No, shit

Okay, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn't THAT bad, as I, um, explain in my review of the film for MSN Movies, but you know how I cannot resist such a terrible joke. 

I noticed something weird watching it, which I didn't get into in the review, because I didn't want to look like I was insane. Here, where I feel more, let us say uninhibited, I can let fly. In Game of Shadows both Holmes and Moriarty reveal themselves to be great aficianados of the classical music, which won't sit well with whoever the heck that dork who does the advice column at The Hairpin is. In any event, one of the film's big set pieces visits the Paris opera, where a really ornate production of Mozart's Don Giovanni is going on. it looks pretty hot, hot enough that I think if Guy Ritchie were to really apply himself, he could come up with a staging of the opera entire that could supplant Zeffirelli's boffo version. So that's pretty cool. And later, during a nasty confrontation scene, Holmes and Moriarty discuss the Schubert lied "The Trout," the strains of which had been heard earlier in the picture. What's weird is that the great American expat director Joseph Losey directed a pretty damn fine motion picture adaptation of the Mozart opera in 1979, then, after doing Boris Gudonov for French television, made a feature called...La Truite, or, The Trout. Nothing to do overtly with the Schubert piece, but hell, don't pretend that Losey (who was what we'd nowadays call a "snob"...didja know he put Davy Graham in The Servant, jeez...) wouldn't have made the mental connection at some point in his process! And as I recollected this I wondered, was this some sorta odd undercurrent Losey tribute, and if so, why. Empirical evidence points to complete coincidence, but it's nice to dream of these connections, maybe. 

Comments

[mike kenny]

Wow, that was far reaching, but interesting to ponder.

[John M]

I'm sure it's all intentional. This kind of inter-textual rigor is par for the course in Ritchie's films.

[AdenDreamsOf]

Now just consider this: Ritchie's version of 'Sherlock Holmes' has moved so far from the Conan Doyle material at this point, can you imagine how a 'Sherlock Holmes' movie will look on screen in forty years?

[David Ehrenstein]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z-K-1edShuc

[David Ehrenstein]

a fortiori

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuwoHm5JMjQ&feature=related

[Shamus]

"a kind of quick-cutting ESP thing with sepia-toned images of violence"

Yeah, that bothered me when I was watching the first part: does Holmes' superpowers include foreseeing the future? Is that come under deduction now? And Christ, they really need more and more newfangled technology to evoke an increasingly primitive past, don't they?

But I enjoyed that movie (haven't seen the second one yet) because, oddly, it had almost nothing to do with the stories (thank heaven): felt more like the TV show House, actually.

But to come back to the point: great review!

[Owain Wilson]

I would like to point out that Jude Law rather closely resembles Robert Shaw in these two movies.

[Chris O.]

Are we missing the end of a sentence after the parenthetical or am I misreading it? Don't pretend that Losey what?

GK UPDATE: Ooops. Fixed.