Arthur and George (Book review)

 

Arthur and George is a 2005 novel by English author Julian Barnes.

The novel is inspired of the true story of the author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and the lawyer George Edalji (1876-1953). Edalji was the son of a Parsi Indian vicar in the Anglican church. The family lived in a small rural English village of Great Wyrley, and in the 1890s they became the target of a serious campaign of harassment via abusive anonymous letters. Their plight was not taken seriously by the village community or the police, and they were even accused of having written the letters themselves. The letters stopped arriving in the late 1890s, only for the harassment to resume in the early 1900s.

In 1903 George was convicted on dubious circumstantial evidence of having perpetrated a series of mutilations on farm animals in Great Wyrley, ultimately serving three years in prison. This miscarriage of justice raised great outrage, even after Edalji’s release. The conviction meant that Edalji lost his career as a solicitor. Eventually the case was brought to the attention of the famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle became the leading figure in the campaign against Edalji’s conviction, writing articles and letters criticizing the unjust conviction. Thanks to his efforts and others, Edalji was pardoned of the charge of mutilating the animals, but he was still accused of writing some of the letters. He was thus denied compensation for his years in prison, but was able to return to work as a solicitor. The Edalji case was a major reason for the creation of a British court of appeal for criminal cases.

This fascinating story is told in Barnes’s novel. It sticks fairly close to historical fact from what I can tell, but its depiction of the internal thoughts and feelings of its characters are clearly the fictional invention of the novelist. This is acceptable, as the book doesn’t purport to be a non-fiction account.

The first part of the novel is a parallel biography of Doyle and Edalji. Doyle rose from humble beginnings to become a celebrated author. The novel might have lionized Doyle, but it complicates the image of him. It takes its time to tell the complex story of his first wife Louise Hawkins, affectionally called Touie. In the early 1890s, she fell ill with tuberculosis, a disease that would ultimately claim her life in 1906. During Louise’s long illness, Doyle cared for her, but in 1897 he also met and fell in love with Jean Leckie. He carried on a platonic but emotional affair with Jean, trying to hide it from his wife, ultimately marrying Leckie in 1907 after his first wife’s death.

In the novel, the morality of Doyle’s actions fill him with doubt. He loves Jean behind his wife’s back, but out of a sense of honour for her, he keeps the affair platonic and does truly care for her well-being. The novel implies that the doubts about his own conduct is why he throws himself into the Edalji case, as a distraction and way to restore his own sense of honour and morality. Still, it treats his views on Edalji’s innocence as fully sincere.

Doyle's complex attitude to his creation Sherlock Holmes is another theme. He disliked being identified solely as the creator of Holmes, regarding his other work such as his historical novels and his spritualist and political activism as being more important. But being the inventor of the brilliant detective is what gives Doyle his fame and gives his actions in the Edalji case more weight to the general public. His opponents also use it to dismiss him.

Edalji, of course had a much more difficult life. A simpler book would make him just an innocent victim, but the novel gives him a full personality, even if the narrative correctly never leaves his complete innocence in doubt. Edalji is depicted as as a solitary and phlegmatic person, who neither smoked or drank or ever married.

He has a firm sense of identity in being english, and a strong believer in the country’s laws and rules, until his conviction is shaken by his false conviction. Despite obviously being the victim of racist persecution, Edalji, firmly convinced of his own englishness, personally discounted that as an explanation for why some people strongly disliked him.

This gives him a point of commonality with Doyle, who was the son of two Irish immigrants to Scotland, yet regarded himself as English. As Doyle points out when they first meet, both him and Edalji are “unofficial Englishmen”. And the complexities of English identity is a major theme in the book. Edalji is the strongest believer in English laws and rules, yet is betrayed by its legal system. And Doyle develops a strong moral code inspired by romanticized tales of English knights and the mythical English king Arthur with who he shares his name, a code that is shaken by his own emotions and actions in his love affairs.

Arthur & George is a fine novel. The true history of Doyle and Edalji is a fascinating story on its own, but its fictionalized telling in Barnes’s novel is remarkable for its power. The prose is beautiful, as is the depth and complexity of its characterization.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (film review/analysis)

 

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a 1970 film, directed by Billy Wilder and written by Wilder I. A. L. Diamond. It stars Robert Stephens as Sherlock Holmes and Colin Blakely as Doctor Watson.

