Mr. Holmes (2015): Investigating Himself

IMDB’s plot summary for the new Sherlock Holmes movie, Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen, anonymously and concisely describes the story as follows: “An aged, retired Sherlock Holmes looks back on his life, and grapples with an unsolved case involving a beautiful woman.” That’s a good enough précis to begin with.  To the extent there is a mystery involved, we don’t want to say too much.

Thinking about this latest installment of the SH brand, I kept wondering what exactly is the never-ending allure of Sherlock Holmes? One is tempted to suggest that it’s the clever plotlines by A. Conan Doyle, except for the fact that many S.H. motion pictures deviate dramatically from the source or are not based on Doyle stories at all.  So it must be something about the character of SH himself - his amazing powers of observation, say? Or is it his prodigious knowledge of arcane facts?  Perhaps his eccentricities (drug use, violin playing, seeming celibacy) have something to do with it?

By my count, there have been about seventy-five feature films featuring the Holmes character. The first one was short: a one-reeler in 1905. The first talkie came in 1929. Basil Rathbone famously played Holmes fourteen times, along with Nigel Bruce as faithful Dr. Watson, mostly in the 1940’s. All sorts of actors have taken on the Holmes mantle, including Christopher Lee, Roger Moore, Peter Cushing, Rupert Everett, and Robert Downey Jr. Well known actors taking on Watson have included John Mills, Patrick McNee, Robert Duvall and Jude Law. Even Lawrence Olivier got into a Sherlock Holmes movie, playing Professor Moriarty in The Seven Percent Solution (1976).

Oddly, interestingly, there were nearly two dozen SH movies released in the 1930’s and 40’s, but only one in the 1950’s and an average of just six per decade between 1960 and 2000. Why? It’s a mystery to me. More recently, since the turn of the millennium, we’ve already been graced with fourteen SH movies, and more are on the way, including a third feature with Downey, Jr. and Law, another season of Sherlock with Cumberbatch and Freeman, and a fourth season of the CBS series, Elementary. Why the sudden upsurge? Again, I haven’t a clue. Perhaps a dear reader can elucidate.

In any event, Mr. Holmes - like most SH movies - is not so much about plot; rather, it’s concerned with character, mood, and a sort of late-life coming of age, if you will.  This iteration features a new take on the canonical character: an elderly, doddery Sherlock. It’s 1947, and 93-year-old Holmes is living on his country estate in Sussex, tended by a capable but crotchety housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney) and her young son, Roger (Milo Parker), who idolizes and tries to emulate him.  McKellen is a quite spry seventy-six year old, but his SH is made to look twenty years older and while not frail exactly, definitely at risk. The once great detective is having difficulty recalling things – to the point that he has taken to writing the names of the people around him on his sleeve cuffs for easy reference, to avoid embarrassment. He is still clever and imperious, but a bit less fervent and perhaps less inquisitive than the SH we typically see. He has slowed down. The fading memory is worrisome, as it would be to anyone, but especially so to old Holmes, because he is attempting to write about his final case - the one that led him to retire from sleuthing thirty-five years ago. The existing account published by the late Dr. Watson was, in Holmes’ view, a work of fiction. (Amusingly, this  SH feels that way about the entire Watson oeuvre.) Watson was more hagiographer than journalist, and preferred neat, tidy endings to his SH stories; but life is not always like that, certainly not in this instance. Now, Holmes is in a race against his advancing dementia to set the record straight. 

But it’s more than that. Holmes’ last case, written up as the “Case of the Glass Harmonicist”, took  place in a different time, a time of more certainty - before the Great War, before the depression of the inter-war years, and before the Second World War killed off imperial England, widowed Mrs. Munro, and left Roger fatherless. As the film opens, SH has just returned from occupied Japan where he had gone to seek a rare form of prickly ash, the bark of which was said to slow or cure memory disorders. Seen in flashback, the search takes Holmes to the ruins of Nagasaki. This revered, worldly Victorian man, who prided himself on understanding the human psyche, is moved and clearly shaken by the devastation he sees. It is incomprehensible that man could inflict such a horror on fellow humans. Holmes says nothing, but we can read this plain as day in his look and physical attitude.  In that moment, as he watches an old Japanese survivor creating a memorial for his lost family out of placed stones, we also see a deep sadness coming over Holmes, and perhaps also the sense of a gloomy parallel between his advancing fate and that of the world.

The Japan trip forms one strand of the overall tale.  While there, Holmes’ guide asks SH if he knows what happened to his  (the guide's) father, an SH fan who had gone to England years before, hoping to meet his idol. But he never returned and has not been heard from. Holmes bluntly and callously tells his interlocutor that he has no idea.

More significant is the back-story about the glass harmonicist, the mysterious and attractive Mrs. Kelmot, whom Holmes was engaged to follow by her concerned husband. The Kelmots’ story is not particularly complicated, but it definitely has the air of a mystery.  Holmes found himself drawn to the unhappy, but beautiful Mrs Kelmot (Hattie Morahan, in a delicate , superb performance), and it’s through their brief relationship that we come to understand Holmes’ eventual epiphanies.

Ian McKellen is, of course, one of the great stage and screen actors of our time. He gives a grand yet understated performance as old Mr. Holmes, struggling desperately to recollect earlier events in his life. Eventually, as the incidents of the Kelmot case gradually do come back to him, piece by piece in sudden, vivid flashbacks, Holmes experiences anew the anguish he felt those many years ago. Back then, through sadness and pain, Holmes gained a sort of enlightenment, and now, in old age, he rediscovers it. McKellen conveys all this  - silently, convincingly, achingly, remarkably - with his body and with his eyes. If you are an Ian McKellen fan (and you should be), Mr. Holmes is worth seeing just to watch the master actor at work.

While the prevailing mood of this movie is melancholy, Mr. Holmes is not gloomy. There is some light, some humor, and a developing warmth as it goes along – a bit surprising in a story about the notoriously cold, unfeeling Sherlock. Amidst his personal crisis and his reverie, SH is still living in the present, taking some pleasure in mentoring young Roger, teaching him about his apiary and, through the study of bees, something about the world at large. He understands, I imagine, that he is the father figure the boy needs and that he, too, needs to care for someone. But there’s tension in the household, as Mrs. Munro becomes wary and jealous of Holmes’ relationship with her son.  Laura Linney does a very nice job as the housekeeper/mom, although her role is mostly on the sidelines.  (Linney, one of my  longstanding cinema girlfriends, was padded up for her role and so believably stout that after the movie I had to Google recent photos to reassure myself she had not, in fact, developed the matronly figure of her character!)

All these story strands eventually meld, loose ends are tied up and mysteries are resolved.  Mr. Holmes is a leisurely yet intriguing movie – as much a psychological study as a mystery.  The tone is quiet and pensive, and the mood is as much yearning as it is melancholy. The ending is a little too “nice”: heartwarming and reassuring, but this did not take away from my overall enjoyment, and may have actually added to it. 

I can definitely recommend this interesting film to my boomer-generation friends. I have to wonder if it will work as well for younger adults. If you fall into that category and have seen Mr. Holmes, I’d love to hear what you think.

In wide release.