Mr. Holmes (Film Review)
Jan. 18th, 2016 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThis movie shares some themes with an earlier Bill Condon and Ian McKellen collaboration, Gods and Monsters: brilliant man in physical and mental decline near the end of his life, aware of it and fighting against it, forms bond with much younger person which helps (somewhat). And yet it's also very different, though Ian McKellen delivers a great and tremendously moving performance in both. James Whale in Gods and Monsters is in exile (so to speak) from an active director's life in Hollywood largely, the film implies, because he's an openly gay man; not directing any more certainly wasn't something he'd have chosen if he could have. Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes, otoh, chose to retire as an act of self punishment, and part of what's haunting him in the movie is that he can't renember any more why, what it was about his last case that let him conclude he could no longer be a detective. Whale is overhwelmed by the memories of his youth, especially those from World War I, and part of his torment is that he can't turn them off; Holmes is tormented by the increasing loss of memory (not just long term, but short term; he's taken to writing names of the people he interacts with every day on the collars of his sleeves so he won't forget them.
At the same time, neither movie is actually pessimistic or dedicated to destroying the icons it portrays. Gods and Monsters conveys that Whale was a brilliant director, and our young pov character enjoys his movies tremendously (as opposed to, say, Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, who considers having to watch Norma's old movies a drag), proving their timelessness. Whale is also witty, charming and still able to form human connections. Mr. Holmes gives us several instances of Holmes "doing his thing", as the young character, his housekeeper's son, puts it, discovering truths from minute details, and the last time he does it in the movie is the well deserved emotional climax that brings together the human connections formed and/or showcased in the movie and the attempt to use intellect and logic to provide meaning that's governed Holmes' life in a tremendous way.
The boy who befriends Holmes is played by a gifted kid, but for my money the most amazing performance next to Ian McKellen's is Laura Linney's as the housekeeper, conveying so much about her entire life just by the way she reacts in the present.
Criticism: applies only if you put this movie in the larger context of Holmesiana. First of all, backstory wise (the movie is set shortly after World War II, and Holmes is over 90, though there are also flashbacks to that last case thirty years earlier which made him retire), Watson is dead, and even worse, he died estranged from Holmes. I don't ship Holmes and Watson (in any incarnation) romantically, but of course I'm invested in their friendship, so this is distressing to me. Secondly, while some of Doyle's stories themselves contain, unless I misremember, Holmes critisizing Watson's writing of their adventures as sensationalist (i.e. Doyle makes fun of himself), it's become a trope for Holmes to do this in non Doyle written adaptions, and that I can do without, especially since many post House incarnations of Holmes are written as over the top jerks. Not this one, I hasten to add: Holmes in Mr. Holmes actually has what Doyle's Holmes has and what, say, BBC Sherlock misses, the capacity for kindness. But seriously, I could have done without yet another variation of "but I never wore the deerstalker and it didn't happen that way!" Lest I give the wrong impression, I should also make it clear that the movie doesn't imply anywhere Watson was an idiot, a la the Basil Rathbone movies, he's via backstory shown to be a good friend (when Holmes goes through the big crisis of the last case, Watson, who has moved out before, moves back in with him to help him cope with the case fallout) , and when Holmes finally allows himself for the people he lost, he names Watson first (then Mycroft, btw).
But like I said: taken as its own story, Mr. Holmes Is a gem.
At the same time, neither movie is actually pessimistic or dedicated to destroying the icons it portrays. Gods and Monsters conveys that Whale was a brilliant director, and our young pov character enjoys his movies tremendously (as opposed to, say, Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, who considers having to watch Norma's old movies a drag), proving their timelessness. Whale is also witty, charming and still able to form human connections. Mr. Holmes gives us several instances of Holmes "doing his thing", as the young character, his housekeeper's son, puts it, discovering truths from minute details, and the last time he does it in the movie is the well deserved emotional climax that brings together the human connections formed and/or showcased in the movie and the attempt to use intellect and logic to provide meaning that's governed Holmes' life in a tremendous way.
The boy who befriends Holmes is played by a gifted kid, but for my money the most amazing performance next to Ian McKellen's is Laura Linney's as the housekeeper, conveying so much about her entire life just by the way she reacts in the present.
Criticism: applies only if you put this movie in the larger context of Holmesiana. First of all, backstory wise (the movie is set shortly after World War II, and Holmes is over 90, though there are also flashbacks to that last case thirty years earlier which made him retire), Watson is dead, and even worse, he died estranged from Holmes. I don't ship Holmes and Watson (in any incarnation) romantically, but of course I'm invested in their friendship, so this is distressing to me. Secondly, while some of Doyle's stories themselves contain, unless I misremember, Holmes critisizing Watson's writing of their adventures as sensationalist (i.e. Doyle makes fun of himself), it's become a trope for Holmes to do this in non Doyle written adaptions, and that I can do without, especially since many post House incarnations of Holmes are written as over the top jerks. Not this one, I hasten to add: Holmes in Mr. Holmes actually has what Doyle's Holmes has and what, say, BBC Sherlock misses, the capacity for kindness. But seriously, I could have done without yet another variation of "but I never wore the deerstalker and it didn't happen that way!" Lest I give the wrong impression, I should also make it clear that the movie doesn't imply anywhere Watson was an idiot, a la the Basil Rathbone movies, he's via backstory shown to be a good friend (when Holmes goes through the big crisis of the last case, Watson, who has moved out before, moves back in with him to help him cope with the case fallout) , and when Holmes finally allows himself for the people he lost, he names Watson first (then Mycroft, btw).
But like I said: taken as its own story, Mr. Holmes Is a gem.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-19 12:57 pm (UTC)About Holmes complaining about the deerstalker, I didn't see that so much as a critique of Watson's writing, but as discomfort about having to constantly deal with another version of him taking over people's perception of him. The movie deals with this element a lot - and I felt it was partly what justified this as a Sherlock Holmes movie, because it really could have stood on its own just as a meditation on aging, grief and loss otherwise - just think of the hilarious adaptation of the last case he watches at the movies, or the Japanese gentleman and his mother who house him when he's looking for the prickly ash.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-21 09:56 pm (UTC)A couple of things I found out online this evening looking up info on the film. Firstly and more lightly, there's a hilarious casting in-joke, as the actor playing Holmes in the film-within-a-film that Holmes is unimpressed with is Nicholas Rowe, who played teenage public schoolboy Holmes in the ultra-eighties Young Sherlock Holmes.
Secondly and more seriously, this is a case of a film having an adaptational happy ending which I thoroughly approve of, as the novel it was based on apparently really was a pessimistic hatchet job on Holmes - at the end of the novel Roger Munro dies from being attacked by the wasps, Mrs. Munro bitterly blames Holmes for encouraging him to take up investigation, and Holmes dies utterly alone believing that he completely wasted his life by valuing reason over emotion.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-21 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-23 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-23 04:06 pm (UTC)Nor did I know about the ending of the book. I'm with you: the film's ending strikes me as far better.