Not so Elementary
Written by Neha // January 5, 2012 // Media & Popular Culture // 8 Comments
He was elitist in an upper-class British way that Poirot was not, enchantingly foreign and unfamiliar in a way Feluda couldn’t be. His vices were carefully constructed, revealed to add simmering chutzpah to the brooding, neurotic detective. Reading Sherlock Holmes, the Holmes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was not a hobby; it was more of a mainline interest. Holmes did not beg you for your loyalty, he commanded it; he was sharp, uncompromising, his mind like a steeltrap, and he did you a large-hearted favour by sharing his intellect. The only other contemporary analogy I can find is with Batman, who shares Holmes’ calm, precise problem-solving approach, deriving equally from forensics as with observation.
Enter then, Hollywood’s Sherlock. He is played by Robert Downey Jr, one of my favourite actors. Robert, with his own eclectic personal history, plays flaws with a luscious relish, which explains him being a choice for playing Holmes even without the Holmesian physical attributes of beaked nose and towering height.
So there it was, at the time I went to watch the first instalment of Robert as Sherlock Holmes: he was going to be quirky, irreverent, and to use Doyle’s term, bohemian, I thought. And Robert was. He also did what Doyle’s Holmes did not do: he distractedly ran around dodging both bombs and beguiling women. The first movie was far from Doyle’s world, but it was also entertaining. For the just released Game of Shadows, I cannot even say that.
For such a Hollywoodised, bang-bang movie, Shadows does what a Hollywood action movie sets out to do. It has well-choreographed action sequences, chases (on horses, not cars, given the period setting) the action-man’s defining USP, the sardonic one-liners in between action sequences (when Holmes declares, from an ostensible equine phobia, that it is after all 1891, and they should be able to charter a balloon). In Guy Ritchie’s Holmes, the USP is the ability of the detective to predict moves during physical fights. He also does some weird martial arts, and runs around even more than in the first movie.
Doyle’s Holmes requires the careful, sepia touch of a Hitchcock, not the frantic jabbings of action movie directors. And a lot has been said in critique of Shadows. Where is the mystery, asks one reviewer. Holmes has been converted to a ‘needy character’, says another. In all, I would say the atmospheric that defines Holmes- his vast intellect, his condescending but concise manner, and his towering method of filling his own life with himself without the slightest hint of caricature- is missing. As Watson sums up succinctly in Valley of Fear: “Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work, even as he mourned darkly when it fell below the high level to which he aspired.”
So Guy’s Holmes is needy, flouncy, and decidedly more Jack Sparrow than Sherlock Holmes. Forgivable, in the vast grey chasm that lies between a director’s vision and box office formulas.
But what I cannot forgive Guy’s Sherlock is his particular brand of masochism.
In Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes’ faithful companion, Watson (given fire, life, and his own charisma in the movies, which did not exist in the books) breathes reverentially of Irene Adler, the only woman who Holmes seems to ever think of: the prototype of all women, in Watson’s exclamations, “the woman”. Irene is bewitching and bottomlessly enigmatic, all the things that make good female protagonists. But she is also something else. She is intelligent. So much so that she foils the great protagonist, Sherlock, himself. In the fictional and vast intellectual universe of Sherlock, this is what makes Irene the worthy woman- she has the smarts to hold up to Holmes. An equal then, on Holmes terms, and on his turf. This is what made her special to me.
Enter Hollywood’s Irene Adler. In both recent movies, Adler, played by Rachel McAdams is beautiful, bewitching, and enigmatic. But is she smarter than Sherlock, or for that matter, even smart enough? No. Of all the things she could have been depicted as ‘doing’, she is the oddball errand-runner of other criminal masterminds, a petty thief, and sometimes, a kinky poisoner. In Shadows, her intellectual presence is so diminutive it wouldn’t have been missed even if it wasn’t there.
To the other woman in Shadows, Watson’s newly-wedded, blonde, wide-eyed wife, Holmes behaves with the scorn reserved for a deep sea jellyfish likely to spurt venom at any given time. He chastises Watson for being married, but above all, Guy’s Sherlock indicates that all women are to be scorned at. They must fall in line with his instructions, or else (spoiler!) drown or be poisoned.
But Hollywood is often sexist. Why then, I thought, my particular derision to this unabashedly Hollywoodised series?
