Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

[starlady]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Dir. Guy Ritchie, 2011.

I really liked this movie! I did not think it was WTFBBQ, nor did I think the plot was full of holes. It was less of a mystery, assuredly, but it was awesome all the same, with one prominent caveat. I was not expecting anything other than what I got, I guess, and I was very satisfied.

Well, okay, Mycroft walking around starkers was a bit of a WTFBBQ, but really, I do love RDJ's Holmes and Jude Law's Watson and Kelly Reilly's Mary, and I thought the guy playing Moriarty was good and the movie was fun and the stakes were comprehensible. I also liked the way they were able to bend the structures of the Moriarty to Reichenbach plot in a distinctively Guy Ritchie way, and I liked that they were able to show Moriarty's true villainy, and why Holmes is right to oppose him, even as it's clear that Moriarty is right and Holmes is fighting the future, a future he can't defeat. The new world is going to kill him, and it's going to take Western civilization with him, as Holmes knows.

Ironically, the one thing I swore in advance of this movie was that I wouldn't forgive Ritchie if he killed Mary, and instead he killed…Irene. I actually kept expecting her to be alive until at least the 2/3 point in the movie, I have to say, and I thought Moriarty's description of her fate was very brutally ironic in a meta-narrative way. Fast-acting tuberculosis, indeed. Wow.

So, was Irene fridged? I…actually don't think so (though of course fans always want to make excuses for female characters getting killed). But she gets killed because of her own actions, mostly, and it's not Irene's death that motivates Holmes, but Watson and Mary's survival, as the handkerchief scene during the crossing makes clear.

As for Holmes, and Watson, and Mary…I am unable to read this movie in an angsty light. The first movie was angsty; in this one everyone understands each other very well indeed, and all the edges have softened. Holmes and Watson love each other, Mary and Watson love each other, everyone knows and accepts this. I think Holmes was angsty and despairing in the first movie, but in the second he's much more calm about everything. Though I'm totally not above reading his willingness to trade his life for Moriarty's downfall as secondary to the way his relationship with Watson is shaking out, i.e. he is actually suicidal--except that he's actually not, textually, because if you're suicidal you don't carry an oxygen rebreather down the jump with you. But Holmes certainly is high as a kite until at least some point during Watson's stag party, if not later, and I really did enjoy all the moments between Holmes and Watson, even if they weren't exactly part of a very strong emotional arc, unless it's letting go.

I continue to enjoy the way that the movies visualize Holmes' methods of processing information and making deductions. I sort of would like to make a vid about that, actually, since I think it's one of the most interesting parts of the movies.

So yes, the gypsy subplot was tired at best, but nowhere near as faily as it could have been (I'm sad that this is my standard), and I liked that the gypsies were also actually French anarchists, and that this was also important. Another thing I really liked was the way the parallels between Holmes and Watson and Moriarty and Moran were drawn, very explicitly at times: Watson and Moran smoking the same tobacco (and the implicit sharpshooters' duel going on between them) versus Holmes and Moriarty actually sharing a pre-visualization, and sharing a love for music, and the opera (though I agree with seekingferret that thematically Don Giovanni was all wrong, unless the filmmakers picked it because of the staging potentials). And I liked that Noomi Rapace's character (I can't even remember her name) didn't have a love interest. She likes Holmes and Watson well enough, but she isn't interested in either of them.

It seems emblematic, actually, that Ritchie's Mycroft is so much less sedentary than Doyle's, and that the movie overtly confirms that he's affiliated with Her Majesty's Secret Service. Everyone (including Mary, OMG!) is so much more rock and roll in these movies, and I love it to pieces.

Comments

[recessional]

It was definitely less a mystery, and more a chess-game: the point wasn't WHAT Moriarty was doing, or even what secret dastardly ways he was going to do it, but rather how he was going to do it and how he was going to prevent Holmes from preventing him from doing it. Which I actually prefer, to tell the truth.

I think the Don Giovanni bit was chosen primarily for the visuals and also, I think, for the theme of an individual refusing to back down from a course of action that brings about a terrible fate.

Mary Mary Mary <3 Altho oddly and perhaps sadly I am not driven to write more fic by this movie. Perhaps it's just delayed.

I am not sure how I felt about Irene's death. I'll have to think about it later, although I do agree she wasn't fridged, and that concern for Watson and Mary was a considerably higher motivation than revenge.

[starlady]

Mary <3!!!

I find that I feel compelled to finish up that last Holmes WIP I've had lying around, and to start the one I've had in the back of my brain for eons.

