Enola Holmes : It’s 1932. Enola Holmes (Millie Bobbie Brown) wakes up to find that her mother has disappeared. It’s her sixteenth birthday. To investigate the matter, her two elder brothers arrive – a certain Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft Holmes (Sam Claflin). Based on the book The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery by Nancy Springer, the movie is about the journey of Enola to find her mother. The focus here is not on the greatest detective of the century, namely Sherlock Holmes, but on his younger sister, who has been blessed with equally formidable intelligence and deductive powers. Unlike the original version however, Mycroft is shown to be an ordinary man who is jealous of his brother’s supernatural powers and the fame that comes along with it.
Mycroft is Enola’s guardian and wants to enroll her in a boarding school where she will be taught the polite manners of a young lady, with the ultimate goal of finding a suitable husband. Enola hates the idea and runs away from home. What follows is a series of adventures on the backdrop of the suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
Within the first minute of the movie, Enola breaks the fourth wall, looks directly into the camera and starts talking to us. Throughout the movie, she interrupts the chases and the fights to talk to us. Sherlock is demonstrably low key here because it’s not his show. His younger sister shines through and uncovers a sinister plot that would have repealed the Reform Act of 1932 and denied women the right to vote. Millie Bobbie Brown is brilliant and carries this YA plot effortlessly on her young shoulders. The choice of the plot is significant. This is a comment on the obvious sexist nature of many of the Holmes stories.
To his credit, Sherlock Holmes was not sexist. He despised men and women with equal ferocity because they were no match for his intelligence. And he held in high regard the one woman who outsmarted him – Irene Adler.
Enola Holmes is streaming on Netflix.
The Undoing : One of my favourite movies in the nineties was The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. I had a sense of déjà vu while watching the first few episodes of the psycho-legal thriller The Undoing. Jonathan Fraser (Hugh Grant) is a well respected oncologist who is accused of murder and is on the run. But things quickly develop and soon it becomes a tense courtroom drama with his wife Grace (Nicole Kidman) hiring the best lawyer to defend him. Her father Franklin Reinhardt (Donald Sutherland) foots the bill, albeit reluctantly because he never liked Jonathan right from the start.
Here is a series where accomplished actors are needed and Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland are simply brilliant. They bring out the nuances of their characters with ease and efficiency.
Lately, I find myself drawn towards still camera shots or shots that have slow camera movements. Perhaps this is a side effect of watching too many action/fantasy movies where the camera is never still. In The Undoing, many conversations are shot with still camera without too many cuts. In between the camera pans to the actors’ hands. A dark, somber Manhattan skyline serves as a coda.
If The Fugitive had all male protagonists, The Undoing goes the other way and has three strong female roles. Grace is a clinical psychologist, Haley Fitzgerald (Noma Dumezweni) is the defence lawyer and Catherine Stamper (Sofie Gråbøl) is the lawyer for prosecution. A marked departure from The Fugitive where Julianne Moore’s role was cut to such an extent that it got reduced to a cameo.
The Undoing is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
The Dig : Based on the novel of the same name by John Preston, The Dig is a story based on true events of the Anglo-Saxon ship burial excavation at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England. In 1939, Mrs. Edith Pretty, a widow and a landowner became interested in the mounds on her land and decided to organise an excavation. She paid Basil Brown, a self taught archeologist, 30 shillings a week for this. Basil found iron ship-rivets and a burial chamber. As the dig went on, the colossal size of the artefacts became apparent.The artefacts were dated to the medieval period, between 6th and 7th centuries and are considered to be the greatest treasure ever discovered in the UK.
The Dig is a moving tale of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) and Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes). Basil initially holds out for a higher wage, but when Edith agrees, he immerses himself in the dig. Basil was self taught with no degrees but had vast practical experience. After the war, the treasure was displayed at the British Museum but Basil was not mentioned because he did not have a formal education. Only recently, this has been corrected and his contribution to archeology has been recognised.
The Dig is a typical British drama film, understated and yet effective. It is streaming on Netflix.
