Mr. Holmes
                                                                                        
Director: Bill Condon
Year: 2015
Rating: 7.0
At the age of 49, Sherlock Holmes retired to Sussex Downs as Doyle recounts in His Last Bow.

"But you have retired, Holmes. We heard of you as living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs.’ Exactly, Watson.  Here is the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of latter years!”  He picked up the volume from the table and read out the whole title, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen."

There have been stories written by others about Holmes years in Sussex, in particular a series of books by Laurie King. This film though is based on A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullen. It is a sad and melancholic film of Holmes in his final chapter. Ninety-three years old, unsteady of step and uncertain of mind. His friends and brother have passed and his memories are slowly escaping. But they still haunt him even if cloudy. He grabs for them in bits and pieces. He still takes care of his bees and has a housekeeper and her young son. Elegiac as it deals with old age and what comes with that. The great Sherlock Holmes searching in his mind for words and writing people's names on his shirt sleeve. It hurts to see because he is Holmes.



Played brilliantly by Ian McKellen who was 73 at the time but easily adds twenty years with makeup, speech patterns and a stiff creaky walk. There is no mystery in the film; only regrets over the past. He fixates on what was his final case (told in flashback) and what happened that drove him to retire, but the details won't come. And an instance in which he journeyed to Japan looking for a plant to help his memory but finding a mystery instead. These two cases meander carelessly through his mind slowly coming into focus. In another flashback, he goes to the movie theater to see a Sherlock Holmes movie. He calls it dreadful. The actor playing him is Nicholas Rowe, who was Sherlock in Young Sherlock Holmes. He can still be brilliant at times as when he looks at the housekeeper and surmises where she has been, but the darkness is creeping in. The certitude of ageing and death for all of us hovers throughout like a fine mist. The housekeeper is played by Laura Linney and the Japanese gentleman is Hiroyuki Sanada. It is slow moving, a near dirge but masterly acted and shot. Directed by Bill Condon, who also directed McKellan in the wonderful Gods and Monsters in 1998.