Last weekend Mr. P and I got out to see "Sherlock Holmes." I'm a fan of Robert Downey Jr. and a bigger fan of Sherlock Holmes, so it was a must-see for me. I liked the movie a lot.
Reviewers on the web seem to be torn between "it's not kosher!"-type objections and appreciation for the fresh treatment. Here's what I liked about it:
1. It did not try to be "authentic." I think to have done so would have been box-office poison. The original stories and novels (and yes, I have read all of them, during a two-day, Percodan-laced binge following extraction of my wisdom teeth) had plentiful adventure, but in the style of the times. I personally love late-Victorian adventure writing; I don't think anyone's ever really done it better than Doyle, Haggard, Verne, Kipling, et al.; but it was made for a pre-cinema age and for a reading public whose primary entertainment was ... reading! And, of course, the stage. I don't see anything wrong with re-imagining great characters for a modern audience whose primary entertainments are on screen.
2. It did not over-explain. Holmes in the stories had to verbalize his deductions because, you know, in a book you can't see what's happening. The author only gives you the clues he wants to - and Doyle did not necessarily feed them all to the audience in a way that the average reader could put together. This movie treatment did, contrary to what one reviewer said, illustrate the method by which Holmes reached his conclusions.
3. It was not ultra-violent. The movie had plenty of action, thrills, chills, and mayhem, but it wasn't oppressive. Abundant humor in the script and (even more important) in the performances kept things clicking along nicely. Some witty editing helped, too.
4. It had a great villain (nicely acted and a terrific voice). I suspected there would be a non-supernatural explanation for everything; we've seen it before, done with much less panache and fun ("The Prestige," anyone?) but the fact is that people of that time were quite ready to embrace a supernatural terror. It was very easy then to fool a credulous public. (Even easier than it is now.) With the villain in "Sherlock Holmes," the only thing that wasn't adequately explained was his source of funds. Unacknowledged heirs commonly had a good bit of trouble getting their hands on the moolah.
5. Downey Jr.'s character reading and the production design. All the classic accoutrements of Sherlock Holmes are present, and the movie lets you see how he lives in and with them. It does not spend much time discussing how much time he puts into studying the newspapers, doing experiments, practicing disguises, tagging along to crime scenes, following miscreants, though evidence for all those activities is present in his rooms. There is only so much time in a movie, after all, and I think the director used it well. The star's performance - gruff, emotionally shut down, impatient, bipolar - is very true to the original character as written.
I will be delighted to add this one to the permanent collection when it becomes available. In the meantime, I may return to the original stories on those nights when I don't want to commit to a full-length book. And then I expect I will get sucked back into Laurie R. King's excellent Holmes series. It's a slippery slope!
Comments