[seekingferret]

My issue with Irene's death wasn't the fridging/representation of women stuff. It was that it was such a fucking stupid way for Irene Adler to die. In Doylian canon Irene is supposed to be the only woman capable of thinking as well as Holmes, and Ritchie does a pretty decent job with Mary and Sim of undermining that in this movie, but that doesn't mean he should make her stupid. Going to meet Moriarty and consuming any food whatsoever is dumb, and I think even Watson would know better (or at least Jude Law's Watson would).

But my problem with the movie really boils down to what you found good about it:"the stakes were comprehensible." This was my problem with the structure of the movie. I thought Moriarty as arms dealer trying to throw the world into war was dumb, boring, but mostly it was comprehensible and that was a problem. You'll notice if you read "The Final Problem" that Moriarty's aims are NOT comprehensible, certainly not to Watson. He runs a massive criminal organization that spans Europe, it has its fingers in every pie, it has involvement in every kind of criminal activity, and "when they reach the scene of crime Macavity's not there"... err... You know what I mean. Doyle is so good in that story at suggesting a mind-to-mind combat of such a high level that the reader can't easily grasp it. And reducing him to a mere warmongering arms dealer is such a letdown to me. That's the great game Sherlock was playing? In a way, it's a read of Sherlock closer to The 7 Percent Solution than I'm comfortable with- Holmes's drug-induced paranoia elevating Moriarty into a more fiendish enemy than he really is in fact is an intriguing psychological approach, but it's not why I want to see a Holmes movie.

[starlady]

I thought they could have done more to play up Moriarty's personal genius earlier in the movie, certainly, along the lines of the mutual visualization at the end, which I thought was brilliantly done, but I did think we saw enough of it--Sherlock being flat-footed at the opera, and also Moriarty killing Irene--to get the impression that he is as brilliant as Holmes. I could have done with a scene with Lestrade in which he dismissed the idea of Moriarty or whatever at the beginning (one wonders whether there was a scene like that in the script, actually).

But yeah, Moriarty's aims are in the end fairly tawdry (though countless Bond villains have done very similar things), which may kind of be the point, on at least one level, I think.

I thought Holmes being high and an addict was actually more obvious in this movie than in the last one, actually, and I do like that these movies have refused to give that up, because it is a part of Holmes' character that he's an addict. I'm not sure the movie gives us enough info on Moriarty to say that Holmes is inflating his importance out of paranoia, in all honesty.

The scene with Irene in the restaurant at the beginning, actually, is one of the best arguments that neither he nor she are inflating Moriarty's genius and capability. Because I agree, for Irene Adler of all people to be so easily snared as that--because she is as smart as Holmes, and as arrogant, and we've seen both those facets of her--says that Moriarty is playing on a very high level. Holmes bringing him down is as much luck as skill in the end, as well as a willingness to sacrifice himself that Moriarty lacks.

[seekingferret]

Well, the thing is, we know that Moriarty's right, that within fifteen years there really will be a world war on a gruesome and unfathomable scale. That's what Ritchie wants the reader to know, the dramatic irony underpinning that scene.

BUT, we the educated students of history also know that there were hundreds of merchants of death who profited by selling weapons or confiscating property or doing other vile things during that unfathomable world war. We know that if this is Moriarty's plan, it's not just tawdry, it's obvious. It's simple, easy, repeatable. Killing Moriarty doesn't stop it, and sacrificing yourself to kill Moriarty doesn't stop it. Even without Moriarty, there will still be hundreds of ruthless and amoral war profiteers and they'll do it legitimately, with the backing and support of governments and the enthusiastic embrace of their people. And that undermines the ending, unless, like I said, the point is that Sherlock is so drug-confused that he's forgotten this.

Sherlock being flatfooted at the opera didn't prove Moriarty's brilliance to me. It proved that Sherlock makes mistakes. He misread the evidence, simple as that. It's not that Moriarty planted misleading evidence. And I still don't understand the idea of assassinating someone with a sniper in the middle of a lethal explosion. Surely the explosion killing him is sufficient assassination? You don't get bonus points as an evil mastermind for killing someone twice.

Your interpretation of Irene's death as revealing the subtle genius of Moriarty is the Watsonian explanation, but I'm saying that going Doylist it makes no sense, and the movie makes no effort to have it make sense. They don't explain what Moriarty did to make Irene feel safe drinking the tea, unless we're supposed to think that little dig about her thinking she was safe in a public restaurant was the explanation. Being in a public restaurant means you're safe from being attacked by Moriarty's goons, it doesn't mean you're safe from someone slipping something into your tea.

Also, there's a part of me that thinks the point of Irene dying like that was to substantiate Sherlock's claim that if she didn't stick with him, she'd be dead within an hour.

I did like the mutual visualization thing. If they could have sustained that all movie it might have been the movie I was hoping for.

