The Other Fellow (2022)
Whilst the debate continues about who would make the best Bond, what about those whose name actually is James Bond (and have to live with it?) Especially if you aren’t a suave super spy, or desire to be associated with the extreme smoking, Aston/Bentley loving, womanising ‘blunt instrument’ franchise. This unique documentary follows up this premise, interviewing many of those Bonds who literally are the ‘other fellow’ and concludes that, (in one case), Bond is an incredible woman… (which is very Bond 26).
Putting aside your outrage, interviewees include a theatre director who neither wants to be stereotyped as ‘gay Bond’ or as any kind of Bond type, but known for his theatre work, first and foremost. And yet he has succumbed to the Bond legend by promoting casinos as Bond, James Bond…. There was a whole succession of James Bonds through one family — one of whom doesn’t like the movies and another who thinks that they have to pass the name on (at all costs).
A former Bond (James Hart) wanted to protect his children from the stigma and associations, and so took his partner’s name instead. Perhaps an unbothered Bond — he is glad to no longer be a Bond, James Bond. Though his daughter would like to be Ms Bond…
Extraordinary was the Swedish man (son of a former World War Two German naval officer) who has changed his name to James Bond (Gunnar James Bond Schäfer) and whole-sale adopted the traits, poses and mannerisms of movie and novelised Bond. He sees Ian Fleming as creating a surrogate father figure for him and a protype of masculinity. Not only is he trying to work fiction in reality, but he has even turned his home into a Bond museum, with movie memorabilia. His faher vanished and has yet to be located… The documentary embraced the glamour of this potential father as missing spy story rather than pushing the psychology more, perhaps too much was taken at face value here.
Battling the jokes, the lines and the cliches, the Bonds make their way through the world. But what do you do when one James Bond is pursued for crime and you’re another James Bond in the same city? More humoursly are their encounters with police and other authority figures, who think all the Bonds are pulling a fast one when they say the name…
What I didn’t expect was a Bond woman to appear (and a very seriously handled story about domestic abuse, overcoming coercion and astutely using the James Bond name as a way of hiding in plain sight). Whilst it all sounds like Q breadcrumbs in Skyfall, it is infact a celebration of an incredibly resourceful and intelligent woman — brave enough to phone the police to get her out of her own home (her husband was repeatedly locking her inside); who gets herself and her son to safety, and after the threat of a stalking incident from her husband at her son’s school, who uses a name change to stop him finding them easily. Worthy of a Bond movie in itself, it was her story and that of her son (renamed to James Bond to spam her husband with too many links to sift through) which made the documentary soar. Equally moving was her son’s tribute to his mother and her brilliance in adverse circumstances.
Interwoven too was the story of the ornithologist (the true James Bond) whose name was purloined by Ian Fleming for his spy novels. Challenged by Mrs Bond, Fleming politely shot back they should find a particularly repellant species of bird to name after him in revenge. Bizarrely they did all meet in real life! (Though we never learn if the real James Bond retaliated through nomenclature!)
Enjoyably filmed like a Bond film with wide, glossy panning location shots and a great score, if you want to discover how all the Bonds deal with people who ‘can’t take advice’ but ‘insist on giving it’ every time a new movie comes out, then this is your shot! (And I was fortunate enough to experience the Q&A after the London premiere with two of the ‘Bonds ‘ — non-Bond Hart and maximum Bondian Gunnar James Bond Schäfer as well the score composer, the editor and the director gathered together for interviews). A bit more depth could have been given as to ‘why’ a 70 year old spy franchise remains so compelling, although the mother protecting herself and her son from abuse covered this well.
