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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 1 April 2015
This article is a review of MR HOLMES.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015. (For more information, click here.)
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“Fiction is worthless,” Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen)
Mega meta: Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes watching a Sherlock Holmes film, where Sherlock Holmes is played by the 'Young Sherlock Holmes'. Such ostentatious clever-cleverness is in short supply. The sole standout is the lead; McKellen shines as a 93-year old Sherlock, in an otherwise deeply unsatisfying, uncinematic take on the legendary detective. Unchallenging Sunday afternoon television is the modus operandi. Where was the peril, the stakes? Our Holmes here is suffering from the war of attrition that is aging. If the film had diagnosed anaemia, it would have been ironic.
Mega meta: Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes watching a Sherlock Holmes film, where Sherlock Holmes is played by the 'Young Sherlock Holmes'. Such ostentatious clever-cleverness is in short supply. The sole standout is the lead; McKellen shines as a 93-year old Sherlock, in an otherwise deeply unsatisfying, uncinematic take on the legendary detective. Unchallenging Sunday afternoon television is the modus operandi. Where was the peril, the stakes? Our Holmes here is suffering from the war of attrition that is aging. If the film had diagnosed anaemia, it would have been ironic.
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“We can’t solve everything,” Sherlock
That line of dialogue, in more skilled filmmaking hands, would have been a cry to the heavens, while looking back, at not being omnipresent to solve more. Portrayed as being a savant on the Asperger’s syndrome scale, MR HOLMES is concerned with a crotchety genius unable to empathise. Past romantic regret is not on the cards; instead we are meant to walk in the shoes of a unique. Quality of writing is not WATCHMEN, where the superhuman are humanised, our connection to the titular protagonist is too weak.
1948, a world still in shock from the most devastating war in history, parallels are not made on a psychological level or on an allegorical plane. MR HOLMES should have been UNFORGIVEN – imagine a reclusive humanity-hating great detective dragged out of retirement taking on an antagonist played by the equivalent of Gene Hackman.
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Spark of imagination absent to ensure rising above the crowds, this interpretation is far too flaccid. We currently have TV shows ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Elementary’, as well as ‘C.S.I.’ and ‘House’ owe a debt to author Arthur Conan Doyle. For its flaws, action flick A GAME OF SHADOWS (2011) at least had energy and menace; Jared Harris’ Professor James Moriarty proved formidable. MR HOLMES, meant to be on the great detective’s final case, as dementia begins to ravage, is bereft of opponent.
Sidekick Dr John Watson and housekeeper Mrs Hudson have passed. As INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL shares, the vacuum left from major characters no longer present could have had a solemn weight. Players have come to terms off screen, when we should be trying to make sense together. An actor of McKellen’s virtuosity touches on existential crisis, but the material lets him down. Irascible misanthropy is the default mode, which offers only occasional, mild divertissement.
Back to dreaming of a silver screen take for the ages.
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