There have been many takes on the life of Sherlock Holmes
after his retirement. It’s an intriguing question, what does someone with a
mind like Holmes do when their years of crime fighting are over, when they want
to move to a quieter existence? After all, whenever Holmes is bored or without
a case during his career, he has to rely on... um... alternative stimulants to
keep himself going. How could such a person give up the thing that brings them
the most interest, and the most enjoyment in the world, and what could they replace it with?
So in Mr Holmes, we see a suggested answer to those
questions. We see an elderly Holmes, living in the country, tending his bees,
struggling to cope with the onset of dementia. The man who described himself as
a brain, with the rest of his body being a mere appendix now has to experience
the slow failing of that remarkable brain. It’s at times incredibly painful and
sad to watch, but seeing Holmes’ memory fade actually brings to light his
compassion, his gentler side. His love for bees transforms from a scientific
interest to a caring relationship, he guards his hives carefully, he studies
them, yes, but no longer so that he might publish an article describing their
actions, but rather that he might use the knowledge to protect and nurture the
creatures.
As you might have gathered, I love this film very much, and
part of me wants to leave this review here and not go on to point out the
faults. Still, I feel that I must.
The things I do for our readers....
Mr Holmes:
The Holmes we meet here so brilliantly played by Sir Ian McKellen
(who else?) is a very complex character. He still has traces of the old detective,
the gentleman, the flashes of brilliance, the occasional ruthlessness. The
greatest difference about this Holmes is that he is grieving.
Grief. People always forget that it applies just as much to people
with chronic illness and disability as it does to those who have lost a loved
one. We are in a constant state of mourning. Yes, we can be happy. We can go
for days, for weeks without being sad or upset by our lack of health, and then
it can hit us like a train. We have weepy days, we have sad day. Sometimes it
comes out as anger, sometimes as depression. And this is the best thing about
this performance. I buy Holmes’
grief. It’s realistic, it’s sad. Not many films bring me to tears. This one
did, and it all comes down to this performance.
That being said… this isn’t the Holmes we know. Sometimes he’s
too angry, sometimes too mellow. He can be too harsh on his housekeeper, and then
suddenly be smiling, gentle, kind. I know some of this can be attributed to age
and illness, but it seems a little off to me.
And then I remember how brilliantly Holmes demonstrates that
even the most rational of us can fall prey to hope when desperation is the only
other alternative. He experiments with what we today would call alternative
medicine, without knowing the side effects, without being aware of the risks. Travelling
half way around the world to find a plant that might make the difference, but
which is untested and unproven is distinctly irrational, and exactly what
people do.
Exactly.
So, I have no problem with giving this Holmes nine beehives
out of ten. And half a dozen tears, for good measure.
…. Wait, Watson isn’t in this one? Alright then, lets go for
the boy.
So, the Boy, Roger:
This is a character I struggle with slightly. Is he sickly sweet,
or just wonderfully innocent? Is he too good to be true?
The answer to all these is… yes. Yes he is. He is kind, he
is curious, he is quite simply a good person, who wants to connect with the
elderly man he works for and understand his story. He is perhaps disobedient,
but otherwise, he is perfection personified.
This should really irritate me. I should hate this picture-perfect
Roger, the counterpoint of the elderly, sometimes grumpy Holmes. But… I don’t.
Not really. Good, truly good people do exist. Sometimes, perfect people happen.
And I can’t bring myself to dislike him. That being said, he is, perhaps, not
the best developed character. He starts off lovely, cheerful, intelligent and curious,
he ends up lovely, cheerful, intelligent and curious.
Therefore, I can only award him six bee stings out of ten.
But at least they’re not wasp stings.
The others:
I think the main character besides the two I have already
noticed is undoubtedly the housekeeper. She is clearly a loving mother, but
she, like Holmes, is in mourning. The loss of her husband has clearly struck
her deeply, and this often influences her relationship with her son. I think
she finds it hard to relate to him, and feels like she is not able to provide everything
he needs. When Holmes steps in to offer some more intellectual pursuits, I
think this feeling grows stronger, and perhaps brings with it some bitterness
towards her employer. Overall, she seems to be struggling to cope. Her character
is delightfully complicated, trying to protect herself, trying to protect her
son, trying to do what’s best for them both. As much as I like Roger for being
perfectly good and kind, I like her for being imperfect, doing what she can and
making mistakes.
