“Mr. Holmes”

Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

Don’t miss director Bill Condon’s film “Mr. Holmes”. I was entranced with some of the best acting I have seen. The seventy-six -year- old Ian McKellen is so masterful that he brings tears to the viewers’ eyes in his show of joy, of fear and of grief. This performance just can not be missed on the big screen. McKellen’s silences, his stares, his impatience and his show of regret are astounding.  Playing a ninety-three- year-old man,who is  still filled with the wonderment of learning about the world and how to live in it, touches our souls.

The film based on a novel I have not read, (Mitch Cullin’s “A Slight Trick of The Mind”) shows Holmes losing his belief in the absolute power of pure logic. At his most indulgent, Oliver Wendell Holmes (  a real person and true American  Brahmin and contemporary of Longfellow) once stated that “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind over-tasked”. Here  Arthur Conan Doyle’s character,Sherlock Holmes, rather cruelly learns that intuition and feeling reference things that logic alone can miss.

The subsequent suicide of a young woman thirty years ago had precipitated the end of Holmes’ career. Now,dealing with major memory loss (that his physician has asked him to document with dots in a journal), Holmes is sadly obedient. Conundrums now posed are bedeviled with lapses of short-term memory as simple as the name of his housekeeper’s son.

Roger is the ten-year-old son played by Milo Parker. His character is exceedingly gifted and in awe of our detective’s methodology and rational carriage. It is lovely to see Holmes correct this bright boy’s put-down of his mother’s language and reading acumen. We have the feeling that the younger Holmes was as saucy. Parker,too,is an amazing actor with his wide eyes and constant questions and sassy,quick comebacks. McKellen excels in showing his delight and approval all the while reminding us of what the grade school detective must have been like. Now,boy and man swim together in the sea. Enjoy the clear language of Holmes’ : “Come along or we will lose the day.” Whether working in his apiary or watching the film, “Lady Grey” where an actor stars as the detective, Holmes states that ” Logic is rare. I dwell on circumstance.” When Roger asks Mr.Holmes what will happen to his bees if he dies, our detective says, “I can’t solve everything!”

Age and the passage of time is a motif in all three storylines: the case that caused Holmes to retire,the widowed housekeeper’s work to provide for her son,and the misplaced revenge of a Japanese national. Flashbacks to Japan include Hiroshima-scared faces and ground devastation. Holmes brings back prickly ash,a supposed remedy for senility. Asked by the young Roger of the herb’s side effects, Holmes responds with “hope”. “Forgetfulness the cure.” When Mrs.Munro  (Laura Linney) asks what to do with it,Holmes snarkily says,”cook with it to enhance your specialities.” McKellin’s earlier groans and subtle question of ,”Is that for dinner?” are right-on delightful in their old age commonness.

Laura Linney is herself masterful. Her protectiveness,tenderness and anger will stay with you. “Spite” and “malice” are words her son uses. She marvels, “Where did you get words like that?” Still she has her mother’s lesson, “Lesson, there then. Don’t say everything you think.” You will knowing smile at the film’s and her last line: “The workers do the work.”Mrs. Munro is  not talking about the bees!

Besides incredible acting all around and multiple story lines,we learn factoids of bee husbandry, the glass harmonica, and how the dead are not so far away when they are remembered with love and with well-placed  stones. We learn that Watson saved Holmes by “bringing him back from the brink” and writing a fictional tale where Holmes was the hero. Early on we learn that there are many misconceptions about Holmes, wearing a hat and smoking a pipe are two. The wrong house address is another. One truth abides Holmes tells his young friend,”When you are a detective and a man visits you, it is usually about his wife.”

On Monday afternoon,at one thirty on July twentieth,2015, there were sixty people in the theater,all over sixty. All were drawn to the screen as soon as McKellen’s steam train left Cuckmere Haven Station. You will be drawn,too, as you learn about “Welsh pony” boys,invisible stories,Catholic “sins of desire”,cowardice cloaked in sacrifice and the fact that logic alone can not explain human nature.