Bond. James Bond. As of this writing, he's spawned 24 feature films, five decades of ravenous fandom, merchandising, video games, spinoff novels, innumerable parodies, museum exhibits - and a documentary made roughly ever year of his life trying to make sense of it all. BBC's entry, Looking for Mr. Bond: 007 at the BBC proves one of the most definitively enjoyable and comprehensive overviews of the 50 year 007 phenomenon - uniquely contextualized by rarely before seen BBC on-set retrospectives - even if their attempts to precisely pinpoint the why of Bond's enduring longevity prove as pleasantly elusive as any.
Bond is as much a shape-shifting escape artist as he is monolithic, and the franchise has always proven a fascinating microcosm of pseudo-individualized pop culture capitalism: the most stubbornly airtight core formula in fictional history tweaked and metamorphosed with each cultural trend du jour. Framed by Tamsin Grieg's crisp narration, Looking for Mr. Bond charts each reactionary twist and turn of the Bond franchise with or against the zeitgeist or its own successes and failures. For viewers who don't know their Moores from their Daltons, it's a succinct distillation of 007's growing pains, while still teasing out rarely articulated tidbits to appease the afficionat00s in the crowd: the camp levity of the execrable Diamonds Are Forever paving the way for the tongue-in-cheek silliness of the Roger Moore epoch; Dalton's well-intentioned, less promiscuous Bond being unfortunately lambasted as the '007 for the AIDS era' (just be glad you didn't have to survive the "PC Sux" vitriol of Reddit, Tim...); Judi Dench's casting as M being responsive to the real-life appointment of Dame Stella Rimington, first ever female director of MI5 in the early '90s, and so on. What really makes the documentary worthwhile is the access to archival footage unleashed from the BBC vault. Each anchored by different BBC presenters and comedians, Looking for Mr. Bond includes unprecedented behind-the-scenes footage from the early Connery, Lazenby, and Moore outings, including Connery, awkwardly half in character, escorting 1963 British viewership on a tour of Fort Knox for Goldfinger. Naturally, we come for the trivia factoids, but stay for the hilariously candid interviews from producers and stars refreshingly untainted by contemporary PR spins (when asked why he returned to Bond after a four year hiatus, Connery glibly deadpans "They offered me a bigger piece of the cake"). Interestingly, beyond the treasure trove of previously inaccessible footage comes an in-house unpacking of Bond's patriotic relevance in the early '60s 'British Invasion,' and interviewers following the franchise through the decades provides a clever intertext of the evolution and international exposure of British cinema through the years.
It's a distinctly top-heavy doc, with gloriously extensive coverage of Bond's '60s glory days and playful '70s reinvigoration (as Moore eloquently puts it, rather than outright self-parody, "inviting the audience to join in on the joke and have some fun"). Sadly, the pace grows increasingly scant over the decades, with poor Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig given increasingly short shrift by comparison, before coming to a jarringly abrupt (if not inglorious) halt with Craig's 007 meeting Queen Elizabeth for the 2012 Olympics - arguably, BBC chortlingly posits, the two most iconic figures in British pop culture. However, beyond this imbalance comes somewhat of a fumbling of the documentary's ongoing subplot: how to rationalize the elephant in the room wish-fulfilment enjoyment of a character (quite rightly) denounced by Dame Judi Dench (and prophetically preceded by world-weary interviews with Diana Rigg and Barbara Bach) as "a sexist, sexist, misogynist dinosaur; a relic of the Cold War." It's a question rhetorically posed, but conspicuously abandoned in the Brosnan/Craig years (no mention of Barbara Broccoli providing the franchise its first female governance, the perfunctory agency provided to later days 'Bond Girls,' or Craig's cringeworthy drag act for 2011 International Women's Day), leaving an initially substantive interrogation feeling irksomely superficial.