The film features two original stories by the scriptwriters and presents an unusual take on the character of Sherlock Holmes. It is an highly interesting take as well, and I want to try to analyze it in depth, so besides this being a review it is a also an analysis of the film’s themes. I’m going to discuss the film’s plot in detail, I suggest watching it before reading this, it is a really good movie.

The idea at the heart of this film is that there is a difference between the in-universe reality of Holmes and the figure presented in the stories told by Watson and published in the Strand Magazine. This conceit is supported by canon, where Holmes does complain of Watson embellishing and romanticizing the stories, and of making Holmes seem almost infallible.

This idea is used to both dramatic and comedic effect. There are several jokes about the embellishments Watson has made, which include making Holmes taller by three inches and exaggerating Holmes’s violin playing skills.

But this premise develops into a serious theme: the difference between truth and fiction, both in the form of positive ideals and cunning deceit. Tied into this is a similar conflict between idealism and cynicism. The film also wants to explore the human desire for fiction, heroes and ideals. There is an ambiguity to these conflicts, one almost personified in the film by Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes claims to resent the idealized fictions created by Watson, yet he tries to be the hero Watson thinks him to be. Holmes complains about being expected by the reading public to wear the deerstalker and inverness cape, yet he still wears them.

Part of the reason for this might be that he is in love with Watson. The first part of the film tells a story where Holmes, in order to get out of an embarrassing situation lies and says he and Watson are in a romantic relationship. Watson is furious, but the viewer is left with the suggestion that it is not just a convenient lie for Holmes. Holmes speaks of five happy years together with Watson with an air of sincere wistfulness that suggests that he privately wants a romantic relationship between them to be true. So Holmes trying to be what Watson wants him to be might be an expression of his repressed love.

Of course, that is only part of it. Holmes also wants to be the romantic hero, despite everything. He is an idealistic man on a probably doomed crusade against the evils of the world.

The plot of the film’s second story brings the idealism of Sherlock into conflict with a cynical reality. Holmes investigates a case that seems like a traditional Holmes story: a mysterious damsel in distress, Ms. Valladon turns up unexpectedly on the doorstep of 221B and asks Holmes to find her missing husband. Holmes investigates the case, but is contacted by his brother Mycroft.

Mycroft is here presented as a Machiavellian and ruthless spy master for the British government. It is extrapolated from the Mycroft of the Bruce-Partington Plans, although the lean figure portrayed by Christopher Lee is very different from the “corpulent” canonical Mycroft.

Mycroft represents the cynical counterpoint to Sherlock’s idealism. His world is one of ruthless international espionage, technology and warfare. There might be a similar interplay between fiction and reality as in that of Holmes and Watson, but here it is about the complex web of deceptions and betrayals among spies.

Mycroft orders Sherlock to drop the case of Ms. Valladon on the behalf of the interests of the British government, without explaining exactly what those interests are. Sherlock however idealistically persists in helping Ms. Valladon and investigates the case despite disapproval from Mycroft and the government. The trail leads Sherlock to Loch Ness, where the root of the mystery seems to involve a sinister scheme involving a fake Loch Ness monster. In another case of this film’s themes of deception vs reality, Sherlock and Valladon pretend to be a married couple named Ashdown.

But eventually, the person behind the sinister scheme is revealed to be Mycroft. He is testing a submarine for the British Navy, disguising it as the monster. Mycroft reveals that Ms. Valladon is actually a German spy, named Ilse von Hoffmansthal.  She is using Sherlock to reveal information on the submarine. What seems at first to be a typical Holmesian mystery story reveals itself to be a subversion.

Holmes’ deductions are correct and lead him straight to the submarine mystery, but he fails to deduce the true nature of Ms. Valladon/von Hoffmansthal, thus falling into her trap.

It is especially ironic as Holmes twice in the film declares that he does not trust women, yet he commits this mistake. His assumptions are still sexist, but of a different kind. He just assumes Madame Valladon is an innocent damsel in distress because that is who he wants her to be. And that is how most his female clients in the canonical stories are like, but Ilse is not.

The irony in the film is present in the canon, where Holmes makes misogynistic statements about how “women are not to be trusted” but those words are never really borne out in his actions towards them. And while the story in the film is original, it is similar to his mistake with Irene Adler in A Scandal in Bohemia.

