Sean Connery embodied the gentleman's correct and agreed-upon model, and had all the right qualities - youthful but unmixed
Sean Connery as James Bond
When I was a kid (maybe ten years old) my dad made one of his famous mistakes and brought me from the video library a tape of one of the James Bond movies.
Since then (in my iniquity) I have been through a lot of movies and action heroes on video, on DVD and also a bit in real life.
But as Prof. Daniel Kahneman explains in the famous Anchor Bias - nothing is as strong as a first impression.
Bond, James Bond - was and still is for me one of the most impressive male models (along with Dad himself of course), the confident walk, the sarcastic smile, the ability to improvise and control any situation, the composure and the fact that he always, but always, finds parking!
All these combined with good action and beautiful stunts, found them a place of honor forever in my mind.
But there's something else for which it's really worth writing this column, for which it's worth mourning the late Sean Connery much more than a handsome looking actor. Something for which it might be worth shedding a tear. And that without exaggerating, something from my old world - of all of us, Is now dead with him.
Connery embodied the correct, balanced, and agreed-upon model of the "gentleman," that is, of the ideal Western man.
He created what we refer to today as "James Bond", he led the character, he was a consensus when there was still such a thing as a consensus.
It had all the right qualities of youth but not mixed: learned but not arrogant, bearing a good conservatism and tradition with a hint of cynicism but never pessimism (even when everything seemed lost), having heroism and willingness to sacrifice for the whole (although business was always taken with humor and wink , For example, when he occasionally found himself in bed with a Russian agent on duty, and would mutter, "Ah ... the things I had to do for Britain").
He was always shocked to the depths of his soul when the leader of the evil organization on duty unfolded before him another malicious plan to impose a Holocaust on the world.
No invented or distorted human rights prevented him from killing those who should have killed, on the other hand he also never was cruel or abused and did not use his "license to kill" against those who should not.
There was no need to talk about the purity of Bond's weapons, he usually fired very little, if at all, only and when at who and what he needed, he never opposed technology and knew how to skillfully adopt mini-tricks and patents from Q wing with playful joy (and probably never managed to return No item intact back to warehousing).
All along it was always clear that he and no sophisticated means is the main weapon (in this spirit I know someone, that when asked at the entrance to the mall if he carries a weapon, he always says "I have no need, I am the weapon"), he did not look for shortcuts and room again And again to the muzzle ("How many times do I have to kill you, Mr. Bond?") Simply because there was a black job that someone had to do.
And that someone was himself.
Bond and Connery merged in our eyes into one character.
Connery is Bond, and Bond is Connery.
Connery has left us, but many sons are left with him in the world, turning around and trying to go his own way and save the world.
To them, I dedicate the post.
Of blessed memory.