Terribly sorry for the lateness of today’s post; winter break does tend to make time seem interestingly unimportant. (What is this time you speak of? Why does it matter what time I get up or go to bed or do absolutely anything? Come to think of it, I’m not going to do anything at all. I think I’ll just lie here on this couch and read this Philip Pullman book…)
At any rate, despite the fact that my own personal winter break has lasted just under a week so far, I’ve somehow managed to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie twice, and all in all I think it’s quite an interesting film.
There is something about Guy Ritchie movies that does something strange to my brain. There’s all this whirling and twirling around on screen, and then cut cut cut to someone’s face, and then slow motion, and look, they’ve just beaten each other up! Perhaps it’s an aftereffect of his relationship with Madonna; maybe he likes to rush through everything nowadays, just in case she’s lurking around the corner… I’m not sure, but both times through now, I’ve had the same problem with the Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows that I did with the first film. I simply cannot manage to concentrate on the plot the whole way through.
It starts off well enough. (Ignoring this handicap, I did love the first film and I also really liked this one.) Watson’s getting married, the dog might be dead, and our old friend Sherley is behaving, as usual, like someone desperately in need of the men in white coats. Irene Adler is doing her usual prancing around London, giving the audience sketchy glances and Sherlock ones of a different sort of nature. Moriarty brandishes his bristly beard. Fights narrated in metaphorical, culinary-related terms occur to Irish step-dancing music. A gypsy who may or may not be Lisbeth Salander makes an appearance and turns out to be the first step towards an intriguing mystery.
But there’s a heck of a lot going on at once. There are action scenes upon action scenes, interspersed with cryptic conversations and deductions that don’t make sense to ordinary mortals, at least on first hearing them. It’s hard to follow, at least in my case, and the mystery isn’t one that a person could attempt to solve on their own; we simply aren’t given enough information. The best bits, in my opinion, are the interesting little segments involving Sherlock in drag and Mycroft in the nude and Watson attempting to dance. The best part of all is a minute-long scene depicting how Sherlock gets where he’s going despite refusing to ride a horse. He rides a pony instead. A rather short pony.
My favorite parts, personally, was any time during which Stephen Fry was on-screen. I absolutely love Stephen Fry. I tend to watch him talk on Youtube when I’m in a bad mood. (I’m a person very prone to slavish worship of interesting creative people; it’s just how I am.) He writes funny books, and he acts brilliantly, and he’s also pretty much the closest a person can get to a real-life Albus Dumbledore. (See his speech on the Catholic church. Or don’t, if you’re Catholic; it’s a little controversial.) So I was really delighted to see him being Mycroft, even if my brain kept going LOOK LOOK IT’S STEPHEN FRY! rather than following along with his part of the story.
Anyway, despite zoning out during a few confusing action scenes that Guy Ritchie has sped through just a little to quickly for my tastes, I liked the movie very much and will probably go see it a third time, as my sister hasn’t seen it yet.
And my next Holmesian project — aside from finishing this year’s Sherlock season, which needs to happen before the new one is released in January — will be reading the books. Stay tuned for reviews of those, too!
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