Despite his sexism, there is little doubt in the film that Sherlock is heroic, he is brave, intelligent and altruistic. But he is flawed in a human way, he does not always deduce the truth. And it is suggested that his heroism and idealism is not fit for the cynical modern era that is coming into being during the late Victorian era when the film takes place. It is an age of deceit he is not able to combat.

This violent and technological age is represented by the ruthless Mycroft and the submarine he is testing during the film. It is a war machine that unlike traditional battleships can kill entirely without warning. Mycroft explains that the British submarine has its equivalent among the German Kaiser, who is creating zeppelins that can similarly kill without warming, except from above.

The looming shadow of the coming world war where technology put to violent ends in the form of submarines and zeppelins would play an important role thus hangs over the film. “The Twentieth Century Approaches” as the title of an unrelated Russian Sherlock Holmes film with similar themes puts it.

But Mycroft’s submarine is opposed by Queen Victoria itself, who orders the submarine to be destroyed. It is highly symbolic that Queen Victoria herself, the very namesake of an age that encompassed most of the 19^th century, is the one who literally scuttles the submarine. Her alternative is just talking to the Kaiser, who is her grandson. Her solution comes from an old-fashioned, almost medieval worldview of sportsmanship and royal family ties. Victoria’s own old-fashioned idealism, similar in kind to Sherlock’s, has a brief victory, much to Sherlock’s amusement. It is a scene that doesn’t make much literal sense, the historical Queen Victoria never had that kind of power, but as comedy affirming the film’s theme, it works.

Afterwards, having been told of Madame Valladon’s true nature, Sherlock confronts her and leads her German spy allies into a trap and her to be arrested. It is a highly ironic scene, where Sherlock pretends to have figured out Von Hoffmansthal’s deception, but of course he didn’t, Mycroft just told him. And Mycroft didn’t use Holmesian deduction to do so either, but ordinary espionage. Through trickery similar to what has in reality defeated him, Sherlock upholds the legend of himself.  In a silent acknowledgement of her victory, Sherlock manages to convince Mycroft and the British government to have Ilse exchanged for a British spiy captured by the Germans.

In the film’s final scene, Sherlock learns in a letter from Mycroft of Ilse being executed while spying in Japan. And that in a kind of tribute to her experiences with Holmes, perhaps to Sherlock’s noble but doomed idealism, she had used the name Ashdown.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a thematically very interesting film, as I hopefully conveyed in this essay. It is a very well-made and enjoyable film too. The script and direction is superb. The complex mood of the story is beautifully sustained, with gentle comedy with some genuinely witty and funny moments serving an ultimately elegiac and melancholy mood.

The acting is excellent, with Robert Stephens in the lead role successfully conveying the variety of emotions Holmes goes through. Colin Blakely plays a comedic and somewhat bumbling Watson, albeit one that feels intelligent compared to Nigel Bruce. Geneviéne Page is convincing as the duplicitous but far from cold Ilse von Hofmansthal. And Christopher Lee, always a commanding screen presence, is perfect for the role of Mycroft as presented in this film. Authoritative, intelligent and with an ever-present hint of scheming menace.

The film is also beautiful to look at, with some very elaborate and well-constructed sets and props by production designer Alexander Trauner that are very impressive. The location shooting in Scotland at Inverness and Loch Ness makes for some beautiful shots.

A recording of Rósza conducting an orchestral suite based on his music in the film

Miklós Rózsa’s score is excellent and plays a big part of creating the movie’s elegiac mood. It features his violin concerto, which was originally a concert piece unrelated to Rósza’s film music, plus some music composed directly for the film.

As grand an achievement, the film which is viewable today is, it is sadly not what it was originally intended to be. The film was originally intended by the director Billy Wilder to be over 3 hours long and feature four stories. There were however cuts forced by the studio that removed two of the segments and pared down the film to about 2 hours.

And none of the cut scenes survive in their entirety, with both audio and visuals intact. Which is extremely unfortunate, as the cut segments sound very interesting. One is about Watson trying to solve a case on a ship and coming to a wrong conclusion, proving how difficult Holmes’s work is. The other is about Watson constructing a fake murder mystery to occupy Holmes’s mind in order to keep him away from cocaine.

The cocaine is present in the film, one of the first Holmes films to directly show him using cocaine after the death of the Hays code. But it isn’t developed much, beyond the suggestion that Holmes’s stated reason of the drug just relieving boredom is not entirely the truth. He clearly takes it at times of emotional distress, such as in the ending when learning of Ilse’s death.  And there is also a barely developed theme of Watson worrying just as in canon over Holmes’s cocaine use, here in the film taking the trouble of hiding Holmes’s supply and diluting the famous seven-per-cent solution to a five percent one.

