I completely ignore what my five-year-old self was doing on this day in 1995. I was being taken care by my grandmother or my aunt after they picked me up from kindergarten, having a slight preference for my aunt as she didn't feed me to my bones as my grandma did, offering me different kinds of food from 4 to 8 pm, continuously. Anyway, one thing is for certain: I didn't care about James Bond, and I completely ignored that the film that would change my life forever was being released in the United States.
GoldenEye celebrates its 25th anniversary today, and I sadly missed out in theatres. However, it did have a big impact on me when I watched it on the telly three years later, even in those old 4:3 tube TVs where most of the details we over-analyze today thanks to 1080p or 4K resolution went missing. And to me, it will always be my favourite movie of all time.
Ian Fleming stated that his stories were "written for warm-blooded heterosexuals", and the 17th entry in the Bond series wasn't based on any of its books, but damn if GoldenEye doesn't fit that concept like a glove! Could there be anything that could make the blood of a straight eight-year-old kid boil than Famke Janssen's red lips suggestively smoking those cigars? Who didn't fantasize to be that man who looked sharp in a tux or business suit and could escape from a dozen Russian soldiers after his head by performing an impossible death-defying stunt? I did. After watching GoldenEye I wanted to be James Bond, and I wanted to sleep with a woman like Xenia Onatopp. I wanted to walk through the Monaco harbour, visit St Petersburg, and wear a linen suit somewhere in the Caribbean. All that while my schoolmates were thinking of Dragon Ball Z and Knights of The Zodiac or too busy with their favourite soccer players.
The film had me at the Gunbarrel sequence. That graphic of a man walking in a tux with all elegance and determination only to turn and shoot at the audience as blood filled the screen enchanted me and it was right there that I knew I was going to watch a great film. The rest of it from the bungee jump, to Daniel Kleinman's dancing ladies over the Lenin and Stalin statues, the tank chase and the fight above the antenna dish, just fascinated me.
GoldenEye opened my eyes to the world and made me investigate. Go beyond the ordinary. I started asking my parents what the Cold War was, what was that red flag with the hammer and the sickle, what's the difference between a Soviet and a Russian, what was the KGB and the Lienz Cossacks. And this film also made me know James Bond. I didn't stop there. I went to watch Tomorrow Never Dies on the big screen and I slowly bought one by one the old Bond films on VHS and every available book on the subject. My first two were James Bond: La Obra Definitiva Sobre el Agente 007 by Juan Tejero (in Spanish) and Lee Pfeiffer and Dave Worral's The Essential Bond, plus some issues of 007 Magazine, Graham Rye's excellent contribution to the Bond fandom. I still remember when I told some of my mates that I was a James Bond fan. "What, James Bond Jr?" they asked me. "Nope. James Bond. 007. GoldenEye!" Then they remembered the Nintendo 64 game, which I couldn't buy but I did rent a lot.
In 2011, a year after I finished high school, I created The GoldenEye Dossier to celebrate not only the film but the many video game versions of it. The site was instantly loved by Bond fans all over the world and it still is. In 2019, facing an atrocious financial situation, I wrote my first book, The World of GoldenEye. Paraphrasing what Bond tells Natalya, I have to say that GoldenEye kept me alive indeed. Twenty-four years after saving the Bond franchise, GoldenEye saved me in a time where friends and relatives looked down at my unemployed self, sometimes lending me some bucks out of pity but making me feel it.
Whenever I think of GoldenEye, I also think of people and places. I think of the comfort of the glorious 90s at my childhood home where I frequently tuned in the TV to see if the film was being re-run, the cheers of the toy stores where everyone was taking a shot at the Nintendo 64 game. I think of my late father, who was always very supportive of my Bond passion. And it was him who told me who James Bond was and -without being a fan- lead me into Bondmanship. I think of watching the film on the old Special Edition DVD my uncle brought me from the US, which I watched on the computer of my grandparents' home. I did practise a lot of English with the DVDs, even some words in French too. Those were the two available languages there. I think of the beautiful Mariana, departed to a hopefully better life, who welcomed me in Rio de Janeiro with the BluRay edition of the movie and Swatch's commemorative wristwatch from 2002, which I proudly wear.
But most of all, GoldenEye reminds me why I am a James Bond fan in the first place. Because GoldenEye has all the elements someone loves to see in a Bond film. There is a protagonist with a commanding presence, a charismatic villain, two stunningly beautiful girls, secondary characters you'll never forget, and it represents the 90s generational zeitgeist very well. The music may be very untraditional to the John Barry standards, but it still fits the mood of the film perfectly. And I have loved "The Experience of Love" from day one, to be honest!
Lately, I barely care for James Bond's future as the continuous marketing fiascos of No Time To Die (particularly its many delays and bland poster campaign) have made me lose my interest for the movie. It'll come back whenever they are 110% sure that the film will be released in April 2021, surely. But whatever they decide to do to the character, my loyalty will always stand with GoldenEye. I still think it's much better than anything that came after that, with all due respect to the other Brosnan movies and Casino Royale, which I love. But this film is the perfect testimony that the Bond formula is not attached to a determined era and that Bond doesn't belong to the 60s or the 90s, but to NOW.
This said, I'll raise my glass today to commemorate the film that shaped my life more than anything else. The Goldfinger of the 90s. My Goldfinger and Thunderball. Here's to Martin Campbell's brilliant direction, Phil Méheux's paradisiac shots, Terry Rawling's fast cuts and Eric Serra's industrial, metallic sounds. Here's to the sexist, misogynist dinosaur I wanted to be like and the woman I wanted to enjoy squeezes with. Here's to the Lienz Cossacks, the three minutes instead of six, the small talk and chit-chats, the foreplay and the boys with the toys.
Here's to the film that kept me alive -and a little alone- for all these years.
Happy 25th, GoldenEye!
For England, for James, for the memories...
And for me.
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