The new Mr. Holmes film does what could not have been predicted and does it wonderfully. In an adaptation that betters the book, the sleuth is an elderly retiree minding his bees on the seashore. That much is consistent with the canon. The remainder of the revisionist triptych comes from Mitch Cullin's 2005 pastiche, A Slight Trick of the Mind, an acclaimed entry into the genre.
An acquaintance with this sophisticated specialty that deserves more than the title of "fan fiction" separates the casual reader from the potential member of the Baker Street Irregulars. Those viewers who were not aware that the steampunk Robert Downey Jr., bug-eyed heartthrob Benedict Cumberbatch, and perpetually sneering Jonny Lee Miller all owe their performances to fifty-six short stories and four novels penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be further confused to be told by aficionados that "ACD" was a mere go-between, a literary agent for the actual Dr. John Hamish Watson. The Great Game (did Holmes attend Oxford or Cambridge? what was the exact wound Watson received from the jezail bullet?) has been played since the beginning. It even has reference works, the annotated volumes by William S. Baring-Gould, and the new set by Leslie S. Klinger, displaying the obsessiveness of the best amateur endeavors.
So Mr. Holmes enters a multi-verse already crowded with rivals. The most famous fictional character is presented here with arch post-modernism. He is a real person who disdains his literary doppleganger (preferring top hat over deerstalker cap, cigars rather than calabash pipes) only less than he does the worse cinematic depiction (played by the actor who more than a generation ago debuted as the young Sherlock in a movie of his own). (The remainder of this blog contains spoilers. Please see the show before continuing. It is excellent and highly recommended.)
With the pace of a BBC mystery series -- a compliment or criticism depending on whether one has acquired the taste -- Holmes recounts to his new housekeeper's young son, Roger, the two mysteries that haunt him.
There is the case of "The Lady in Gray," as it is styled in the black-and-white matinee feature that the "real" Holmes dismisses, apparently the last case that he worked. His failure forced him into retirement, but he cannot remember what he did wrong much less why he was not right. He is sure the screen version has it all garbled, because that was always so with his companion's tales. Yet the true details elude him, as he struggles with aging.
Then there is the complication of Tamiki Umezaki, a Japanese Anglophile, who invites Holmes on a journey to Hiroshima not long enough after the nuclear devastation. They have been corresponding. Umezaki has promised Holmes a remedy to his ailment. A rare plant called the prickly ash will restore his vitality. During their travels, Umezaki reveals his ulterior motive: his father abandoned his mother and him decades earlier, sending as his parting gift an edition of the initial Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet.
The framing device itself turns out to be more than the metafictional infrastructure. It enables Holmes to make amends.
In the ultimate case, Holmes was hired by Thomas Kelmot to follow the man's wife. Distraught over two unsuccessful pregnancies, she has become enthralled by the "glass harmonica," an instrument associated with spiritualism. She may be plotting the death of her husband.
Holmes eventually recalls the particulars. His achievement is not from the foul-tasting vegetable he has carefully transported back to England; there is no more boost from that herb than from the royal jelly it took the place of. No, the newfound memories are due to the attention of an audience, Roger, and the child's locating a memento of the forgotten investigation, a single kid glove that had been hidden away in a desk drawer.
The revelation for Holmes is that there is more to life than ratiocination. It turns out he had deduced everything about the unhappy Ann Kelmot, all too well -- moments after their single encounter, she killed herself by standing on railroad tracks to await the oncoming locomotive. The analysis of her life was not what she needed.
That realization in turn prompts Holmes to do something more in character than might be expected: tell a lie. He invents a story for the disappointed Umezaki. He writes a letter to the hopeful man, imagining that his father volunteered himself for the service of the British Empire, leading an adventuresome and honorable life with the understanding he would have to forsake all that he knew and cared for. Although the world's only consulting detective might have fibbed to bring about a certain justice, he fabricated in this instance only to offer comfort. He consoles Umezaki as he had not Mrs. Kelmot.
His character development continues throughout. Holmes does not hesitate to inform his housekeeper, who is eager to depart his service, that remarkable children are often the result of unremarkable parents. But when Roger insults his mother, noting she is barely literate, Holmes directs the child to apologize for being deliberately hurtful.
The movie alters the book significantly. Stung by wasps, not bees, Roger recovers from wounds (the clue about the identity of the culprit is that no stingers are left behind) that are not quite mortal on the screen albeit fatal on the page.
This means Holmes ends with a heart and a hearth. He acquires a family of sorts. This is the closure he has sought. He himself was not conscious of this search.
He concludes that Mrs. Kelmot had propositioned him. She wished for them to run off together. They would be alone in one another's company. He had rejected the offer without even properly acknowledging it.
He has another chance. He propositions his housekeeper, platonically of course but no less meaningfully, promising her his estate if she will care for him for his remaining days. His longevity also is the source of either a joke or an error, and devotees will take it as the former. On a stroll, Holmes tells Roger he won't live to the century mark as Roger's great-uncle had, because what are the odds that two people whom Roger knows, would be so lucky -- as Holmes might have observed, these events are independent and his own lifespan cannot be affected by someone else's.
Mr. Holmes is not the first Holmes pastiche and it will not be the last. It belongs to the lineage of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970); The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1976); and Murder by Decree (1979) -- the 1970s are a celebrated decade for American motion pictures, and Holmes benefited as much as the auteur. Its behind-the-scenes conceit will be familiar to anyone who knows Holmes is a scholar of apiculture who published a monograph on the "segregation of the queen."
The three primary performances are pitched perfectly. Ian McKellan as Holmes communicates the thirty-year span with his posture and his wielding of his cane, a prop for him when young(er), a necessity when older. Laura Linney as Mrs. Munro is as resigned as a widow as she is put upon as a domestic. Milo Parker is Roger is bright, feral, a child actor likely as remarkable as his character. (Nicholas Rowe's is not the only cameo that will delight insiders.)
The temptation to humanize Holmes is, well, human. We may admire him for his faults. But Watson, Watson's wife (or wives), Mrs. Hudson, and her apparently numerous successors, all were long-suffering. Even brother Mycroft seems to have been more sociable, at least founding the Diogenes Club (no talking whatsoever, except in the Stranger's Room, which provides the setting for the penultimate scene). In the Holmes novel authorized by the estate, The House of Silk, Anthony Horowitz similarly gives us a Holmes who cares for the "street urchins" who form his invisible network of assistants; in the original works, Holmes regarded them without concern.
This Mr. Holmes is transformed. He is more mellow than his puckered expression would suggest. He smiles as if surprised by himself, and so makes us smile, surprised by him.