Dumbing Down Sherlock

While the new Sherlock Holmes does keep up Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tradition of mysteriously sexy titles, the second installment of the Guy Ritchie-helmed movie duology (and maybe more) clarifies the universe that ensconces his interpretation of the most loved misogynist in popular culture this side of Doctors Sheldon Cooper and Gregory House, and although it has proved to be markedly different from what you would've expected from London's finest, it's not all that bad. There are many many many versions of Sherlock Holmes, most recent and contemporary to the film is the  BBC's Steven Moffat-written, much lauded update starring Sherlock reincarnate Benedict Cumberbatch, and while purists will point to a sort of full circle with the comparison between Holmes & House, considering that Doyle based Holmes on a medical practitioner in the West Indies, Guy Ritchie's Holmes (series) is not a complete waste of time.

For the uninitiated, Sherlock Holmes is a consulting detective - he's not as much a celebrated, meddlesome know-it-all, as he is a violin-playing society-rejecting anarchist who believes his brilliance compensates for an acute shortage of social graces or seeing the need for them. He's beyond observant, cultivates information into the sorted shelves of knowledge in his mind, and is the occasional coke-head, and while he does have a profound working knowledge of the martial arts, he rarely engages in physical combat and only carries weapons on himself when imperative. His relationship with Dr. Watson, his trusted aide, blown so far out of proportion with the gay jokes in the films, is one based on respect from the 'good doctor' and a sort of good-natured though remorseless exploitation of the doctor that is brought to life in the now epochal "Come at once if convenient, if inconvenient come anyway." The doctor is often the metaphor for the bored common man, tagging along, watching the genius of Holmes at work from close quarters, safely assuming the security blanket that Holmes' ways provide extend over himself, documenting what needs documenting in a clerical fashion typical of understudies and apprentices.

But if you grew up in a world that opened its eyes to satellite TV and never picked up a Sherlock Holmes, making a beeline for that (apparently) great mystery writer Agatha Christie instead, you will end up expecting tight-wound mystery where there's supposed to be none. Fact is, very few of the short stories are about great mystery - The Speckled Band being the most oft-cited example. The literature around Holmes as written by Doyle was always just that, literature around Holmes - a convenient room-mate & living conditions, well juxtaposed siblings and symbolic, unnatural tendencies. Right from the Sign of Four to The Valley of Fear (or the Case-book), Doyle showed us what we wanted to see, how we wanted to see it throughout his canon - an Ubermensch through the eyes of someone who wasn't - Watson's critique of Holmes in early stories could be interpreted at times as suitable jealousy pangs. And while the pleasure of reading Sherlock Holmes was in the unwinding of the case that his genius let us in on at the end, those that aren't familiar with the literature and yet feel an urge to get with the films because hey, it's Gaye Reechee, might not feel shorthanded.

That we live in a world where we love to super-size everything, it is these eccentricities of Holmes that get blown way out of proportion on the big screen, which means an erstwhile mellow gentleman who gets around well with the urchins and street-dwellers becomes a manic, thrill-seeking, parkour-wielding wit monger who attends bachelor parties and peace conferences with a swagger that is unrecognizable to anyone familiar to the canon. The boxing and drug binges that are often left to the unwritten word and the reader's imagination in the 'texts' becomes the mainstay in the set of films, with tame witticism and expert CGI brought in to supplant the evocation of character; to the point that in a scene where Robert Downey Jr. throws the rather lovely Kelly Reilly off a train in one of the sequences, he proceeds to markedly parody/pay homage to Heath Ledger's joker in a sort of retarded misplaced reference trope. It doesn't help that he smokes the pipe exactly once throughout the marathon runtime of the film.

Although I wasn't hoping for a great mystery plot, the Game of Shadows does have some imaginative story arcs. The meetings between Holmes and his arch-nemesis to-be-or-not-to-be Professor James Moriarty are enjoyable in the same vein that that one scene from Dhoom when John Abraham & Abhishek Bachchan sans kid walk side by side. The funniest scenes of the film feature a naked Stephen Fry; our daring duo lying on the floor on a train in the midst of heavy machine gun fire and Jude Law firing a believably early version of a mortar cannon, and while that might be problem for the pedantic Holmes fan in you, it does redeem what is a thinly veiled giant allusion to the creation of a pan-European business order, another badly placed reference to the real world outside. I'm a fan of Rachel McAdams' Milady De Winter-filtered Irene Adler, her character's early death in the film is disheartening.

Compared to this, and the comparison is automated in my head because of the contemporary nature of the projects, the BBC series is Kanye West/Jay Z-level GOLD - the update to the 21st century is well rounded, a snazzy woolen trench coat-clad Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman play believable tenants and the liberties that the script takes are well compensated by a healthy dose of all that is awesome about Holmes, including his occasional naivete, tobacco and a shiny new minimalist magnifying glass.

So if you know nothing about Sherlock Holmes, have no clue what he does and how he does it, care little for the increasingly alienating nature of story-telling in mainstream global cinema, I propose you watch Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows - if not as a surely more entertaining alternative to the Anil Kapoor-starring rehash that is Mission Impossible Whichever to spend your weekend grand on, then as an entry point into the world of a man, whose existence if conclusively disproved will surely be a disappointment to young boys and old men everywhere. This, I'm afraid, is the only aspect of the film that makes it worth going to watch - that in pandering to the slick violence and empowered women brigade, the film looks good enough to watch once, and at the very least leaves the audience exiting the cinema hall poised to potentially cross the threshold to being a Sherlock Holmes fan.