Mr. Holmes
Directed by Bill Condon
Stars Ian McKellen, Milo Parker and Laura Linney
Now showing at AMC Woodlands 20, Regal Park Place Stadium 16, Muvico Sundial 18 + IMAX and AMC Veterans 24. Opens July 24 at Tampa Theatre.
mrholmesfilm.com
Mr. Holmes brings us a uniquely touching and captivating look at a legendary detective in his golden years, starring the inimitable Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf from Lord of the Rings).
After working on blockbusters like Dreamgirls and Breaking Dawn, director Bill Condon swims outside the adolescent mainstream to bring us an elegiac look at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock after his prime, based on Mitch Cullin's 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind.
Set in 1947, the movie introduces the viewer to a real-life Holmes, who doesn't wear that famous deerstalker hat or a cape. He prefers cigars to pipes, is a genteel and somewhat melancholy old man who grimaces at the novels and movies about his cases, stories penned by deceased partner Dr. John Watson. On the case of a lifetime, the 93-year-old detective must uncover clues that bring him face to face with his failing memory and painful regrets.
The film begins in Holmes's seaside retirement home, where he has befriended a precocious boy named Roger (Milo Parker), the son of a new maid (Laura Linney), who's become a trusty confidant — and a surrogate grandson of sorts. Roger, full of admiration, and no doubt feeling the void left by a father who died in World War II, snoops through Holmes's belongings and cajoles him into sharing stories and solving riddles. Though not overt, we see Roger rage against the dying of Holmes's light, engaging his elder pal in beekeeping tasks and storytelling that recapture his intellectual spark. Meanwhile, Holmes's tales emerge on screen as richly detailed, intertwining flashbacks of his tragic final case, which involved a suicidal woman mourning her stillbirths, and an oddly revelatory visit to Japan.
These stories aren't so much riveting in their subject matter but gut-punching in their revelations about Holmes as a man. We begin to see, not only from the retired sleuth, but through Roger and his mother and the characters in Holmes's tales, bittersweet truths about aging, loss, change and acceptance. If you have an older parent or have recently parted with one, Mr. Holmes will definitely hit home.
The performances are first-rate — though Linney is iffy at first but ultimately wins us over as she usually does. Incidentally, Condon's film provides a reunion between director Condon and Linney, who worked together in Kinsey, and between the director and McKellen, who collaborated on the fantastic Gods & Monsters.
Mr. Holmes should rightfully bring McKellen his first Oscar. We see him show remarkable range — in flashbacks as a dapper gent with faculties intact and, in the film's present, a weakened nonagenarian who experiences flashes of brilliance and lapses of humiliating senility.
Regardless of your taste in films, don't dismiss Mr. Holmes as another dull, mannered period drama or aging boomer-pandering British trifle (cough, Marigold Hotel films, cough). Mr. Holmes's tautly layered storytelling (adapted gracefully by screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher), unexpected warmth (with just a skosh of sentimentality) and eye-popping cinematography — aided by some smart editing and a gently breathtaking score — reveal that the greatest mysteries of all are uncovered from within ourselves.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.