Mr. Holmes-The Man beyond the Myth, Review: And you thought you knew your Sherlock!

Mr. Holmes presents a 93 year-old Sherlock without his coat and pipe, after Dr. Watson and his house-keeper Mrs. Hudson are dead and gone, living with a new housekeeper (Mrs. Munro) and her young boy (Roger) in Sussex, cultivating a keen interest in bees and nurturing an apiary, in the year 1947, having quit his Baker Street office and his profession 35 years ago, out of professional disappointment, suffering from senility and dementia, trying to put together on paper a factual version of the case that led to his retirement—to rectify the literary liberties taken in Watson’s account of the same case. It is the Sherlock Holmes you never knew, or never was.

This Holmes foray is a seamless composite of three stories, aided by flashback.

Having just returned from a trip to Hiroshima, Japan, Holmes starts to use the prickly (spelt ‘prickley’ on screen, probably the olde English spelling) ash plant he went there to search for, in an effort to improve his failing memory. As he spends time with Roger, showing him how to take care of the bees in the farm-house's apiary, Holmes comes to appreciate his curiosity and intelligence, and develops a paternal liking for him. Over time, Roger's gentle prodding helps Holmes to remember the case, and why he retired from the detective business.

Thirty-five years earlier, a man named Thomas Kelmot (in the book he is Thomas Keller) had approached Holmes, with a request to find out why Ann, his child-obsessed wife, had changed so much, after suffering two miscarriages. Holmes followed Ann around London and observed her taking actions that made it appear as if she were planning to murder Thomas and inherit his property, such as forging checks in his name and cashing them after convincing the bank that he was ill, checking out the details of his will, and buying poison from a chemist's shop. But it is Ann who ends up dead.

Facts, fiction, inspiration, adaptation, creative liberty…where does one end and where does another begin? Clues are scattered along the way.

Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a British detective called Sherlock Holmes in 1886 and wrote succeeding instalments of the series, till 1927. But the stories were narrated in print, not by Doyle, or in neutral third person, but in first person, by Dr. John Watson, Holmes’ best friend and side-kick, (never to be confused with ‘Dr. Watson for Windows’ a programme error debugger). Two of the published stories were narrated by Holmes himself.

Mr. Holmes is based on a novel by Mitch Cullin, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher. Cullin says, “The mentorship that my elderly Holmes provides for the boy Roger is based on the dynamic I had with the late ‘Sherlockian’ John Bennett Shaw.” Mitch Cullin is the author of eight books, including A Slight Trick of the Mind, Tideland, and Branches, a novel-in-verse. He lives in Japan, where, in addition to writing fiction, he collaborates on various projects with his partner, the artist, Peter I. Chang. In his book, there is a whole segment set in Japan.

By profession, Doyle was a doctor, who first practiced in Portsmouth, where he had a friend called Dr. Watson, and later took-up ophthalmology, in London. He was very impressed with a professor of medicine, who taught him in college, and often incorporated his professor’s perfected diagnostics into Holmes’ detection skills. In the film, Mrs. Munro wants to leave Holmes and take-up another job in Portsmouth.

Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring Holmes, the last one appearing in 1927. In the 1893 story, The Final Problem, villain Moriarty and Holmes plunge to their death. Doyle resurrected Holmes in 1901, in a novel called The Hound of the Baskervilles (made in India as a film in 1962, titled Bees Saal Baad). Cullin’s novel had Roger dying, the film version shows him surviving, one of the few optimistic notes in the otherwise melancholic film. Doyle died in 1930, in Sussex, which is where this film places Holmes in his last days.

Conan Doyle himself viewed his most important efforts to be his campaign in support of spiritualism, based upon the belief that spirits of the departed continue to exist in the hereafter, and can be contacted by those still living. His father died of psychiatric illness. Now we know why Mrs. Kelmot believed that she and her ‘foetus-dead’ children were merely on either side of a wall.

