The Other Fellow
Matthew Bauer’s novel documentary explores what it must be like to be called Bond, James Bond.
Not for the first time there is much gossip and rumour as to who might be the next James Bond, but have you ever considered what it means to be a man who is already James Bond? Yes, I refer to those many ordinary people who, the name not being in the least unusual, go through life continually encountering comment because of the worldwide fame of Ian Fleming’s 007. What confronts such people, for better or worse, is a question that occurred to the Australian filmmaker Matthew Bauer and it has led him to make his first feature, The Other Fellow. As a concept for a film, it is decidedly novel and Bauer approaches the subject in a lively manner by quickly introducing a considerable number of James Bonds ranging from a computer programmer to a Guyanese politician to a prison inmate.
Many will find this quite engaging, but nevertheless one does question whether or not the issue can sustain a whole feature film even if this one clocks in at a modest eighty minutes. It is, perhaps, a warning sign that, having started the film with footage of Ian Fleming himself admitting that he stole Bond's name from that of an ornithologist whose book 'Birds of the West Indies’ was well known to him, Bauer reprises the same material later on – and more than once. One James Bond describes his name as both a blessing and a curse but only one man featured here has consciously built his life out of it. In Nybro, Sweden, Gunnar Schäfer is a local legend having created his very own James Bond Museum and having adapted his name to Gunnar James Bond Schäfer. He is an intriguing figure, an obsessed loner who claims to be inspired by the notion that his father who disappeared in 1959 was a spy like 007 causing him to embrace Bond as the image of the father he never knew.
Not surprisingly this Swedish Bond gets more footage than many of the others but four further people have stories that give them a particular degree of prominence. One is the aforesaid author of ‘Birds of the West Indies’ and another is a theatre director, James Alexander Bond, who willingly accepted being interviewed and did not hide his sexuality but was taken aback to find that the published piece made a headline out of the fact that James Bond is gay. But the most striking section is that built around James Bond Jr. an African-American from Indiana who suffered sixty days in jail but also made news locally on another occasion when he was unjustly accused of murder. In passing his story reveals the extent of your problems if your name is James Bond since, if the police question you and ask your name, they are likely on hearing it to assume that you are trying to be funny with them. For that matter on first being introduced to somebody every James Bond knows that a jokey reference to 007 is virtually inevitable to the extent that they get fed up with it.
It is indeed the case that The Other Fellow ranges from the humorous to the disturbing but, as noted, Bauer is keen to keep things on the go. This extends to what he presumably regards as livening up the interviews by inserting dramatised reconstructions. This is rarely to my taste since, as happens here early on, brief shots of this kind illustrating what is being said to camera about a past event only serve to make one aware of the artifice. Furthermore, as the film proceeds, Bauer increases the extent of the re-enacted scenes. This becomes most pronounced with the fourth of the featured figures who is not another James Bond but a woman who tells of marrying a psychopath who hit her and abused their child only to find that after their divorce he continued to track them down forcing them to take on fresh identities. So much of this is re-enacted that little sense of documentary reality is left and it is only late in her story that it has any clear connection with somebody bearing the name James Bond.
The last scenes in The Other Fellow reconnect with earlier sections, in some cases offer a kind of resolution and underline the fact that as No Time to Die premieres there is still no let-up for those named James Bond unless, like the man now named James Hart, you opt to change it. Bauer’s film is a watchable oddity but perhaps you have to be passionate about all things related to 007 to find it any more than that.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Gunnar James Bond Schäfer, James Alexander Bond, James Bond Jr., Ms Bond, James Lee Bond, James Hart, James Neal Bond, Tacey Adams, Gregory Itzin, Rachel Perrier, Ethan Langstaff.
Dir Matthew Bauer, Pro Matthew Bauer and Michelle Brøndum, Screenplay Matthew Bauer and Rene van Pannevis, Ph Jamie Touche, Set Des Laetitia Gangotena, Ed Lesley Posso, Music Alastair McNamara, Costumes Leesa Simone..
The Other Fellow-Bulldog Film Distributors.
80 mins. UK. 2022. US Rel: 17 February 2023. UK Rel: 19 May 2023. Cert. 15.
