They learned from past experience. Remember, they wanted to film the funeral scenes for SPECTRE on an old cemetery in Rome but didn’t get permission.
Actually, they did get permission, but then it was revoked when the religious set figured out what it was they had given permission for.
She’s also wearing white, symbolizing both innocence and a bride to be.
P.S. Welcome back, Surrie. I remember reading your posts about Spectre all those years ago.
A very insightful reflection and one I pretty much agree with, particularly how frustrating it is to see elements from Fleming like the garden of death included but done badly and not really used. Better they not include them at all.
I thought I was replying to Revelator by the way but my IPhone isn’t always cooperative.
Oh, you did. But unlike the old forum, the original post isn’t quoted automatically in this new one. (it’s linked to in the top right corner of your post). If you want to quote, just mark the part you were going to quote and the click on the reply button.
You are 1000% correct.
I very much agree that the ‘Garden of Death’ concept falls flat in NO TIME TO DIE - if it wasn’t there we wouldn’t miss anything in the film’s story and the more industrial pool comes closer to a bio-reactor. Actually, the refinery equipment from SPECTRE’s base would probably have been good for a bioweapons plant.
For something like Safin’s poison/nanobot/virus op I would have expected huge glass domes or a greenhouse complex, maybe even inside a garden perimeter with poisonous plants or predators guarding the complex. That would have given an extra layer of security Bond would have had to cross in stealth instead of guns blazing.
Then again, that garden of death Fleming described…
Amis was the first to note that the garden itself, while sounding intriguing and suspenseful, doesn’t have any offensive qualities. It reads better as an idea - and works for Blofeld’s scheme to offer a suicide scene as public service - than it plays out as an actual obstacle. Indeed, once over the wall Bond takes care not to touch anything or expose his skin otherwise. Then he hides in a shed in relative comfort and waits for the next night to strike.
Granted, Bond just escapes detection by luck with the help of some old sacks of soil and fertiliser. But he manages to cross the garden without difficulty and it’s only the trap inside the castle that catches him before he can get at Blofeld. The garden itself is dangerous, but most to those who want to kill themselves on the premises. In a film, especially a Bond film, the concept would hardly provide the suspense from the pages where Bond witnesses a suicide and later the ‘cleanup’ of another victim.
So overall I’m not sure seeing the garden of death done ‘faithfully’ for Bond would really reap the desired effects. Not unless there is some fight or action staged that would show the stakes.
I do agree with this statement but…it’s still a good idea that easily could have been improved upon and become more than the sum of the two parts (the literary and cinematic).
Off the top of my head…the train fight in FRWL adds in the attache case rather than the cigarette case that creates a gripping scene that improves upon the original idea. The car chase in OHMSS is an improvement over the novel’s Bond (still a great idea) flipping the road sign.
I do think there have been moments where EON/Maibaum/whoever improved upon the source material without undermining it in any away. Garden of Death for me is one of those “concepts.” I do feel that I’d rather it didn’t appear at all, rather than in it’s current “throwaway” form. Right now it’s the cinematic equivalent of an end-table or a floor lamp. Just kind of there…
I think that’s exactly what would work. Fleming was running out of energy in YOLT (and even more so in TMWTGG) and the Garden is a case of introducing a great concept but not exploiting it to its fullest potential, as he might have done a few books earlier. If, say, Bond had accidentally torn his suit earlier and then had to pass through the garden, and then encountered a henchman or villain that he had to dispatch in hand-to-hand combat, then the stakes would be dramatically raised.
I’m somewhat reminded of the treatment of Jill Masterton in Goldfinger—Fleming describes her death “off-stage,” through Tilly’s words, but the film dramatically improves on this by showing Bond stumbling upon her gold-painted body. The same goes with the raid on Fort Knox—the film goes inside the building instead of staying at the gate. It fully exploits the potential for fabulous imagery that the book suggested but didn’t completely portray.
