water the plants and then went on vacation. It was a slow gradual death due to inattention. Many people were saddened by the loss of such an erudite commentator. We can only hope that someone with wherewithal, heretofore and etcetera, etcetera will bring it to life in the hereafter.
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