more Napollya rambling

fabula-unica:

So I re-watched the movie last night, and I’ve been thinking about those credit scenes, in which you see glimpses of their confidential files, and in which the rawest, ugliest bits of their characters are laid out (and this is related to why I think Gaby Teller is poorly written, because she is without essential flaws, but that will be a subsequent rant about misogynistic writing in general.) Anyway, Napoleon is a gambler, and addict, a con man, a thief. In other words: a liar. Illya’s chief flaw, of course, is what his file calls “violent personality disorder.” In other words: a psychopath. I’ve talked before about how interaction with Napoleon leads to his first psychotic episode that a) occurs because he does NOT want to commit violence, and b) ends in something other than violence. (We’ll come back to that last point.)

At issue here is how each man helps the other begin to resolve their chief character flaw — or at least, begin to grapple with it. Because Napoleon is a liar, and every iteration of him as a person — art thief, spy, man of the world — is just him being a liar, because that’s what lying liars do. They create a persona and then inhabit it, and Napoleon’s persona is the sophisticated confidence man who “prefers to work alone” and needs nothing and no one, whose sense of personal integrity is elastic at best, and who certainly feels no loyalty to anyone, anything, or any idea other than himself. He is not a nice man. He is not a particularly good man. It is not a particularly good man who ditches Illya in that boat and swims to shore, then sits there — in one of the film’s most hilarious sequences — calmly eating a sandwich and some warm chianti while Illya literally goes down in flames in the background. He even starts to drive off, because of all the victims of his lies, there is none greater than Napoleon himself. He has lied to himself about who he is, because the lie to oneself is the chief and greatest con of all, and he’s mastered it. He is Napoleon Solo, and he doesn’t care about anyone, because that will just weigh you down, and he won’t tolerate so much as a speck of lint on his jacket. So he starts to drive off, leaving Illya to certain death.

Only he can’t, quite. 

You can see the moment when it happens: Is this who I am? Of course it is, what you are talking about, just drive! But… it’s not who I am, is it? You can see the moment when he accepts that he has been lying to himself; he is not the person who can drive away, dammit. He wishes he were. But he’s not, and he accepts that, and he drives back, launching himself into the water, because when Napoleon decides to do a thing, it will not be done by halves.  

Illya helps him stop lying. 

From that point on in the film, there is a realness to Napoleon that Cavill plays beautifully. He has been stripped of the ability to lie to himself, and while he still lies to others with perfect ease — he wouldn’t be much of a spy if he couldn’t — he can no longer lie to himself. He is a person with loyalties, and he does care what happens to other people, in particular this strange and provoking man who has made him start to question every assumption about himself and the world he has made. 

And what of Illya?

He does not lie to himself, and never has. He is a person of extraordinary honesty and directness — Napoleon’s true foil. But he has other problems, a lot of them. And for the first time, like I said above, he experiences a psychotic episode because he DOESN’T want to kill, and not because he longs to. But even more importantly: for the first time he has a psychotic episode that does not end in someone getting hurt. Napoleon just quietly ripped the lid off the box he has been trapped in, and he did it by tossing him his father’s watch, by reminding him that a world of actual loyalties, of true integrity, of real connection, lies behind the shadow world of politics and espionage that is their day job. That moment of connection is his way out of his prison of psychosis, like the moment of rescuing Illya was Napoleon’s way out of his prison of lies. And even more beautifully, one moment is the direct cause of the other. When Napoleon stops lying to himself, and allows himself to form connections, then he does things like retrieve Nikolai Kuryakin’s watch for no other reason than it is important to Illya. Seeing Napoleon’s connection, and his willingness to own it, defuses the psychosis in Illya. And that connection — that ability to connect, rather, that willingness to admit the capacity for connection lay within him — that was because of Illya. Illya sets the whole loop in motion. 

These two deeply flawed men can only be healed by each other, and can only be whole with each other. That is just basic cinematic exposition. That is exactly what the film is saying. Now, as a fangirl and a queer-eyed reader, naturally I am going to extend that connection sexually, which is my prerogative as an imaginative viewer. I’m not saying the film itself connects them sexually. I am saying the film creates their deepest emotional bond with each other, and makes it perfectly clear that there is ONLY ONE PERSON who holds the key to unlocking each of them from their private hells. Call it a romantic connection, call it a soul bond, call it the deepest form of brotherhood, it doesn’t matter — at the end of the day, they are the piece that makes the other whole.  

On Illya Kuryakin and the uses of violence

fabula-unica:

I cannot get away from thinking about that last scene with Illya, in which he is ordered to kill Napoleon because Napoleon has the disc.

Now, here’s the thing: this is some clever film-making. Because of course, Illya begins to have a psychosis reaction as soon as he gets this information, right? But which information? In other words, there are two important bits of information Illya is handed in that phone call: a) Solo has managed to snake the disc out from under him, and b) he has been ordered to kill Solo. So… which one is it? Is he freaking out because Solo got the better of him, or is he freaking out because he has to kill this man he has come to respect, to like, and to trust as he has very few, maybe, in his adult life? The film teases the viewer, and refuses to give us the answer directly.

