MR. HOLMES: Blu-ray (Mirimax/Roadshow 2015) Lionsgate Home Video
Sir Ian
McKellen is Sherlock Holmes…well, sort of. At 76, an age when most actors have
slowly retreated from the spotlight, McKellen, one of the finest of his or any
other generation, shows no signs of slowing down professionally: all evidence
to the contrary in director, Bill Condon’s Mr.
Holmes (2015), a movie that endeavors to put the kibosh on one of
literature’s most beloved fictional heroes; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s cerebral super sleuth, Sherlock Holmes.
Is it just me, or have others grown weary of seeing how the once mighty
and galvanized creations from their treasured childhoods are steadily being torn
down, reconstituted or entirely revamped for the ‘modern age’? I do not ever recall Sherlock Holmes being a problem
for past generations to accept and digest. In fact, there was always a general
acceptance to embrace history – as
history – and not try to rewrite it, merely to suit contemporary tastes. If
we were speaking of the works of Michelangelo or Da Vinci, this conversation
would be moot. No one would suggest, as example, the Mona Lisa ought to be
spruced up, perhaps with a nose ring and a little lip gloss, maybe even a bit
of peroxide and a pair of earrings, clutching a cell phone instead of her shawl
so as to make her (choke!) ‘relevant’
for today’s casual viewer. No – Mona is a classic – period! So is Sherlock
Holmes.
One of the
most celebrated and perennially revived fictional characters, by my way of
thinking, there is still only one Mr.
Holmes – at least, at the movies – and his name is Basil Rathbone; once
astutely described as ‘two profiles
pasted together’, though nevertheless, the spitting image of the famous
Sidney Paget drawings accompanying the first volumes of Conan Doyle’s famed
detective stories. For nearly a decade, Rathbone embodied this beloved figure
as no actor before or since has been able (save, Jeremy Brett, as the BBC’s
quintessence of the great man in made-for-television episodes). History has not
been nearly as kind to the long line of character actors who have tried to make
something of Dr. Watson – in the Conan Doyle novels, little more than the
omnipotent storyteller, though not much of a ‘character’ within the stories
themselves. I will hold to my assessment; that Nigel Bruce’s befuddled and
portly Watson, opposite Rathbone’s aesthetic beanpole, remains the best of the
lot; of his own design and the perfect comedic foil and appendage to
our deductive genius. But I digress.
The Sherlock
in Mr. Holmes is not Conan Doyle’s creation so much as a wan ghost flower of this
former self; the screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher, loosely based on author, Mitch
Cullin’s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of
the Mind. Not a great start, if you
ask me, as Cullin has decided to present Sherlock Holmes with a double whammy
of calamities to face in his twilight years; the first, the only case to remain
undocumented by the great detective, still nagging away at him from the
peripheries of his deteriorating subconscious; and second, the ravages of old
age – nee, Alzheimer’s – which has slowly begun to enfeeble Holmes’ mind. What
could be more tragic than to have one of the greatest inquisitors of the late
19th and early 20th century reduced to the equivalent of
a scholastic cripple, blankly staring out his window as his crumbling intellect
indiscriminately sifts through the past and present, creating great uncertainty
and confusion. Herein, I will confess;
this isn’t the Sherlock Holmes I was hoping to see Sir Ian take on. He could
have so easily been the best Sherlock Holmes we have seen in a very long while.
I will simply go on record with my general disinterest, and occasional contempt
for the likes of Robert Downey Jr.’s farcically played younger Mr. Holmes. I am
also genuinely not a fan of either Benedict Cumberbatch or Jonny Lee Miller’s
impressions of this great man on TV.
Again, I
digress. Condon’s movie is not the worst
of the lot, not by a long shot; intelligently made and expertly played by
McKellen and others in the cast. Still, it is a little much to expect an
audience to simply write off such time-honored characters as Dr. Watson and
Holmes’ cherished housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson (still most charmingly realized in
the Rathbone/Bruce serial by grandmotherly, Mary Gordon); the former, explained
away by McKellen’s Holmes as having married, then later died; the latter, not
even referenced in passing in this movie. Sincerely, I am not loving
cinematographer, Tobias A. Schliessler’s homogenized, teal-biased and
desaturated camerawork; envisioning a rather bland mid-register to both the
lush green fields surrounding Holmes’ Sussex farmhouse, and the starkly gray
and incinerated remnants of Hiroshima after its nuclear holocaust. Frankly, I
am fed up with too many present-day cinematographers who have seemingly taken
their cue from the ‘stylistic’ approach first established by Janusz Kaminski.