And Holmes is condescending, originally in Doyle’s books, and then in all the screen adaptations to follow. In the books, he treats Watson like a footstool or like a lapdog, depending on his mood, patronisingly tossing clues to Watson, after having already made the deductions himself. And this is an important point. Holmes is condescending towards men and women. In the movies however, Watson is ‘male’ enough to hold up to Holmes in the great physical tasks that Hollywood throws their way. In the first movie, Adler is competent, but on the ‘wrong’ moral side, and is left punished, handcuffed by Holmes. She uses seduction as a tool (another irritating, formulaic deviant from the original story, also observed in the TV version), and befitting that predictable movie-formula, requires rescuing.
A second reason why this annoys me is the very creation of Adler by Doyle is so cool cheap air jordans. It is rare to find a post-Victorian literary hero who acknowledges a woman as an equal because of her intellectual skill. Doyle’s Adler is witty, but not in the gay and chatty way of an Austen heroine, she is formidable, but not in the shady, criminal way she is depicted in the new movies. She was thus, for me, a little planet in herself within Doyle’s world, a luminous planet which was often remembered, and always as self-sufficient.
The Holmes I know does not ‘perform’ rescues. He may however, be allowed to be confused by women, in the way Stephen Hawking has just said he is. Hollywood’s Holmes to the girls rescue? Not so elementary at all.
8 Comments on "Not so Elementary"
Very perceptive. But the thing is, Guy Ritchie knows his audience, beer drinkers. And I guess that’s what he’s doing, playing to the (very macho) gallery and relying on Robert Downey’s insouciance to carry the day.
I agree almost completely. Would go further to say that it’s hollywood becoming bollywoodised, with the one-on-one fight scenes, machismo from heroes, and of course the essential happy ending. Wouldn’t have complained had it not been for the fact that I was watching what was supposed to be a Sherlock Holmes film! Sits ill with all my happy memories of reading Sherlock.
“a little planet in herself within Doyle’s world, a luminous planet which was often remembered”, loved the description. But why is Holmes masochistic? The machismo is evident, I can see. Haven’t watched the second in the series, but I actually found the wrestling and the violin in the first film interesting…..I didn’t see it as out of character with Holmes at all, I simply thought that these were things that the science of deduction lent itself very easily to, in the way Guy Ritchie interpreted them.
Bibek: thanks! You are right about Robert’s insouciance carrying the day. He lends himself well to eccentric characters. Having said that, Holmes is much more than eccentric, and I wish we could have a rendition which tries to create the book’s atmospherics.
Arghya: I completely agree, and the lines between Bollywood and Hollywood are so blurry now, especially in the action genre! I think I’m also a bit tired of the whole hold-your-breath-dont-blink action movies that have been shown over end 2011-12. Now if only Scorcese would make Sherlock, though..
Daya: Thanks! The interpretation of Sherlock as a pure action-genre doesn’t irk me as much as infusing it with old Hollywood formulas does. Was Irene Adler ever a romantic interest? No, she wasn’t, so why interpret her as one? Creating a very mainstream, familiar, male (and female) character takes away from my Sherlock experience. Also, ha, I wonder how it would be if they made Poirot with a girlfriend, or Feluda with an item number. What made these detectives more than the average joe/ crime-fighter was the persona, which I feel should be preserved!
I think what you’ve failed to appreciate is how the condescension you point out plays against the powerfully homoerotic narrative that Guy Ritchie attempts to spin in the sequel. Holmes doesn’t have a place for women in the movie, primarily with Watson stepping in as the traditional love interest: it is the two of them who engage in the give and take, the constant arguing, and the cold wars so definitive of any real couple. It’s not even an implied kind of narrative: note the scenes of the two of them huddling in a train compartment, or Holmes complaining about Watson’s repressing himself.
And sure, there are the token romantic interests in the story, but they’re dispatched off rather quickly to give proper reign to the real love story. Perhaps there is something misogynistic about Ritchie’s approach to the matter, but locating it in the realms of sexism leaves out some valuable perspectives.
Two important points here:
1. My critique stems from the fact that one, the Holmes we knew, the literary Holmes that Doyle created, has not been re-created. This wouldn’t be so problematic if Sherlock didn’t stand for what he does- which is action/ detective work paired with a unique persona. This is the persona in which condescension is reserved for men and women, ie on in which sexuality does not matter. Firstly then, this uniquely asexual persona has not been created (if it did, it would make for such interesting film!)
2. Further from this point, it is tiring and problematic that old Hollywood formulas have been infused in the already alienating rendering of Sherlock- these be Irene as a love interest, other mysterious women (all of whom have to tow Sherlock’s line, etc). While I agree there is a homo-erotic current between Sherlock and Watson, all indications seem to be that Irene will rise again- this time in turn for a proper ‘rescue’, which was also the main focus of the first movie. Why then, call the main character Sherlock Holmes?