The clue is this: every other time Illya has a psychosis reaction, it is in response to verbal or physical violence, threatened or otherwise. He does NOT have a psychosis reaction because someone has gotten the better of him, or because a strategy has not turned out the way he hoped, or because of a sudden plot twist. It is violence that he responds to, every time. Violence begets violence.

Illya has a psychosis reaction because he is being asked to kill. He knows it is unavoidable. He knows – or thinks he does, until Solo shows him the way out – that he has no choice. It is the imminent violence that is causing his reaction, and for the very FIRST TIME, he is having a psychosis reaction not because he is longing to kill, but because HE DOES NOT WANT TO KILL. This is huge. This is a character-defining moment for Illya. It is his first moment of powerful revulsion at violence, his first rejection of it.

Illya Kuryakin has a psychosis reaction because he does not want to kill; because something – someone – has become more important to him than his orders. I’m not trying to suggest that Illya at this point has a romantic attachment to Solo; I’m suggesting that their partnership, and loyalty to that partnership, has quietly become the single most important thing to him. If you doubt me, check out his foot pressing that pedal on the torturer’s electric chair, the torturer who caused Solo such unimaginable pain.

So this beautiful scene is doing double duty: it is showing us how deep, how powerful, is Illya’s connection to his partner, and it is showing us that maybe, just possibly, with a lot of help from that partner, he will be able one day to emerge from this horrible feedback loop his body is caught in, of pathological desire for violence.

tl;dr Illya loves Napoleon all other interpretations are WRONG WRONG WRONG.

alex51324:

saucefactory:

Dear. He calls her—what kind of dangerous secret agent is such a softie that he treats little old ladies so gently?

To me, this is a hugely important character moment, because it shows that Illya knows he’s fucking terrifying, and he doesn’t want to be

 As an armed KGB man bursting into a little old lady’s home in the middle of the night, he’d be terrifying even if he wasn’t ten feet tall.  And he knows what that’s like, because he was on the other side of it when he was ten and they came for his father.

Furthermore, I read the hotel room scene with Gaby–the drunk-dancing pyjamas scene–much the same way.  She’s not really acting like she’s scared, but she probably should be: he’s big enough to break her in half, a representative of an occupying force, and, at least according to his dossier, psychotic, and here she’s being made to share a hotel room with him and pretend to be his fiancee.  So he bends over backwards to be as nonthreatening as possible, to the extent of letting her slap him in the face with his own hands.  Twice.  

This gives me a lot of feels.  

(Source: tedystaleva)

Anonymous asked: oh god while we're on the topic of napoleon & agency how about how his response to getting fucking drugged is "i'll just lay down & make myself comfortable then, been here before" TALK ABOUT CLINGING TO SCRAPS OF AUTONOMY

ingu:

building on this post

image

(x) Honestly the gender politics in this film is some curious stuff. Reverse the genders and both this scene and Napoleon bedding Victoria becomes infinitely more sinister. Same goes for Gaby slapping Illya. From start to end, Victoria treats Napoleon like a plaything, an object, something to be toyed with.

Keep reading

Further to the re-blog earlier today about Napoleon’s character, agency and control - because, yes, I would agree with this view.

Also, the mention of the subversion of gender roles, which I was already having some thinky thoughts about after watching the film.

sergeantjerkbarnes:

ingu:

mamalaz:

The Man From U.N..C.L.E

The Final Cut vs Behind the Scenes

#I REALLY #WANT TO TALK #ABOUT THAT TOP LEFT MOMENT #because victoria doesn’t kiss napoleon in the context of the finished film #(she apparently does there in a version that didn’t make the final cut but that’s besides the point) #there we get to see napoleon in a sexual situation that he is a) not in control of and b) has not consented to #he’s fucking terrified #he already knows what kind of human being victoria vinciguerra is and he already bedded her in a last ditch effort to salvage their covers #which was likely victoria just playing along with him to lure him into a false sense of security until she sprang her trap #having all of this turned against him and weaponized is absolutely terrifying for him#his agency as an individual has been questionable for a decade thanks to what the cia keeps holding over his head #and his grip on that remaining autonomy is likely pretty tenuous considering how often he’s thrown around as the team honeypot #so he shields himself from intimacy by turning it into game after game #tryst after tryst #mark after mark#because the second he lets his guard down is the second he loses everything or dies #and there was probably a pretty big part of him that figured victoria and her nazi “doctor” were about to go for broke on both options #HI SORRY I’M REALLY EMO ABOUT THIS SAD BARGAIN BIN 007 I’LL SHUT UP (via brodinsons)

#ALL OF THIIIIIIS #him bedding victoria was such a dubcon moment #and the next morning he looked exhausted #and so resigned #‘trust me i gave her everything i got’ #napoleon tries so hard to cling to his last shreds of agency #truffles #clothes #giving illya the watch instead of shooting him like a good dog #and in this he and illya have a lot in common? #illya also never chose his life it was chosen for him #him imprinting on gaby like a puppy seemed just that #how many opportunities do you think he has for touch and intimacy? #because this may be the first time he’s had a chance to have something like a connection #and the same goes for napoleon #‘i work better alone’ #as admissions go are actually a little heartbreaking (x)

Re-blogging for the various tags, which I found rather thought provoking. The above did not occur to me at all, those three times I watched the film. However, on hindsight, this definitely seems plausible. (New headcanon?)

(via jhholtzmann)