Review of Mr. Holmes (2015) by Meritcoba — 31 Jul 2015

Holmes can not remember.

He can not remember what happened thirty five years ago when he investigated his last case.

Something must have caused him withdraw to the country to never take on another case again.

What made him exchange the buzzing streets of London for the buzzing sounds of the bees at his rural hideout?

Holmes forgot..

What does he remember?

A young man and his wife, a saddened young lady. And something about dead children.

But then his memories fail him.

For at ninety-three the great detective is becoming senile.

And Holmes has only his failing memories to supply him with the facts, for the stories that his friend Dr. Watson wrote were, to say the least, embellished. Penny dreadfuls as they were called. Gripping fantasies that sold because the boring truth did not.

And Watson himself can not help him either, for he has passed away several decades ago.

This then is the main story of the movie Mr Holmes, which has Ian McKellen play the great detective desperately trying to recall what happened.

McKellen is known by the general public for portraying the wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies(and by a smaller audience as the archvillain Magneto from the X-men movies) and he plays Holmes with great skill.

There is a certain similarity between Gandalf and Holmes. Both wizened intelligent men with unique skills but also loners.

There is also a great difference, or so the movie has it. For Holmes is a man of logic who has no patience for flights of fantasies and to a certain extent lacks in empathy.

Unlike Gandalf, whose sees the strength of character in both Bilbo and Frodo. He has the insight that Holmes lacks and which is ultimately Holmes weakness.

But even at ninety-three one can learn.

The acting by McKellen is impeccable. Believable would be the word that springs to mind. But the movie as a whole isn’t.

I can accept that Holmes is a man of cold logic, but the movie has to convince me that he also lacks a deeper insight into the soul of men. Or, more to the point, into the soul of a woman.

And I cannot believe that the greatest detective of the world would falter here just because the movie wants me to. Like a court suit it should build that case, but the movie spends less than fifteen minutes on the crucial episode. In fact, the episode is so underdeveloped that it isn’t even clear what the young man is asking Holmes to do. Holmes takes on the case without any clear goal in mind..

Otherwise the movie digresses. There is for instance an almost superfluous trip to Japan. And just too much time is spent on Holmes’ rural life and his progressing senility.

Ultimately the key relation is the one between Holmes and the young lady he investigates. And exactly this episode is so short that it is beyond belief that Holmes should have been deeply affected by the fate of this particular lady.For that the relation should have been developed more.

The concept kill your darlings once again should have been applied and the movie should have concentrated where it mattered. Instead the movie doesn’t spend enough time where it counts and meanders..

It doesn’t help either that at times the movie jolts you out of the suspension of disbelief by showing you scenes populated with neatly dressed people, shiny brand new cars and clean streets. Impeccable in a wrong way. The ultimate jolt for me was the wing of a German plane that stuck out of a patch of farmland. It was so obvious put out there that I could see the movie maker at work. Which isn’t a good thing.

And then the music. Movie classical music once more. The muzak of the filming industry. Highly unoriginal, but it serves the purpose. This is the choice of the uninspired.

Mr. Holmes is a nice movie and should be watched for the acting of Ian McKellen and the supporting cast. The bottomline is that the movie fails to convince because not enough attention is given to where it counts and too much where it doesn’t.