Sherlock Holmes Screen Spotlight: Ian McKellen in the Elegiac Drama ‘Mr. Holmes’
Director Bill Condon explores the end of Sherlock Holmes’ life, as the detective confronts his fears and regrets in this affecting 2015 drama starring Ian McKellen.
What would Sherlock Holmes be without his vaunted intellect? That’s the question explored in director Bill Condon’s 2015 film Mr. Holmes, adapted from the 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin. While there’s a somewhat traditional Holmesian mystery threaded throughout the film, Mr. Holmes is a more contemplative story about an old man coming to terms with his regrets and finding human connection at the end of his life.
Ian McKellen brings the perfect mix of playfulness and vulnerability to his portrayal of Holmes during two time periods. The main story takes place in 1947, as the 93-year-old Holmes has been retired for decades, living a quiet life on a Sussex estate where he spends his time engaged in beekeeping. As the movie begins, Holmes has just returned from a trip to Japan, where he sought out the plant known as prickly ash, which supposedly has medicinal properties that can counteract his failing memory.
That failing memory clouds Holmes’ ability to recall the details of his final case, which appears in sporadic flashbacks featuring McKellen as the younger (but still aging) detective, working alone in London. Holmes’ longtime associate Dr. John Watson has left him behind in order to get married, and Holmes is saddled with the distorted reputation created by the fictionalized books that Watson wrote about the cases they worked together.
“I think I was real once, until John made me into fiction,” Holmes says, and he spends much of Mr. Holmes contending with that complex legacy, on personal and professional levels. The case that drove Holmes to give up investigating was sensationalized in Watson’s final book and a subsequent film adaptation, but Holmes wants to remember what really happened, rather than the cheesy movie version. Condon tweaks the tradition of Holmes films by showing clips from a movie within the movie, featuring onetime Holmes actor Nicholas Rowe (Young Sherlock Holmes) as the bombastic cinematic Holmes.
As frail and addled as he may be, Holmes still values the truth, and he can’t find peace until he confronts the mistakes he made in the past. That also means reaching out to people in the present, and the central relationship in Mr. Holmes is a sweet friendship between Holmes and the young Roger (Milo Parker), son of his live-in housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney). In his earlier days, Holmes was too distant and aloof with people like his brother Mycroft and his friend Watson, and now he forms a genuine fatherly connection Roger, who’s eager to learn about Holmes’ apiary.
The flashbacks to post-World War I London feature Mr. Holmes’ most recognizable detective-story elements. Holmes is hired by a distraught man to follow his grieving wife, whom he believes has been influenced by a controlling music teacher and spiritualist. It’s not an elaborate mystery, and the solution is not about unveiling a culprit or uncovering a conspiracy. It’s about Holmes’ own emotional shortcomings, the way he relies on logic at the expense of empathy.
That could make Mr. Holmes a bit frustrating for anyone expecting a satisfying mystery to solve, but the movie is satisfying in a different way. It has all the heartfelt warmth that Holmes denied himself during much of his life, but he now finds in the simple pleasure of teaching Roger about beekeeping — and about being a detective.
“Did you do the thing?” Roger asks excitedly about Holmes’ meeting with his final client, referring to the detective’s famous ability to deduce a person’s entire history from just one look at their attire and mannerisms. Holmes can still “do the thing,” but what’s more important is that he now understands the value of other things, too. With his lively presence and debonair style, McKellen could have made for a great peak-era Holmes, but here he carves out a unique portrayal of the character, as Holmes figures out the simple mystery of kindness and generosity of spirit.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for the Boston Globe, Vulture, Tom’s Guide, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.