I'm going to keep the list fairly short. There was Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes; A Game of Shadows (2011) - Guy Ritchie films starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law: the British television series Sherlock (2010) starring Benedict Cumberbatch: Elementary (2012) an American television series starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. Those are the English language works that leap to mind. There was also Detective Dee; Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) directed by Hark Tsui and starring Tony Leung Ka Fai. Detective Dee is the only one not to explicitly reference Sherlock Holmes but I think this has less to do with a desire on the part of the writer and director to distance themselves from the body of Conan Doyle's work than the difficulities Mandarin speakers would have pronouncing the r-l combination in "Sherlock". In a side note, I have often wondered why so many peoples are saddled with names they cannot pronounce themselves. The Scottish are "Sco-itch", Irish are "Oirsh", and I had a professor of Oriental Philosophy who could only manage "Hor-rendl". Perhaps this accounts for my earlier question about why Asian is now the preferred term. Back to the Holmes question. I'm not going to say much more about Detective Dee but it is a very entertaining movie, well worth watching.
I am anxiously awaiting the third season of Sherlock. Cumberbatch is the least civil, most arrogant, least likable of all the reboot incarnations. All of the recent English language Holmeses have a disarming arrogance and compulsive need to solve problems but Miller's and Downey's versions are made to seem more human - they are given emotions we can relate to. They feel things we can understand and react accordingly. Cumberbatch's Holmes has a few moments (most notably in Season Two's The Hound of Baskerville) in which he struggles to express something like friendship for Watson (and fails miserably) but his motives are the most obscure. And, of the three, the visual style of Sherlock appeals most to me. Elementary has less sophisticated crimes than Sherlock but it also has Lucy Liu. Given the choice between looking at Lui or looking at Martin Freeman, I'm not going to strain myself pondering. Lui, it should also be said, makes Watson a more complete and complex character than either Law or Freeman but I am biased for the reason stated in the previous sentence.
The obvious question presenting itself is why no less than 4 reboots in the same number of years. What Holmes, in any of his incarnations, does is create the semblance of omniscience by careful observation and deductive reasoning. At least that's how the writers explain it. He is a hero, and narratively (or dramaturgically) more satisfying the less he acts like one. This is why Cumberbatch is my favourite Holmes; he's the rudest, least sensitive, more egotistical, and least likable. The sense in which he is a hero is more like Achilles than, say, Martin Luther King Jr. He is not a great person. He is a hero because he is capable of things beyond mere humans. His heroic gift is understanding.
The Hulk is strong, Spiderman shoots webs, Wolverine regenerates, Sherlock Holmes figures things out. Not people of course, they are completely beyond him. All heroes need a tragic flaw and the inability to bridge the gap between himself and everyone else is Holmes'. He is capable of understanding because he exists in a world where cause an effect follow each other in a completely rational manner. One thing all of the reboots have in common is there are no crimes of either passion or stupidity. Even in those cases where irrational motives cause the crime (hate, jealousy, envy, etc) the crimes themselves are meticulously planned. Sherlock Holmes' world operates according to rules and there are never exceptions. This is what makes the Holmes stories so satisfying (or more accurately, reassuring).
We can choose to believe the world we occupy functions like the world Holmes occupies - that things happen for reasons and the whole is ultimately comprehensible. The first of those choices (the belief is cause and effect) might be correct; I don't believe it entirely but it is a useful belief in many cases. The second is manifestly incorrect. The world, in its entirety, is not comprehensible. Not even those parts created by and for humans can be understood. Complexity, on a massive scale and with all its emergent properties, makes this an impossibility. Holmes real super-power is the ability to reassure us someone out there understands what's going on.
Look at the release dates again. The earliest is 2009. Given how long it takes to get from the first idea to the finished project, Ritchie's Holmes probably started to seem like a good idea around the same time the world's financial system started falling apart. In other words, about the same time some of the smartest and most knowledgeable people in the world had to admit even they had no clue how things really worked or what was causing them to stop working.
I know I have a fixation with the financial collapse. I relate it to our fascination with zombies, with various tropes in architecture, and now with Sherlock Holmes reboots. I think it marks an extremely important moment in our history. Previously the only proof we had the world was ultimately incomprehensible was provided by mathematicians and physicists - the practical definition of "people who can easily be ignored". In the last five years we have been forced to decide whether the financial systems that run our societies are controlled by wicked people who wish us harm or people who are basically well-intentioned but are the metaphorical equivalent of monkeys trying to fix a space shuttle. I vacillate. Most days I prefer to believe the people "in charge" (to the extent one can be in charge of something one doesn't understand and can't control) are not especially good people whose incompetence causes more damage than their ill-will.
And it isn't just our financial system that defies understanding. In my post on Piblokto Madness I agreed with (my hypothetical opinion I put into the mouth of Haruki) Murakami - the entirety of our existence is staggering complexity and continuous randomness combine in a world we can nevertheless navigate. Holmes, the hero, is the guide to this world. Nothing is too complex and randomness is a non-factor.
No comments:
Post a Comment