This lack of development is probably due to that story segment being cut, which is a shame. More development of Holmes’s cocaine habit, as well as his friendship with Watson and his worries about his friend’s drug use would be interesting.

Still, even in abridged form, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes remains an interesting and highly enjoyable film. There have been more films about Sherlock Holmes than any other fictional character besides perhaps Dracula, this is one of the best.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

 A novel, and it’s three adaptations.

This 1974 novel by Nicholas Meyer is perhaps the most famous Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel. It was a best-seller when released, was partly responsible for a revival of interest in Sherlock Holmes in the 70s, and its success has inspired the publication of many, many more Holmes pastiche books.

It’s success and status in the Holmes fandom has led to it being adapted at least three times. And I’m going to talk about and review not only the novel, but also its three adaptations which have been made over the years: the 1976 film, the 1993 BBC Radio Drama and the 2016 comic book.

To discuss the story and its adaptations properly, I’m going to explain the plot, including the ending, so be warned.

The book’s take on Holmes is revisionist. It focuses on Holmes’s use of cocaine, which in the novel has by 1891 became an addiction that might kill him. Professor Moriarty being an evil criminal mastermind is Holmes’ delusion, created by his compulsive use of cocaine. In reality, Moriarty is an innocent mathematics tutor, who once taught both Sherlock and Mycroft when they were children.

To cure Sherlock of his addiction, which might soon turn fatal, Doctor Watson and Mycroft Holmes lure him to Vienna, to meet Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Freud is to treat and cure Holmes of his drug addiction.

After much effort by Holmes himself especially, Holmes is put on the part of recovery. Then he discovers a mystery involving one of Freud’s patients, and the game is afoot once more.

As mentioned, this book was a huge success. And it is understandable, for it is a very well-written book. Meyer’s imitation of Watson’s style is successful and feels authentic. The premise is interesting and inventive. The first part of the book, showing Holmes’ in the grips of a terrible drug addiction, his and Doctor Watson’s valiant efforts to help him recover is emotionally powerful. The close friendship between Holmes and Watson is very well depicted.

The second part of the book shows Holmes, Watson and Freud working together to solve a mystery. It is a very good mystery and is exhilarating to read about. The entire trio get to show their skills, and the idea of a team-up between Holmes and Freud is used to great effect.

It culminates in an amazing action scene with a train chase and a swordfight atop a train. The scene may be silly, complete with a “cutting up a train car for fuel” part straight out the Marx Brothers Go West, but very fun.

It has high stakes, involving a possible war in Europe, which adds to the excitement, but it still feels grounded enough to be a fitting case for Holmes. Despite the politics involved, it is still rooted in personal/psychological problems (which provides a role for Freud to make deductions of his own). Holmes is also unable to change history through his actions, he himself notes that he has at most only delayed a European war, which of course eventually broke out in 1914. This helps further ground the case in reality.

Meyer’s book is a good example of how Holmes is adapted to fit the times. Despite being a period piece set in 1891, the novel is very much a product of the 1970s. The frank depiction of Holmes’s drug use was due to a greater openness about drugs and their effects in culture at the time. The depiction of Holmes as a fallible hero due to his drug use also fit the sceptical cultural mood at the time, even if the second half re-establishes him as a heroic figure.

Holmes philosophizing on war and violence in the comic book adaptation, as is typical of the comic book, the words are pretty much verbatim from the book.

The theme of the second part of the book is clearly anti-war, with the backstory involving a pacifist quaker woman trying to destroy an arms manufacturing empire and Holmes trying to stop a war in Europe. After the disaster of the Vietnam War, this fit the prevailing anti-war mood in the western world perfectly.

Of course, despite being a product of its time in these aspects, the book doesn’t feel dated for the most time, because the time period in which it was written mostly is expressed through themes. The 1891 time period, the style of the novel and the characters Holmes and Watson’s feels true to the original stories.

Holmes’s praise of Freud in the comic book adaptation, again the words are pretty much directly from the original novel.

The novel has probably dated the most in its positive depiction of Freud and his ideas. Freudianism was going through a period of popularity in the 1970s. Although I’m on the whole against freudian ideas, the depiction here wasn’t that annoying to me.  I must admit that the comparisons made between Holmes’ detective work and Freud’s work are actually quite clever. Freud’s case studies read like detective stories after all (and are probably just as fictionalized).

