John H. Watson, MD, has much to answer for; just ask this Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes created by American novelist Mitch Cullin, whose 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind is the basis of this beguiling film, has little time for the first-person narrator of all the detective's adventures.
He dismisses the books as "penny dreadfuls in an elevated prose style", tells us he never wore a deerstalker (a word Watson never used) or smoked a pipe ("I prefer a cigar") and that even the 221B Baker St address was a fiction to throw tourists off the scent.
The film adaptation, written by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Condon, who worked with McKellen on the wonderful Gods and Monsters, delivers us a unique Holmes: free of the cliched accoutrements, and seldom having recourse to the brilliant insights one character calls party tricks, he is instead a human being of complexity, plagued by uncertainty and not a little sadness.
In 1947, Holmes is 94, living as a hobby apiarist on the Sussex Downs with his widowed housekeeper (Linney) and her son Roger (Parker) and haunted by a 30-year-old case that he failed to bring to a successful conclusion.
The kicker is that he's losing his memory, so he has to dredge up the story, writing it into being for Roger (and us) as the film flashes back to bring the remembered events to life.
It's an enchanting conceit, sustained by bravura turns from McKellen at both ages - but particularly as the older man - and we are dragged deep into the story which involves a childless woman (Morahan) and introduces us to the oddest of musical instruments, a glass armonica and a mysterious German music teacher.
Intertextuality abounds - at one point Holmes goes to the cinema to see a film based on Watson's fictionalised version of the story we are in the middle of - but it never feels smart-arsed.
The story is an intricate puzzle though never even slightly difficult to follow. But in the end, it's a testament to the process of writing as a way of coming to terms with one's past, and a celebration of the redemptive power of fiction.
Cast: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan
Director: Bill Condon
Running time: 103 mins
Rating: PG (adult themes)
Verdict: Enchanting whimsy that creates a unique Holmes.
- TimeOut