The purpose of great cinematography used to be (and still ought to be) to
distinguish itself, not simply amongst the many creative elements gone into the
creation of a motion picture, but equally, to set every movie apart from its
competition. By and large, today’s
visual approach to shooting movies appears to mimic everything Kaminski does,
regardless of whether or not this aforementioned style suits the subject
matter. Sherlock Holmes isn’t really the sort of tale to be told in bleached
out colors and blown out contrast levels. In fact, Condon’s movie needed to
have the Merchant-Ivory look applied to it; something along the lines of Tony
Pierce-Roberts’ richly saturated visual flair in The Remains of the Day (1993).
Our story is
set in 1947, Sherlock Holmes, aged 93, retired and living on a remote Sussex
farm, tended to by housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), who lives on the
modest estate with her young son, Roger (Milo Parker). Munro is a harsh one;
not very tolerant of Holmes’ isolationist bachelor, and even more critical of
Roger’s deep and abiding fascination for this recluse who spends most of his
time either in his upstairs study, pouring over old case files and committing
his meandering thoughts to paper (in absence of his deceased biographer, Dr.
Watson) or solitarily tending to his bee husbandry. At every turn, Condon’s
movie attempts to debunk the legend of Sherlock Holmes; Holmes seen quietly
amused inside a local cinema showing an ‘old movie’ based on his exploits, and
later, in flashbacks, all but dismantling prickly ash merchant, Tamiki Umezaki’s
(Hiroyuki Sanada) impressions of him by devaluing the deerstalker and hornpipe,
trademarks worn and smoked by the movie’s incarnate Holmes.
The first
third of Condon’s modest excursion badly waffles between Holmes’ recent past
(his trip to Japan) and the present. Somewhere between these counterpoints of
reference, Hatcher’s screenplay also plays fast and loose with the particulars
of Holmes’ only open case file ‘The
Adventures of Dove Grey Glove’ – inserting flashbacks devoted to Holmes’
investigation that neither augment nor advance the central narrative so much as
they chronically discombobulate and obfuscate the straight-forwardness of the
case itself. It’s this clumsiness in Mr.
Holmes’ opening act that remains frustratingly subpar – unworthy of the
character or Ian McKellen’s superb portrayal. More richly rewarding is the
focus on Holmes’ burgeoning friendship with young Roger; the kind gestures of a
mellowed intellectual who, on a more intuitive level, realizes his mind has
slowly begun to regress to that of a child. Determined to impart some of his
wisdom on this inquisitive lad, who obviously is keen to learn and has a
probative mindset that may prove his strength as he matures, Holmes infrequent
memory lapses incur the widow Munro’s considerable displeasure. She will not
stand for Holmes filling her son’s head with lurid details that make
crime-solving appear as a glamorous profession.
At Roger’s
ginger prodding, Holmes endeavors to recall the case that caused him to retire
from sleuthing altogether. “When you're a
detective, and a man comes to see you, it's usually about his wife,” Holmes
explains. And so, in flashbacks, we regress some thirty years, meeting a
younger, more agile Holmes, still in full control of his acuities and living at
221B Baker’s Street in London. Holmes is introduced to Thomas Kelmot (Patrick
Kennedy), a solicitor desperate to learn why his wife, Ann (Hattie Morahan) has
suddenly become distant after suffering two miscarriages. The screenplay plays
fast and loose with the most obvious reason; Mrs. Kelmot has taken a lover. Tailing
the young wife around town, Holmes discovers the affluent Mrs. Kelmot forging
and cashing checks in her husband’s name, reviewing the details of his Last Will
and Testament, and, even quietly buying a bottle of poison from the local
chemist’s shop. Holmes also learns Ann has been taking music lessons on a glass
harmonica, under the auspices of prima donna, Madame Schirmer (Frances de la
Tour). Once again, Hatcher’s screenplay cannot resist the urge to misdirect the
audience even further down the primrose path, into another transparent
scenario; Mrs. Kelmot intends to murder her husband in order to inherit his
formidable moneys and property. Gradually, however, Holmes unearths the more
tragic inducement for Ann’s secrecies; planning a tombstone engraved with the
names of her two miscarried children and her own with the intention to commit
suicide as she can no longer sustain or survive her terrific grief over their
losses.
Confronting
Ann in a garden, Holmes claims firsthand knowledge of her epic loneliness and
crippling isolation. His confession is, of course, shallow and meant to make
Ann recant her plans for suicide. For the briefest of moments, Holmes’ ruse
does the trick; Ann sharing a tearful moment and spilling out the poison she
has only just bought. Relieved to have seemingly prevented her suicide, Holmes
is entirely unprepared when Ann tenderly pleads for the opportunity to share ‘the burden of their loneliness together’.