In many ways the Garden of Death is better utilised in the '67 YOLT, where one side of Blofeld’s office is festooned with plants and a deadly pool of piranha fish - at least that’s stolen with some clarity form the novel even if it too isn’t a direct interpretation. I’ve stated before that the Garden of Death and a closer attachment to Fleming’s climax to YOLT would have satisfied me far more than the half-hearted but hero’s death inducing effort we do get.
After Bond broke Safin’s arm, I was hoping the writers had recently read Scorpius and decided to have Bond drag him into a poisonous bush. That would have been use enough of the Garden of Death for me.
YOLT would be a really difficult book to adapt faithfully. The suicide topic is sensitive and controversial. Plus there’s not a lot that goes on in the first half of the book. Bond is depressed most of the time. He and Tiger go drinking and talking a lot. It’s contemplative.
Once at the castle, Blofeld is wearing a kimono and plans on beheading Bond with his sword after a bizarre fumarole torture scene called The Question Room. While re reading it, it dawned on me that Blofeld’s schemes get smaller. Thunderball is the global threat of stolen nukes. Then OHMSS goes for the microscopic with bio warfare. Then finally with YOLT, the Garden of Death was the site of 500 suicide/murders. But in each book, Blofeld comes to symbolize death more and more despite the smaller scale of his plots. By contrast, Bond reawakens from his depression and comes to symbolize life, literally creating it with Kissy Suzuki’s pregnancy.
If you consider Spectre/No Time to Die as EON’s telling of the TB/OHMSS/YOLT trilogy, the Garden of Death had to be there at the end. I sort of view Heracles as the weaponizing of the poison garden. It’s already in line with Safin’s philosophy, but gives him a delivery system. It fits within his scheme, even if he doesn’t technically need it to work. And SPECTRE would totally have their own poisoners. Makes perfect sense. “We must one day develop a faster venom,” Blofeld says in FRWL after Klebb kicks Kronsteen with her poison bladed shoe.
Given how Spectre ended, they made the best choices they could to adapt it. Maibaum was a genius at adapting Fleming, so it wasn’t going to be as good as what could have been. But I enjoy what it is all the same.
It’s much more than just in line with his philosophy. It’s the poisoner family’s heritage, he grew up there as a child. It’s his personal shrine and the origin of his interest in these things. He has it kept by gardeners and it’s maybe the only real joy he has in life. Like YOLT Blofeld, he’s a collector of these things, maybe even a bit of a nerd.
A double helping of some of the stuff he grows there (maybe digitalis for reference) would have been appropriate, but with the broken arm just before… woops, there goes the BBFC rating 
Didn’t one of the cast members say Safin was going to have a really brutal death? The arm break is rough but I was expecting a modern twist on Doctor No’s demise (probably a result off falling for some of THAT hype).
It’s very much in line with reversing the existing material.
The leader of SPECTRE has a poison garden - the killer of SPECTRE has a poison garden
Bond has a son - Bond has a daughter
Tracy dies - Bond dies
Blofeld creates a bio weapon - M creates a bio weapon
The garden from the film is an inheritance and a hobby, rather than a suicide lure. The real poison is what Safin manufactures, but the plants do build on that theme. From an aesthetic point of view, I rank Poison Island as the best villain lair since Drax’s jungle base from Moonraker. But I do have soft spots for the Arecibo Observatory and Stealth Boat.
The garden of death does feel a little shoehorned in, but I don’t think that someone unfamiliar with the novel would notice so much. A bit more could have been done with it in the script, and there could have been more plants on display (even given the spare Japanese aesthetic). But to me it’s a minor flaw.
Apart from voluntary suicide, what does the the Garden of Death have beyond the visual?
Had my third viewing last night. Being freed from having to work out what was going on / critique as I go / decide how I felt towards it etc. allowed me to simply enjoy it on a pure entertainment level, and that was my overriding emotion this time, that I was thoroughly entertained. In that respect I probably felt more like the non-super fans in the audience who turn up having not spent years looking forward to it and who just watch a Bond movie for a couple of hours of entertainment.
Incidentally, the cinema was again packed, which surprised me for a Wednesday night, even if it is half term in the UK.