I'm in a bit of an odd spot when it comes to talking about Sherlock Holmes.
I've never read any of the books (despite wanting to go over the years) and I hadn't seen any film adaptation. I've watched countless other Noir based films, detective stories, procedural. You name it.
But never Holmes himself.
Which now puts me in the awkward situation of trying to talk about a movie that acts as a partial deconstruction of the Sherlock Holmes Mythos.
With Ian McKellen playing an ageing, slightly more durwar Mr. Holmes.
Not just that but in this universe all of his stories exist in one form or another as him assistant Watson had written them all down it was the one to publish that stories.
In doing so created the Sherlock Holmes everybody knows. so now Ian McKellen's Sherlock has to live with the embellishments of his overly dramatic and romanticising former colleague.
That's a bit of a problem for me. I'm not entirely sure which aspects of Sherlock Holmes belong to the fictional stories and which ones are supposed to belong to the character of this film.
So I have to do something of a judgement call. which lucky enough the film does point out most of the time probably hoping to cover the base of the people don't watch Sherlock Holmes.
Our story takes place towards the end of Sherlock's life. At a staggering 93 years old he is now living out the rest of the days in retirement.
Taking to raising domestic bees on his own private estate with a housekeeper to manage his most basic Affairs.
She also brings with him a small child who's taken quite a liking to Sherlock.
Partly out of his celebrity status and partly out of pure childlike wonder for the activities of an older generation.
A fair bit of this film is just Sherlock and this little boy going around taking care of bees talking about Sherlock's previous Life as a detective pushing through the myths and mythology. Discussing just how serious one should be in their personal mannerisms. Which becomes an all more important when you realise that the small boy could turn into a right nasty little man if pushed in the wrong direction. Even Sherlock learns the value of some creative liberties if you can bring about a more positive conclusion.
On top of all of that we get a nice Prime secondary story of Sherlock trying to remember his very last case which has become increasingly more difficult with the onset of Alzheimer's.
Sherlock is trying to remember his days as a detective and wants to write a memoir about it something to off put the ridiculous fictional stories of his Mini cases for out the years.
But he's having a problem of remembering just what it is that happened especially towards his last case the one that forced him to give up on detective work all together some 30 years previously. It's with the aid of this young man urging him on to remember and helping them out with his mediocre activities that he's able to piece bit by bit together the strange events took place with that final case and its most unorthodox end.
He was also trying a few herbal substitutes to see if it would help his mind as well some of which involved royal jelly. A kind of Honey subscription created by bees that specially made for the Queen's consumption along with a another herb that requires travelling to Japan as to obtain it from the remnants of scorched-earth that had been so prevalent throughout Japan after the second World War.
And there is finally a tertiary story of the housekeeper wanting to leave the Estates to go live with her sister back in the city so that she can get her son away from Sherlock Holmes when she starting to be was a bad influence.
Overall we found it to be a very pleasant story. It has a dramatic moments for it needs it but it's nothing that's going to upset anybody while watching. And you can kind of gather where everything's going to go which is a little ironic given that it's a Sherlock Holmes story and you would suspect a slightly less linear Direction that's not really what the movie striving for.
Ian McKellen gives a fantastic performance as Mr. Holmes. The kid who plays the small boys is surprisingly good. You can always tell that he's an actor playing a certain character but he doesn't really take you out of the movie and his presence never becomes annoying.
The woman who plays the housekeepers a little hit and miss at moments. But I think that's more down to hold her characters emotionally written.
Some of the old age makeup was a little unrealistic for Ian McKellen but luckily it wasn't plastered on to hard. He didn't look like a character out of Star Trek. He just look like an Ian McKellen that want me to dress up as an old man.
Which luckily you don't have to deal with throughout the whole film in the few scenes where he's playing is traditional Sherlock Holmes he just looks like regular Mister McKellen.
Maybe it was just me getting used to it. But I swear the makeup got better towards the end of the film.
Or maybe it's just the TV I was watching it on.
Unfortunately I ended up watching a whole whack of movies on a new TV that shows this ultra high definition plasma thing.
I don't know what it is.
But it's one of those weird televisions that makes every single movie look like it's been filmed on a camcorder because they're trying to give you that hyper realistic look.
And it looks awful for a film.
It completely takes away the Cinematic Flair.
It looks great for television shows because they're already designed to look like that anyways. But when I'm watching a film I don't want it to look like it's an episode of EastEnders.
Comments
Post a Comment