Most of the other characters come in flashback. There’s the
character of Umezaki, who is given the sad task of introducing us to the awful after-effects
of an atomic bomb. He is an interesting character, who offers to help Holmes,
but has his own motivations. He wants to understand why Holmes might have told
his father to stay in England and abandon his family, something which Holmes
cannot remember doing. Something that interests me is the possibility that, due
to Holmes’ memory problems, he actually could have met and advised Umezaki’s
father, but then forgotten. Either way, he is eventually comforted by an almost
certainly fictional letter written by Holmes. I wish we saw more of this character,
and understood what the repercussions of his relationship with Holmes were.
And… really, the only other character worth talking about is
the woman around who the case in this story revolves. Ann Kelmot. Somewhat of a
tragic character from her first appearance, a mother whose children have died,
who wants to remember them, and who wants her life to end. She also joins the
list of people who have managed to fool Holmes, and in the most tragic fashion,
by succeeding in taking her own life. There is a lot of misery here, and
ultimately it is failing to overcome this that makes Holmes believe that he
must retire.
I think I need to talk about that a bit more, and why not
here? Holmes sets himself up to fail here. He takes on the role of grief councillor
as well as detective, and it is a grave mistake. At the end of the day, he
encourages her to go and find other help, probably the most sensible thing he
does, but he does not follow her up and ensure that this will happen. He tries.
He fails. Sometimes, the very best fail. At any other time of his life, I think
he would not allow it to affect him, but at this time, when he is already old
and starting to struggle, it might come as a final blow.
Except, the Holmes we see in flashbacks isn’t failing. He
isn’t forgetting. He is cheerful, confident, as much as ever. He has taken
failure before, he has made mistakes that have led to deaths before. It seems
strange that this one should have such an affect on him.
Anyway, I can award six out of ten prickly ash plants for
this lot.
The story:
Well, what can I say? Three different stories are mixed
together here, the Japanese story, the Kelmot case, and the Roger story are all
mixed together, well… chaotically. But well. It works. All of them are
complete, in their ways. They also seem to represent the state of mind of Mr
Holmes, the way he’s sometimes living in the past, sometimes struggling in the future.
There’s a certain amount of regret in the way the whole thing is presented,
which I really like, and at times Holmes is put in a really difficult position.
There are problems in every story. Although I’ve already
said I like the housekeeper, I really dislike her place in the plot. She almost
becomes the villain of the story by wanting to take Roger away to Portsmouth
and leave Holmes, which seems… unfair. Her reform at the end also seems a
little unbelievable. Otherwise, not much really happens. There is a nice twist
with the cause of the damage to the bee hives, and I think everyone involved ends
up a better person, so it’s quietly satisfying, I suppose.
The Japanese story is touching and sad, but seems to lack
some depth. Honestly, if you took the whole thing out, you lose nothing from
the other two.
And the Kelmot story… well, I’ve already said that I think
this isn’t really enough to force Holmes to retire. That being said, experiencing
a death is never the same twice, so maybe you could explain it away like that.
I suppose my real problem is that this is Holmes’ last case, his grand finale.
Even if he makes mistakes and gets things wrong, at least we could have had
something with some real mystery, a real showcase of Holmes’ talent. This
mystery is… rather bland. Not many features of interest. It was a nice story,
but… underwhelming.
So overall, I award the story five white gloves that smell of
roses out of ten.
So, the complete score for Mr Holmes is 26/40. I wish it
were higher. There’s so much good about this film, and I would watch to see
Mckellen playing Holmes if that were all it was. But there is more here. There’s
interest, there’s love, there’s sadness. I’ve already watched it several times, and I
almost certainly will want to see it again. Perhaps there are things I wanted to
be better, but that shouldn’t take away from what this is; a brilliant adaptation
of Sherlock Holmes.
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