Those seeking more intensive accounts of the makings of each 007 outing can find more comprehensive behind-the-scenes accounts online elsewhere (or, for antiquated hoarders like me, on the Special Features of each DVD...). Still, for the nominally interested or Fleming fanatics alike, Looking For Mr. Bond is, on the whole, a brisk, informative, and enjoyable hat tip to the world's least secret secret agent, particularly in his fledgling years, and an hour well-spent. Just, please, don't ask poor Pierce if he misses the role any more. Hello darkness, my old James...
-8/10
Bond is as much a shape-shifting escape artist as he is monolithic, and the franchise has always proven a fascinating microcosm of pseudo-individualized pop culture capitalism: the most stubbornly airtight core formula in fictional history tweaked and metamorphosed with each cultural trend du jour. Framed by Tamsin Grieg's crisp narration, Looking for Mr. Bond charts each reactionary twist and turn of the Bond franchise with or against the zeitgeist or its own successes and failures. For viewers who don't know their Moores from their Daltons, it's a succinct distillation of 007's growing pains, while still teasing out rarely articulated tidbits to appease the afficionat00s in the crowd: the camp levity of the execrable Diamonds Are Forever paving the way for the tongue-in-cheek silliness of the Roger Moore epoch; Dalton's well-intentioned, less promiscuous Bond being unfortunately lambasted as the '007 for the AIDS era' (just be glad you didn't have to survive the "PC Sux" vitriol of Reddit, Tim...); Judi Dench's casting as M being responsive to the real-life appointment of Dame Stella Rimington, first ever female director of MI5 in the early '90s, and so on. What really makes the documentary worthwhile is the access to archival footage unleashed from the BBC vault. Each anchored by different BBC presenters and comedians, Looking for Mr. Bond includes unprecedented behind-the-scenes footage from the early Connery, Lazenby, and Moore outings, including Connery, awkwardly half in character, escorting 1963 British viewership on a tour of Fort Knox for Goldfinger. Naturally, we come for the trivia factoids, but stay for the hilariously candid interviews from producers and stars refreshingly untainted by contemporary PR spins (when asked why he returned to Bond after a four year hiatus, Connery glibly deadpans "They offered me a bigger piece of the cake"). Interestingly, beyond the treasure trove of previously inaccessible footage comes an in-house unpacking of Bond's patriotic relevance in the early '60s 'British Invasion,' and interviewers following the franchise through the decades provides a clever intertext of the evolution and international exposure of British cinema through the years.
It's a distinctly top-heavy doc, with gloriously extensive coverage of Bond's '60s glory days and playful '70s reinvigoration (as Moore eloquently puts it, rather than outright self-parody, "inviting the audience to join in on the joke and have some fun"). Sadly, the pace grows increasingly scant over the decades, with poor Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig given increasingly short shrift by comparison, before coming to a jarringly abrupt (if not inglorious) halt with Craig's 007 meeting Queen Elizabeth for the 2012 Olympics - arguably, BBC chortlingly posits, the two most iconic figures in British pop culture. However, beyond this imbalance comes somewhat of a fumbling of the documentary's ongoing subplot: how to rationalize the elephant in the room wish-fulfilment enjoyment of a character (quite rightly) denounced by Dame Judi Dench (and prophetically preceded by world-weary interviews with Diana Rigg and Barbara Bach) as "a sexist, sexist, misogynist dinosaur; a relic of the Cold War." It's a question rhetorically posed, but conspicuously abandoned in the Brosnan/Craig years (no mention of Barbara Broccoli providing the franchise its first female governance, the perfunctory agency provided to later days 'Bond Girls,' or Craig's cringeworthy drag act for 2011 International Women's Day), leaving an initially substantive interrogation feeling irksomely superficial.
Those seeking more intensive accounts of the makings of each 007 outing can find more comprehensive behind-the-scenes accounts online elsewhere (or, for antiquated hoarders like me, on the Special Features of each DVD...). Still, for the nominally interested or Fleming fanatics alike, Looking For Mr. Bond is, on the whole, a brisk, informative, and enjoyable hat tip to the world's least secret secret agent, particularly in his fledgling years, and an hour well-spent. Just, please, don't ask poor Pierce if he misses the role any more. Hello darkness, my old James...
-8/10