Herein, Ian McKellen gives us the briefest flash of Rathbone’s incarnation of
Sherlock Holmes; this enterprising and scholastic tower of intellectual
efficiency, utterly void of any human connection – particularly to the female
sex. At Holmes’ insistence she return to her husband for solace and
understanding, Ann suddenly realizes she has been played for a fool in her
fragile emotional state; Holmes’ only interest in her, to prevent the suicide,
but not because he shares in her sadness. Hurrying along, and superficially
giving Holmes his satisfaction, Ann steps in front of an oncoming train to her
death. Stricken with the knowledge his betrayal has contributed to her demise,
Holmes officially retires from sleuthing and retreats into a self-imposed exile
on his farm.
It is
important to note that, for the purposes of this review I have
compartmentalized and consolidated this subplot into a single summation. Within
the movie, the scenario is Ginsu-ed into a series of fragmented, almost
unrelated and chronologically out of sync timelines; presumably reassembled to
make the case more intriguing for the audience when, in fact, it does little
more than chronically unhinge and confound the senses; particularly, as these
various pieces are fitted into yet another flashback sequence, devoted to
Holmes’ most recent trip abroad to Japan in search of the prickly ash Holmes
has been led to believe will stave off the onslaught of his advancing memory
loss. In this second spate of tidbits, we meet Tamiki Umezaki, a great admirer
of the fictional Sherlock Holmes, though somewhat put off by meeting the man in
the flesh, whose stature and cynicism fails to live up to the ideal Umezaki has
stored up over time.
Umezaki has
agreed to take Holmes to the spot where the sacred root grows. But Umezaki’s
purpose is two-fold; the latter reason, his sincere hope Holmes can shed some
light on what has become of his father, Masuo (Zak Shukor) who abandoned both
Tamiki and his mother, Maya (Takako Akashi) while stationed in England during
the war. Before Masuo vanished, apparently into thin air, he sent several
letters back home, one of them singing the praises of Sherlock Holmes. Disinterested,
as time is of the essence to retard his ailing mental decline, Holmes fluffs
off Umezaki’s request, rather cruelly suggesting he never met Masuo; also,
perhaps Masuo merely and selfishly wanted to start a new life abroad minus the
perceived impediments of a wife and child. Umezaki is understandably wounded by
these insinuations. Shortly thereafter, Holmes leaves Japan to pursue his
treatment at home with the prickly ash. Alas, it illustrates no medicinal
properties to delay the progression of his disease; a bitter finding, indeed.
In the
present, Mrs. Munro becomes increasingly short-tempered with Holmes’ bouts of
forgetfulness; her frustrations boiling over after Holmes becomes dangerously unconscious
from an experiment, injecting a solution of prickly ash into his arm. Confined
to his bed for some time, Holmes is viewed as a burden by Mrs. Munro, who
writes to secure a new post as a chambermaid at a hotel in Portsmouth. But
Roger, having gleaned some expert tutelage from the great detective, now views
his mother with a modicum of disdain: her simplistic dismissal of Holmes seen
as cruel and unfeeling. Moreover, with Holmes’ expertise, Roger has been shown
a possible way out of his own present-day working class status. Thus, a riff
develops between mother and son. To please Holmes, Roger takes it upon himself
to look after the bees. Tragedy strikes when the boy is inadvertently and
repeatedly stung – almost to death – his seemingly lifeless and swollen body
discovered by Holmes lying unconscious near the house. Rushing Roger to
hospital, Mrs. Munro is thwarted from her malicious attempt to torch the
apiary. Still, blaming Holmes’ for Roger’s near fatal attack by the swarm, Holmes,
instead points out Roger was not stung by the bees, but rather, wasps the boy
was trying to drown in order to protect the bees.
As Roger begins
to slowly recover from his ordeal, Holmes, perhaps for the very first time
fully cognizant of the value of human kindness and the interconnectivity of
one’s personal connections with others, bequeaths his Sussex farm to Mrs. Munro
and Roger. They will inherit his land and possessions upon his death; an
inducement to encourage her to stay, rather than take on yet another menial
career of hard labors elsewhere. Mr. Holmes' last act is all about
redemption; humanizing this presumably stuffy and clinical academic. Keeping
true to this premise, Holmes equally has a change of heart about Dr. Watson’s
fictional embellishments of Dove Grey Glove Case. He realizes Watson’s lies
were a sort of ‘kindness’ toward Mr.
Kelmot – a way to heal his broken heart. In this spirit, Holmes feels compelled
to author a letter to Umezaki, lying to him about his late father’s bravery as
an honorable man working in service of the British Empire. The truth, that
Masuo never intended to return to his family after leaving Japan, is quietly
kept from Umezaki; Holmes deducing from his own experiences with the late Ann
Kelmot, sometimes the truth shall not and cannot set one free from the burdens
of an imperfect past. In the movie’s
epilogue, Roger educates his mother on the proper care of Holmes’ bees. Holmes,
fast approaching the end of his days, is seen on a hilltop, quietly emulating a
tradition he witnessed in Hiroshima: the placement of a ring of stones,
representative of the loved ones lost to him over the years, that he, rather whimsically
is now looking forward to soon rejoin.