[starlady]

*nods* The "he's going to start WWI!" thing only works in so far as we're expected to believe the sharp split in the respective histories of politics and technology--the phonograph in Moriarty's study is at least ten years ahead of its time, and his arms are about the same. And Holmes' damn automobile! It's hard to know just how advanced technologically Moriarty is, because no one in the movie reacts with any surprise to any of it--Holmes' car just earns annoyance. If social history as a whole is fast-forwarded, Moriarty is just another would-be war profiteer. If it's not, he's not and he's a true threat. Again, not enough information.

I do agree that the Doylist explanations for Irene's fate are unsatisfactory, for sure.

[djkittycat]

Actually people did stare at the car as they rode out of Holmes' street and moved to the side to get away from it.

[jhameia]

Moriaty planting the chess piece at the opera, I think, points to him expecting Holmes to read the clues a certain way, and the assassination is of someone who might be able to provide evidence of Moriaty's dealings. As the movie reiterates over and over, Moriaty doesn't leave loose ends: the double-assassination is designed to absolutely ensure that dude doesn't live, because Holmes might have seen through the trap and stopped the bomb anyway.

That's why Moriaty tells Moran, "you're not coming to the opera tonight" because he recognizes the chances of the bomb NOT going off from Holmes reaching the dude, so he sends Moran off to kill the man just in case.

I'm kinda miffed about Irene dying too. It didn't feel like she was being fridged, BUT STILL there was a sense of "let's remove this piece from the game because it's too messy to deal with otherwise" not just on Moriaty's part but also on the scriptwriters'.

[seekingferret]

Problem with that is that Moriarty's goal was more than just killing the dude, it was also to blame the anarchists for the bomb. If I'm Moriarty, I don't tell Moran to aim for the dude, I tell Moran,: "If Holmes shows up to stop the bomb, shoot him."

I think the no loose ends thing is the smartest feature of the movie, though. it not only marks Moriarty as an incredibly careful and thorough thinker (Sending someone to kill Sim because there's a chance she has a clue that only someone as smart as Holmes could decode is the mark of a great planner), but because it slowly builds a trail of breadcrumbs to his door in the accumulating pile of dead bodies. This is the movie's ying/yang: Moriarty is brilliant and impossible to spot, but Holmes is brilliant enough to spot him.

[jhameia]

But Moriarty ~respects~ Holmes too much to kill him (seriously the chess game on the balcony was slashriffic Y/N?). But then, he knows only Holmes would spot the gunshot, so the anarchists still get blamed anyway. I agree that no loose ends was one of the best things of the movie as well, since it forces Holmes to keep apace with Moriarty.

[seekingferret]

Chess scene was indeed phenomenally slashriffic, but no, I don't think Moriarty doesn't kill Holmes out of some abstract form of ~respect~. I think he doesn't kill Holmes for a similar reason to why Holmes doesn't kill Moriarty- he knows it won't take. The mutual visualization scene at the end shows what happens when they try to kill each other. They're both thinking so far ahead, considering so many eventualities, that a straightforward attempt to kill Holmes isn't going to work. Moriarty respects that if he tries to kill Holmes there's a fair chance it will end up backfiring on him.
SoI don't understand why you don't use Moran there to try to kill Holmes. Holmes is brilliant but he's not immortal, and this is a pretty good setup to take him out. The only reasons I can think of not to are, well, mancrush like you suggest, or in malicious evil supergenius fashion, in order to use Holmes as your stalking horse to maneuver some of the other chess pieces. Perhaps Mycroft doesn't go to Reichenbach if Sherlock doesn't warn him, and Moriarty has reasons for wanting Mycroft at Reichenbach? I don't know, at this point I'm probably best off stopping my speculation and just writing the damn fix-it fic.

[starlady]

BUT STILL there was a sense of "let's remove this piece from the game because it's too messy to deal with otherwise" not just on Moriaty's part but also on the scriptwriters'.

Yeah, I felt a bit of that too--like there's some kind of law that there can only be two female characters in any of these movies!

[jhameia]

Yeah, as soon as she was offed I was like, "aaaaaand there goes my Bechdel Irene/Mary partnership." And Sim never talks to Mary either. So not only can there only be two female characters, they must also be as far away from each other as possible!

[recessional]

sacrificing yourself to kill Moriarty doesn't stop it

No, but it stops him from being a direct threat to your best friend and his wife, which those other, merely amoral merchants of death are not likely to have. I don't know if, Doylistically, Ritchie was intending to make a contrast about our lack of control over grand sweeping events while highlighting our involvements in small ones, but to some extent, I don't really care either.

