The Guinness Book of World Records officially determined in 2012 that no human being had been played more often on film than the character of Sherlock Holmes.
Since his screen debut in 1900--only thirteen years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created him--we've had the classic Homes played by Basil Rathbone, and the cocaine-addled one played by Nicol Williamson. We've had "Young Sherlock Homes" and "The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother." In the last decade alone, three contemporary takes on Holmes have inspired popular TV shows ("Sherlock," "Elementary," and "House").
Now, in Bill Condon's movie "Mr. Holmes," we get Old Man Sherlock (Ian McKellen), long-since retired and living out his days tending the apiary at his cottage on the southern coast of England. He is tended to by a long-serving (and long-suffering) housekeeper (Laura Linney), while her young son (Milo Parker) provides the closest thing Holmes seems to have to a friend.
It's 1947, and the great detective, in his 90s, has just returned from a trip to Japan in search of a medicinal plant he hopes will help slow the degradation of his once-impeccable memory. The inevitable toll age takes on a person's mental faculties is even more poignant when the mind in question is a unique specimen like Holmes'.
In this version of the myth, Holmes is a real-world character whose exploits were rendered in print by his sidekick and amanuensis Dr. Watson, who's long since dead. In one charming scene, McKellen goes to a film based on one of his cases and is aghast at the inaccurate melodrama on display.
Determined to set down his own version of events, Holmes struggles to remember the details of his last case, 30 years earlier, involving a husband's concern for his grief-stricken wife. The story, though, isn't the final deductive triumph you might expect. It's much more of an elegy, not just for the man himself, but for the rational, absolutist worldview he represents.
"Mr. Holmes" hops through three time-frames, flashing back not only to the case in question, but also to Holmes' recent journey, on which his Japanese guide (Hiroyuki Sanada) reveals a hidden connection with another part of Holmes' past. In all three periods, Holmes is forced to confront his flaws and limitations.
If that sounds like a bit of a downer, it is. But McKellen's performance, aided at times by some pretty good old-age makeup, preserves enough of the acerbic ego we expect from Holmes to keep things punchy. Linney, curiously cast, works out fine as the scolding, brusque Mrs. Munro, while Parker gives a restrained, believable juvenile performance.
There's a certain symmetry between this film and 1998's "Gods and Monsters," the movie that brought Condon to prominence. In that film, McKellen played Hollywood director James Whale. Both films, adapted from novels, center on men born in Victorian England trying to cope with changes in the world and in themselves. In the interim, Condon worked on splashy Hollywood musicals (he wrote "Chicago" and wrote and directed "Dreamgirls") and made a couple of "Twilight" films.
Now, reunited with the star of his first big success, Condon has made a move that's almost too much of a relaxed exhalation. Apart from the lead performance, this is an awfully sleepy take on one of the most alert characters in literature. But McKellen's work is enough to make this a notable addition to the more than 250 Sherlocks captured on film over the years. There will always be plenty of fictional geniuses solving impossible crimes, but Holmes, it turns out, it where the heart is.
-- Marc Mohan for The Oregonian/OregonLive
***
"MR. HOLMES"
Grade: B
Rating: PG
Running time: 104 minutes
Playing at: Opens Friday, July 17 at multiple locations
Cast and crew: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada; directed by Bill Condon
The lowdown: In 1947, a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) struggles to remember the details of his last case thirty years earlier. Less a mystery than an elegy, somewhat buoyed by McKellen's spirited performance.