As last act
finales go, Mr. Holmes’ is richly
rewarding; bringing about the necessary closure, not only for the characters in
this film, but seemingly marking a definite period to the Holmesian film
franchise begun so very long ago, and, long endured by some truly laughable and
badly executed slings and arrows to keep Conan Doyle’s perennially appealing
sleuth ever-present and alive in our hearts and minds. If only the rest of the
movie had managed something greater than a series of disjointed vignettes, Mr. Holmes might have been a truly
fitting epitaph to this legacy. Instead, at just barely under 2 hrs., we have a
clumsily assembled, and occasionally lumbering would-be melodrama, draped in
the enigma of a crime thriller that, quite simply, fails to engage. The
revelations unearthed by Holmes in the flashbacks of the Dove Grey Glove Case
are neither startling nor satisfying; merely perfunctory addendums to the aged
Holmes’ own realization in act three: a derivation on the ole cliché about ‘no
man’ being ‘an island’.
The best thing
about Mr. Holmes is undeniably Ian
McKellen’s monumental and effective performance as this ailing giant in the
world of crime-solving. McKellen infuses his performance with sparks of the
classic Sherlock Holmes’ inspired brilliance, but also provides subtler jabs of
pleasure, gradually derived by stripping away the mask from this unicorn we
only thought we knew until now. It is a fascinating character study when
director, Condon and screenwriter, Hatcher allow the careworn thespian
something meaningful to say and/or do; also, in pauses from Schliessler’s
chop-shop camerawork, long enough to bask in the afterglow of McKellen’s
ability to hold our attentions merely as a presence, without any uber-clever
embellishments in the cinematography. Alas, too often this aforementioned trio
of creatives, toiling behind the scenes, conspires to deprive us of McKellen’s
formidable gifts on display. Too many cutaways, departures from the main storyline,
maladroitly inserted flashbacks, hacked apart and/or parceled off in snippets,
entirely failing to direct the audience into more intriguing past regressions,
results in an unevenly paced narrative. Colin Starkey and Sarah Crowden,
briefly glimpsed in non-speaking cameos as Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson
respectively, are utterly wasted and pointlessly mis-referenced as portholes of
the past rather than integral characters in the Holmesian tradition. Fair enough – this story is not about them.
But must we interminably remain faithful to the source material - Cullin’s
novel - at the expense of sacrificing these hallmarks ensconced in our
movie-land folklore.
I have made
this point in the past, and see no reason not to resurrect it again herein;
namely, that great literature and great movies rarely – if ever – run a
parallel course. In the golden era of Hollywood, the creative brain trusts
responsible for true cinema art fast came to the collective realization what
works in the realms of the imagination, gleaned from the mind while reading a
novel, does not necessarily translate well – or, at all – to the literal world
of the cinema arts. Movies cannot imagine. They must illustrate, concretely
and, if possible, concisely. Like a lot of movies made in the past twenty
years, Mr. Holmes takes Cullin’s
book too literally; disregarding the notion, movies can ‘improve upon’ a novel
or, in fact, provide us with an alternative interpretation, no less richly
rewarding – but different – than the book. Alas, our movie-land pop culture is
a little less creatively fertile for this oversight. Bottom line: Mr. Holmes is passable entertainment.
Without Ian McKellen, the picture would be nothing at all. For completionists
of the Holmesian folklore on celluloid, I suppose this latest addition will
suffice. Personally, it left me flat and fairly disappointed more with the
character and structure of the piece had not been done. At this point, I would have settled for even
tried.
Mr. Holmes’ debut on Blu-ray is what one might expect: extolling
the virtues of its 2.40:1 digital photography, its hues occasionally reaching a
level of sumptuousness, but on the whole, more subdued with a somewhat softly
surreal ambience. Shadow detail is
wanting: a result of this 1080p transfer or the shortcomings of the Arri Alexa
XT with which this movie was shot…who can say? I only know that on my display
black levels never went beyond a deep and murky base, everything registering in
mid-range tonalities of grey. There is some slight shimmering too, mostly in
Holmes’ tweed coat – presumably, the enduring scourge of digital photography. The 5.1 DTS audio is fairly subdued; this
being a mostly dialogue-driven drama with few instances to truly show off depth,
as well as the clarity of its sound field. Still, roaring train whistles and
Carter Burwell’s evocative score are the beneficiaries of some restrained
ambience. Good stuff here. Extras are the biggest guffaw: two featurettes (I’m
going to label them as ‘commercials’):
Mr. Holmes: The Icon and Mr. Holmes: The Story – combined, they
total depressingly less than five minutes. Really?!? If you can give us both
the character and the plot in under five, I will venture you haven’t much of a
movie to begin with! Bottom line: pass.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
1
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