Freud’s involvement culminates in the final twist of the novel, where Freud is able through hypnosis reveal a traumatic experience in Holmes’ childhood. His father killed his mother, due to her affair with his tutor Professor Moriarty. And the novel presents Freud’s predictable analysis of this uncritically: this traumatic event explains why he became a detective and fighter of crime, why he used cocaine, why Moriarty became a malignant figure in his delusion and so on. It’s of course silly, although it is fitting for a novel involving Freud and Holmes to end like this, with Freud’s theories being applied to the great detective.

The novel was adapted into a film directed by Herbert Ross in 1976, with a screenplay by Meyer himself. And I have mixed feelings about it. The novel is flawed, but the changes made for the film make it worse. The main problem is that they changed a lot of the mystery in the second-half. It involves an evil baron, a damsel in distress and a train chase, but there the similarities pretty much end. The book’s complex backstory involving the morality of weapons manufacturing and a possible war in Europe is jettisoned.

Instead we get a simplistic “rescue the damsel in distress” story.  And it is a racist/orientalist plot as well: An evil Ottoman Pasha wants to kidnap a white woman for his seraglio. This is a massive change for the worse.

The original plot was sexist also in its  “damsel in distress” nature, but it was more interesting. The themes of weapons manufacturing, a war in Europe and the woman Nancy Slater’s opposition to it raised interesting themes and raised the stakes for the story. And while she was damseled, the woman’s moral principles and intelligence was what put that plot into motion.

The film’s plot has none of those engaging features, and it is just boring and clichéd. It is racist and was extremely unoriginal even back in 1976. Also, it’s a minor and underdeveloped part of the film, but the film’s clumsy attempt to hint at a romantic relationship between Lola and Holmes was just annoying and felt out of character for Holmes.

Of course, the film has its merits as well, which is why I have mixed feelings about it. Certain aspects of the film are quite excellent. The film is very well-made overall. The direction and cinemtography is odd sometimes but conveys the suffering Holmes goes through well. The acting is excellent, especially Nicol Williamson as a Holmes in a very difficult situation. Robert Duvall’s Watson is held back by his stuffy attempt at an english accent, but his part is decent otherwise. Alan Arkin is a convincing and authorative Freud. Vanessa Redgrave is underutilized as Lola Deveareaux but she is always fun to see. We even get a bit of luxury casting with Laurence Olivier as in the small role of Moriarty.

And for certain stretches, the film works very well. The first half or so of the film is excellent, and adapts the novel rather closely, with only minor and insignificant changes. The film goes off the rails in the second half due to substituting the strong mystery of the book with a weaker one. But the climatic train chase is on par with the one in the book and very fun. Ridiculous, but such an entertaining and exciting scene. Perhaps one of my favourite action scenes in cinema, if I’m to be perfectly honest.

The film is very uneven, and the changes made from the book generally only weaken the story, but there is enough good things that it can be worth watching. The climatic train scene is so fun that it makes up for the weak mystery plot that led there.

There was also a 1993 BBC radio drama adaptation of the book. It stars Simon Callow as Holmes, who also played the role in the “Unopened Case-book of Sherlock Holmes”, a series of pastiche radio dramas aired on the BBC the same year. It has almost been (unfairly) forgotten, but can be found on the OTR Researchers Library website.

This radio version takes some cues from the film in how it dramatizes the story, but as is the standard for BBC Radio adaptations of literature, much more faithful to the book and retains the mystery from it. And it is much more stronger because of that. The acting isn’t on the level of the film or the contemporary Clive Merrison/Michael Williams BBC Holmes dramas, but still quite strong. Callow is a good Holmes and Ian Hogg as Watson outdoes Duvall from the film. It is a bit rushed due to only being 90 minutes, but is an excellent and faithful version of the book that is a far less uneven experience than the film.

Similarly faithful to the book is the 2015-2016 comic book adaptation, written by Scott and David Tipton with art by Ron Joseph. The script follows the book very faithfully. There are some minor cuts to the story to make the story work as a 100 page comic, but no major changes. It is so faithful that there isn’t actually anything to say about the comic’s writing that I haven’t already said about the source material.  The art is well-done and nice, even if I’m not that enamoured with how Joseph draws humans, but that is probably a taste thing.