Sherlock Holmes' sitting room in Baker St.
I finally went to see the new Sherlock Holmes adaptation with no small amount of trepidation. For years, Holmes and I have been very well acquainted and I was afraid my clear, well-defined image of a character I so loved would be muddled and abused by watching the film. I walked into the movie theater slightly nervous, and came out…pleasantly surprised.
There is no doubt that Robert Downey Jr. plays a very different Sherlock — one without the hawk-like nose, questionable drug addiction and cat-like cleanliness of appearance. I knew within the first fifteen seconds of the film that this was not my Sherlock, the vision of which is very meticulously imagined in my mind. Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy Downey’s clever acting, or Jude Law’s surprisingly good turn as Watson, and the interesting banter between them, which I think was a bit limited and overshadowed by the looming heaviness of the action scenes. Downey was, as always, fascinating to watch, playing up Holmes’ eccentricity and lending his character a more whimsical air, which nicely counterbalanced Jude Law’s stolid but unstuffy Watson. I was also pleased to see that Law’s performance elevated Watson out of the dim and stodgy stereotype that has so plagued the poor fellow.
Despite the changes wrought in Sherlock by the film, I was surprised by the details that still rang true from the original stories. The deduction that a pocket watch with a scratched keyhole must belong to a drunken man was lifted straight from Conan Doyle’s pages, and the scene of Holmes engaging in bare-knuckle boxing had it’s roots in “The Sign of the Four”, in which Holmes greets a former boxing champ turned bodyguard with fond reminisces of their match against each other. There were even a few sprinklings of familiar Sherlock-isms; Downey lazes around his (uncharacteristically) sloppy Baker Street rooms and moans, “My mind rebels at stagnation.” Sadly, there were fewer lines in the script that allowed Downey to show the full extent of his character’s fierce intelligence, or the amusing mixture of arrogance and impatience with which Holmes often regards those of lesser intellectual powers.
I do wish, though, that the producers saw fit to use one of Conan Doyle’s real stories, or at least incorporate a few of them as a base for the plot. The invented mystery that Holmes was meant to investigate was of such grandly epic, Dan Brownian proportions that it failed to be engaging, just as the supposedly dastardly villain, Lord Blackwood, failed to be frightening, even when he rose from the cemented security of his grave. Apparently, it’s now a Hollywood fact that every movie villain must be bent on nothing short of world domination via some supernatural, pentacle-worshipping cult, or else audiences will yawn and withhold their dollars. Personally, I would have much preferred the nemesis to have been a Jefferson Hope or Jonathan Small from the stories — or, of course, a Professor Moriarity, who made a brief cameo entrance and will doubtless feature in the inevitable sequel, hopefully without supernatural powers.
As one New York Times article pointed out, Arthur Conan Doyle would have been seriously displeased with the implications of the plot, which sought to expose the men who dabbled in magic and spiritualism as frauds. It’s well known that Conan Doyle took an interest in the occult in his later life, and doubtless he would not have appreciated his characters being used in concert with such a plot…although I also suspect he would not have approved of the film in general.
My last gripe: as much fun as I’m sure it was to throw Holmes’ female nemesis Irene Adler in the mix to show the detective’s “sexier” side, I found her involvement in the case to be slightly misguided. Irene Adler was, if I remember correctly, not specifically a criminal, but rather a stage performer and clever adventuress — although I suppose, in Victorian England, that amounted to much the same thing. Again, it’s an action movie staple that the cavorting, adventure-bent men have to have some sort of feisty female side-kick who will join in the fun, preferably wearing perfect makeup and something attractive. A character with Irene Adler’s wit and self-possession deserved better representation.
Nevertheless, despite it’s faults, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed “Sherlock Holmes” for the rollicking, tongue-in-cheek adventure it was meant to be, and watching the film led me inevitably to the superior pleasure of re-reading the stories. Laid out before me again were all the tales I’d first devoured, and all the stories I thought I’d read, but found I hadn’t. “The Red-Headed League”, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”, “A Study in Scarlet”, “The Speckled Band” — nothing ever compares to the richness of these stories, and the cleverness with which Conan Doyle maneuvers his hero through them. I believe I will never, ever get tired of Holmes lazily spouting his powers of deduction from his armchair as if it were the simplest thing in the world, or tucking his chin to his chest, brow furrowed, pipe ablaze, to consider a new case. The classic, literary Sherlock is timeless — no movie adaptation, no Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett or Robert Downey, Jr., can ever change him in essentials. That’s the beauty of the character.
