Young Sherlock Holmes

For once, I wish Steven Spielberg would take his camera and go home. He's really getting on my nerves. He doesn't direct this picture, but once again, his fingers are all over it, and big gooey fingers they are too. He is beginning to reveal the limits of his range (“the limits of his capabilities” as Kay said of George in “The Last Convertible”) and if he doesn't do something quick, even his wonder-boy aura may not save him from oblivion (of course, in that event, he could always purchase a small island--or a large one--and retire to a life of opulent over-consumption). I'll be more than a little curious to see what happens with his “The Color Purple,” due out soon, and is, as best as I can determine, the first adult picture he has directed. In any event, why am I railing at Steven? Because, by his invidious influence, he takes what should have been a marvelous picture and cheapens it with his pop-horror sensibilities.

I enjoyed this picture, but the more I thought about it afterwards, the more dissatisfied I became, and the more I began to realize how much the entire structure had been designed to support a bunch of special effects better suited to some of Spielberg's more juvenile creations. But first. This is such a great idea, to explore the origins of Holmes. I, being a Holmes fan (though I can lay no claim to being an aficionado--it's been a while since I read the collected stories) was eager to see it. The possibilities appeared great. Though the picture does have more disclaimers than any other I've seen lately, mainly apologizing for the fact that they made this story up. Come on... that's stupid! Those of us who know the facts of Conan Doyle’s opus do not need to be told that this is an extrapolation, and those who do not will not care. One shouldn't be so apologetic about one’s premises--it undermines the viewer’s faith. I mean, when Nicolas Meyer wrote “The Seven Percent Solution” and “The West End Horror” he didn't apologize for the fact that Conan Doyle hadn't written them; he presented them to us as his own furtherance of the corpus. It was not necessary for the filmmakers here to tell us that this is a "speculation" or remind us that in the novels, Conan Doyle had already detailed the meeting of Holmes and Watson as adults. Really. They put one prominent disclaimer at the beginning and one at the end, I suppose just to ensure that nobody in the audience could simply indulge in the flight of fancy without feeling a little bit guilty.

But I digress. The picture is beautiful to look at--set and staged like the best “Christmas Carol” you ever saw, all Victorian England--plum pudding, snowfall on Jolly Olde England, ruddy men in mackinaws dining on pheasant. The period detail is rich and (to my untrained eye) flawless. There is that same delighted satisfaction in creating this world as we have seen in Barry Levinson's other pictures; it comes across as a labor of love. Levinson, who directed this, also directed “The Natural” and “Diner,” two pictures that I admire very much. And here he does a terrific job too, capturing that Holmesian era and maintaining pace and style except for when he is derailed by the Spielbergisms (we're getting to that). The story, natch, is about young Holmes solving a series of murders, but the real fun comes from watching the evolution of a persona which has been immortalized. There is a certain satisfaction in hearing him cry "The game is afoot” for the first time, and in seeing the origin of his deerstalker cap, his pipe, and his cloak, and even to learn the reasons for his later life of loneliness. And there are intriguing glimpses into his character, as when a group of the schoolboys are sitting around discussing what they want to be when they grow up, and Holmes, when asked, says, "I never want to be alone." Nicholas Rowe, a 19-year-old Etonian, is outstanding as Holmes; you sense the struggle of flaming emotion with the cool discipline of intellect (I couldn't help but think as I watched this, that Holmes has a good deal in common with Mr. Spock). Alan Cox is also very good as the young Watson, and the development of their friendship is handled quite nicely. One drawback is the intermittent voiceover narration (I suppose meant to be the grown Watson reflecting on those years) which I found to be redundant and distracting and wholly unnecessary. The young lady who plays Holmes’ first love is very lovely, in an almost Sphinxlike way, which I suppose compensates for the relatively shallow role she has to play.

So we have all this going for us--terrific performers, a great premise, beautiful period reconstructions, excellent direction, humor, and the delight in seeing a cultural icon fleshed out--where and why do things go awry? I suppose in part it has to do with the plot (the central mystery) but also the way in which that plot is manifested. It revolves around a group of Indian cultists who go around murdering respectable Englishmen for revenge reasons much too lame to bother with (not to mention too, too, too convoluted for its own good). Well, right off the bat we have trouble. Though the writer (Chris Columbus I think) gets credit for the script, there has got to be a lot of Steven in here. Indian cults? Ring a bell? Bizarre ritual murders in a huge red flamed temple? Sound familiar? Uh-huh, it's “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” all over again, and unfortunately, this aspect of the movie captures all of the claustrophobic unpleasantness of the earlier one. There is a problem here in that the plot is merely a variation on the old psychotic killer routine, hardly a fitting opponent for Holmes, whose specialty was villains of intellect, not psychosis. Spielberg really seems to be fixated on cults. Maybe he should join one.

The cult murders people by shooting them with tiny darts from a blowgun, which causes hallucinations so terrifying that the victim kills himself to escape reality (pretty complicated, if you ask me). Ah ha. What a marvelous excuse for some—you guessed it—special effects. Whoopee. The first hallucination segment is pretty chilling, and one, (the glass man one) is great to look at, but some of the others (especially the Harpy one and the bakery one) made me think (nauseatingly enough) of “Gremlins,” another picture (and an awful one) which wasn't directed by Spielberg but had his footprints all over it. One was fascinating, but not for visual reasons; it's the one Holmes has when he is hit with a dart, and it hints at some incident in his past that may have contributed to his development. The thing is, that's a cheat, they use it as a hook, which proves that the hallucinations are being used whatever way the filmmakers want. There is no consistency, which gives the lie to the whole notion. The point to all this is that they subvert this marvelous fancy, this lovely concoction, with a bunch of 80’s style SPFX which exist for the sole purpose of bringing in the jaded modern audience looking for a thrill. (OK, I'll say it—trying to appeal to the nitwit 14-year old crowd.) They lack the confidence to let this wonderful premise stand on its own, without the help of a bunch of mindless imagery. They even include a flying machine trip which is oh-so-like the bicycle flight in “E. T.” Spielberg is retreading himself here, and I don't think that's a good idea. The E.T. trip, the little mobile gremlins, the shaved-head cult chanting in the red glow of fire just before their temple is destroyed. We've seen it all before. It makes me think of the Bond series, and how when they started running out of new ideas they just started using old ideas again, until each picture just seems like a synthesis of those which had come before. Furthermore, I’m unimpressed with the caliber of the mystery, and even the deduction of the solution. I seem to recall that those in the books were much more cleverly plotted, and much more ingeniously resolved. Here the clues tend to fall at their feet (literally) and the deductive leaps are unconvincing.

Last but not least, I'm not happy with this film's depiction of the origin of Moriarty. Before I saw it, I was certain the film was going to show Moriarty as a youth too, and perhaps show the start of a rivalry with Holmes, even then, which would later go on to become that epic struggle between the forces of good and evil. But they didn't. I won't bother to say how they handled it, just that I found it a disappointment and a cop-out, and in fact a disservice to the notion of Moriarty. Moriarty must have been created as Moriarty, and I'll leave it at that. To say he evolved out of another, lesser criminal is to strip him of the aura that has made him one of the all-time immortal criminals. So that's about it (he said after rambling on interminably). A picture, in summary, full of good things, but with an annoying number of bad things, all of which could have been avoided if only the people involved had more confidence in their art. As it is, it just misses; instead of a fully resonant work, we are left with merely adequate entertainment. They didn't trust what they were doing, and from there all the flaws evolved. Elementary, eh? Elementary.