BEFORE: I'm getting a late start today because I had to sort my receipts from last year, we've got an afternoon meeting with a tax preparer, to get our returns filed now, instead of mid-April. We're trying to beat the rush, and we can then breathe a little easier once everything's filed.
I went on an actor-linking tear last week, since having a movie-watching schedule in place is another thing that helps me relax. Easter was no problem this year, I've got the perfect pair of films, and I can get there from here in exactly a week, that turned out to be a snap. But then I fooled around with the cast lists of some of the other films on my list, and I managed to get from Easter (April 1) to the upcoming Avengers movie, which at the time was scheduled to open on May 4. I figured I might not get to see it right away, considering the crowds, so I came up with a chain that would get me there somewhere in the week or two after May 4, but then of course they went ahead and moved the date of that film's release, so now it's April 27. (I guess it doesn't matter when I see it, as long as it's before the date I've picked to review it.). I actually had two paths to get there - the film's cast is so large, there must be a thousand ways for me to link to it - and one scheduled it earlier than the other, but I like the later model because it works in more films, it clears more off of my list.
Another reason to like the second path is that it allows me to place THREE appropriate films on Mother's Day weekend, and I was then able to extend it further, including the "Solo" Star Wars film, and then getting to a war movie for Memorial Day. But jeez, Father's Day is just a few weeks after that, was I able to extend the chain a little bit further? You betcha - maybe this week I can work on getting to an appropriate film for July 4, I've got one in mind, but right now that film doesn't link to anything else, so if that's as far as I can program, I can always switch over to documentaries for a while.
Today's film is my sneaky way to get back to more modern films, because I now allow characters to carry over from one film to another, even if no actors do. I don't expect it to follow the Basil Rathbone films exactly, but perhaps it will somehow, even if just in spirit.
THE PLOT: An aged, retired Sherlock Holmes deals with early dementia as he tries to remember his final case and a mysterious woman, whose memory haunts him. He also befriends a fan, the young son of his housekeeper, who wants him to work again.
OK, first off, this film restores the original timeline of Sherlock Holmes, that of being a prominent detective in the late 1800's, meaning that by the year 1947, when (some of) this film is set, he would be a much older man, and 93 is the age given here. So the accelerated timeline of the Basil Rathbone films is now tossed out - in fact, the plot here disregards all references to Holmes novels and movies, except to point out how the short stories (written by Watson, not Arthur Conan Doyle, within this fictional world) and the movies (with the actor who played in "Young Sherlock Holmes" reprising the role, sort of) managed to get everything wrong.
It's a bit like how in the Marvel Comics universe, the superheroes are well-known around the world because there are also comic books within that fictional universe, and the heroes allow the fictional Marvel Comics to publish stories of their heroics. It's very meta, but it probably all just started with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wanting to appear in their own comics as characters. On the other hand, the "Watchmen" comics posited that within a world with superheroes, there would be no need for comic books with superheroes, so everyone in that fictional world read pirate-based comics instead.
So this Mr. Holmes never wore a deerstalker hat, never smoked a pipe, and never even lived at 221B Baker Street, because why would a real detective with real enemies give out his real address? Nope, here he lived across the street, so he could see if any of his foes turned up at the address in the stories to do him harm. That's a trademark Sherlock Holmes move right there.
When we first see Holmes here he's finally left London for good, and moved up to a country home in Sussex where he maintains a hive of bees, in the belief that the queen's royal jelly will help extend his life, or at least restore his memory. He wants to take a stab at writing himself, relating the details of his final case - if only he could remember all of them.
We then get small bits and pieces of the final case, which took place just after World War I (30 years prior) and involved a man who wanted to find out why his wife was estranged from him, and why she was never at her music lessons that he was still paying for. Eventually Holmes follows her and watches her from afar as she forges checks with her husband's signature, checks on the details of his will, and then buys some poison. It sure seems like she's about to murder her husband, but is that really what's going on?
There's another set of flashbacks, too, and the film toggles between all three timelines in that annoying way where the viewer has to assemble everything on their end. The third timeline is an extended trip to Japan, which is set a few months before Holmes moves back to the country home. Holmes is a guest of an admirer from Japan, and together they search for a prickly ash, a plant which supposedly has better healing powers than that silly bee jelly.
There are some interesting connections between the three timelines, which to many would be enough justification for fracturing the timeline like this, but you probably know what I'm going to say about this practice - it's covering up the fact that the story wouldn't be interesting at all if told in the proper sequence. Any time one of the stories gets a bit of a slowdown, they can just cut to one of the other timelines, and it's a quick fix to cover up any pacing problems. But it's a cheap trick that wears thin very quickly, if you ask me. And there still isn't really enough of a story in any of the three timelines to have any sort of decent build-up or resolution.
But what's worse, what's always worse, is someone thinking that it's interesting to watch someone writing a story down. It's just NOT, and I've seen it in many, many films. And even worse than that is watching someone with writer's block, or in this case dementia, trying to write their story down. Essentially you're just watching some actor sitting there looking at a blank page, trying to find the right words, or trying to remember some facts about the past and at that point, a director should realize that he's just wasting everyone's time.
The relationship between Holmes and his housekeeper and her son is really the best thing about this film, and it's a great emotional awakening for a character who perhaps seemed very cold and emotionless in many of his cases. Maybe old age had an effect on him, especially if he'd seen everyone else in his life either die or leave in some fashion.
Starring Ian McKellen (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast"), Laura Linney (last seen in "Nocturnal Animals"), Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada (last heard in "Minions"), Hattie Morahan (also last seen in "Beauty and the Beast"), Patrick Kennedy (last seen in "Atonement"), Roger Allam (last seen in "The Queen"), Phil Davis (last seen in "Quadrophenia"), Frances de la Tour (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Colin Starkey, Nicholas Rowe (last seen in "Snowden"), Frances Barber, John Sessions (last seen in "Legend"), Sarah Crowden (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Hermione Corfield (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi").
RATING: 5 out of 10 glass harmonica lessons
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