And whether or not various war-profiteers will, as it were, profit from the coming explosion, it won't be one shadow-emperor of Europe, spending lives and controlling nations for his own gain. The broad ends (that of the war) are less important here than the specific causes and what that says about the specific ends.

As to Irene feeling safe drinking the tea, she knows the waiter by name. It's her favourite restaurant, some place where she obviously knows most of the staff personally. Moriarty didn't just get "someone" to poison her - he got, more or less, a friend to poison her. To me, that makes a difference.

[seekingferret]

The thing is, I care. "The Final Problem" is about the struggle between individuals and fundamentally Watson in calling Holmes the wisest man he ever knew is asserting that killing Moriarty made a difference. The movie doesn't lose that scene. It's not trying to shift us off that idea.

"The Final Solution", Chabon's novella, does make that contrast quite explicit. Chabon does a beautiful job of struggling with our lack of control over the grand sweep of history. I'll acknowledge that there's room in the Sherlock mythos for that theme. But that isn't what this movie is about, and moreover as I said in my first post on this thread, I don't want the movie to be about that.

I go to a Holmes movie to watch the triumph of the individual. I want to see a man so brilliant that otherwise insoluble crimes dissolve before his mentation. And while I'm okay with the smaller scale cases if the crimes are petty and the criminals pettier, I need Moriarty to be a match for Holmes, a man so brilliant that history hangs in the balance when he goes to smoke a cigarette.

We know from our study of history that there wasn't a single shadow-emperor over Europe during World War I- instead there was a cartel of shadow-emperors. It's hard for me to see the difference, it's hard for me to see how the specifics overshadow that lack of distinction.

When Moriarty tells Sherlock that the forces of history are working in his favor, it's about the weakest evil genius speech I've ever seen. It ought to have begged the question, "Well, if war's going to happen anyway regardless of whether you ignite it with a spectacular assassination, why are you bothering to expose yourself by igniting it personally?" I think that moment is when Moriarty signs his own death warrant.

As to Irene, come on, it's not some tiny corner restaurant where you know and trust everyone in the kitchen. It's the Savoy! With Irene's thieving skills you can't imagine that she doesn't know how easy it would be for someone to slip into the kitchen with a few drops of some quick acting poison? He didn't get a friend to poison her. He got to someone in a giant, complicated restaurant.

[seekingferret]

Let me be clear, I'm not advocating substituting some other villainy for the war profiteering shtick. I'm advocating substituting hundreds of other villainies. Gunrunning in the Balkans? Moriarty's behind it. Spiked opium in London dens? Moriarty's doing. Holdups of trains through the Pyrenees? Moriarty's people. Human trafficking in Prussia? That's another tendril of Moriarty's evil.

Doyle's Moriarty isn't a man with a single scheming, maniacal plan to rule the world. He's a man who has so many pots going that stopping any one of his plots doesn't do him any damage beyond inconveniencing him. Stop the anarchists from bombing London? Nice one, Mr. Holmes. On to plan B.

Holmes's reason to track him down and stop him, therefore, isn't to prevent a single scheming, maniacal plan to rule the world. It's to stop human suffering. The faster Moriarty is brought down, the faster Holmes can attend to the task of disassembling Moriarty's organization. This job, in the books, is the task of years of focused effort.

My original objection, recall, was that as starlady said, the stakes were comprehensible. In my vision, Moriarty's plan would be so complicated that the stakes aren't comprehensible. And what's great about this is that it would have supported the movie's subtitle, by emphasizing the game part of it rather than the consequences part of it.

a question of context

[mrkinch]

So, cross-dressing. I don't enjoy it as slapstick, done badly for comedic purposes, which is what I take from the clips I've seen. As a friend pointed out, in canon Holmes would never cross-dress badly! Does it serve a purpose by its absurdity? Is it not absurd in context? Does it follow a third course?

I would be very interested in that vid.

Re: a question of context

[starlady]

Hmm, the crossdressing. It's not played for laughs (though parts of the sequence are funny, to be sure), and there are reasons for it to be so slapdash on Holmes' part which are mildly plot-spoilery. And there are reasons for him to crossdress that aren't for its own sake, so it's not gratuitous in that respect.

Re: a question of context

[mrkinch]

I am encouraged. Thank you!

Re: a question of context

[via_ostiense]

It's not presented as a joke to the audience nor do Mary or John treat it as a joke. It's not as refined in its detail as I'd expect Holmes' costumes to be, but as starlady says, there are reasons for it to be slapdash.

Re: a question of context

[mrkinch]

Very good to know. Thanks!

[jhameia]

Also, the scene between Mycroft and Mary made me think about Emma Thompson mocking Stephen Fry on QI.

[surexit]

Oh, that sounds really great, I'm so looking forward to it.