While Doyle was elated at the readers’ response to his detective legend, he felt that his other writings deserved better. The only real sleuthing in Mr. Holmes is related to a mysterious German armonica teacher, following Ann around London and some ‘prove it’ tests to Mrs. Munro and Roger. Together, they constitute about 10% of the film. The rest is an amalgam of remorse, retribution, ravages of war, cold facts v/s fertile fiction, aging, death, inability to cope with loss.

Perhaps out of nostalgia, Ann is advised to take-up lessons in playing the ‘armonica’ (not the harmonica/mouth organ), wine glasses filled with water to produce an ethereal sound. Designed in 1762, by Benjamin Franklin, it was initially named the 'glassychord'. Armonica is derived from the Italian word for harmony, "armonia". It has very soft sound, and is almost extinct now.

Jeffrey Hatcher, who read his first Holmes story when he was 10, is the author of the play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, and its feature film adaptation. He also wrote the play "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders”, playing the title role for several performances. It did not come as any surprise when he was commissioned to write the screenplay of Mr. Holmes, in 2005, shortly after Cullin’s book was published. It took all of 10 years for his efforts to reach the screen. Amongst other reasons for the delay, he says that casting of the lead character took an inordinately long time, and director Bill Condon (Kinsey, Dreamgirls, Chicago-screenplay) was busy with the last two Twilight movies, and the Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) biopic, The Fifth Estate. It is amply clear that on both counts, the decade long wait was worth every year of it.

Mr. Holmes is meticulously written and painstakingly executed. Locales speak, casting is superb, performances impressive, and comedy is used with restraint. A passing shot of a lady bomb victim walking by, with a disfigured face, as the camera pans to show the sign Hiroshima railway station, and Holmes visibly shaken and momentarily disoriented, stands out. So does the almost montage like ease with which Condon wraps up the red herrings dropped by Ann. Almost all characters are inherently good human beings, with no villains at all. There is too much sadness around, though, and it may be to counter pervading morbidity that the makers decided to keep Roger alive. Incidentally, there are many more differences between the book and the film.

After seeing Mr. Holmes, one finds it difficult to swallow that Ian Mckellan had never been interested in the character. It is a tour de force, both for the make-up and costume team, and the Condon-McKellan pairing. The Gods and Monsters duo are in godly good form here too. While the latter got KcKellan a mere nomination, is an Oscar ready for the picking this time? The 76 year-old is completely convincing, whether he is swimming with Roger or tending to the bees or battling memory loss with all his might. Not many can portray ages 58 and 93 with equal competence. Every pore in his body is in tune with the persona. Yes, we have seen him the X-Men films, and as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, but this is special.

Mrs. Munro is noted stage actress Laura Linney, another Condon faithful, from Kinsey and The Fifth Estate. It’s a deglamourised role, with unsympathetic shades, yet perfectly credible and deserving empathy. Milo Parker plays Roger, who is 14 in the book, looks 9 on screen and is 12 in real life. He proves that you do not have to be precocious or wise-cracking to endear yourself the audience. It is alright to be selfish and a little blunt, as any boy that age might be. Mr. Holmes is his third screen assignment, but first release.

Capable support comes from Hiroyuki Sanada, Takako Akashi, Zak Shukor, Patrick Kennedy, Roger Allam and Frances de la Tour (for some reason, she sounds more French than the German she is supposed to be). Special mention must be made of Hattie Morahan as Ann, who has to depict a host of behavioural traits, some cultivated, others soul-baring. Hattie’s  mother is well known actress Anna Carteret (Juliet Bravo), and Christopher Morahan, who directed The Jewel in the Crown TV series, is her father. Such genes can do no harm. Nicholas Rowe, who portrayed Holmes in Young Sherlock Holmes, portrays Holmes, in a sequence spoofing the b&w Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, one of which Holmes himself is shown watching in a cinema. Incidentally, the film-in-film shows him solving the case of the armonica teacher and her student’s death, as in the Watson version.

Ages 9.3 to 93 are represented in the film. So are various nationalities: British, Japanese, American. Bees and wasps have important places in the narrative. There is no sex, no violence, no real crime, no car chases, no thrilling duels, no sci-fi, no VFX. So, is it worth seeing? Elementary, my dear filmgoer!

Rating: ***1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhPPq9cmPCc

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