I Watch Films: Mr Holmes

Mr Holmes

Ian Mckellan is a 93-year old Sherlock Holmes in 1947, trying to recall his last case, which was, I think, in 1919. What’s happened is this; he’s retired to keep bees, but seems to be losing his memory. When his brother Mycroft died last year, he sent Sherlock a case of all of Dr Watson’s publications of Sherlock’s cases. But there’s something wrong with the last one, more wrong that any of the others which were embellished and dramatized. Sherlock can’t remember, and the royal jelly he’s taking doesn’t seem to help. He’s been to Japan to seek out the Prickly Ash, which he hopes may help.

This is all told out of order, as we see him come back from Japan, meet with his housekeeper and her son, and tend to the bees. He can’t remember, so we’re kept a little confused. His housekeeper isn’t happy – she’s not signed on to be a nursemaid, she thinks that he’s teaching her son weirdly (?), and she’s looking for another job, one perhaps less isolated and dead-end.

There’s maybe four mysteries we’re presented with. What’s killing the bees? What went on in Japan? What was the case of the grey glove? And what is bothering Sherlock, that he can’t remember but is clearly important?

All of these are moderately interesting, but because the film is a lot of flashbacks with the main action being an increasingly frail Holmes tending bees and writing a memoir it feels vaguely unsatisfying. We’re being offered a conclusion to Sherlock Holmes that we don’t really want or need. And so in a decade of two great and one good Sherlock Holmes’s, Mckellan’s comes in fourth.

Pushing Will Ferrell into fifth.

Watch This: A slow, Sherlock Holmes-themed period meditation on mistakes and redemption
Don’t Watch This: You’re still working your way through Elementary