An ageing Sherlock Holmes battles the march of time and a fading memory in this latest screen reincarnation
Seasoned actor Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, The Golden Compass) had no problem portraying a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes in the Bill Condon directed film, Mr Holmes.
“Well, I’ve been preparing all my life because I am now 76 years old, so I’m closer to 93 than I’ve ever been before,” he jokes to entertainment website NPR.
McKellen’s onscreen demeanor honed by years of performing on stage and in front of the camera, was no doubt the reason this veteran thespian was the front runner for the role.
“It’s acting,” says the English actor. “It’s exaggerating feelings. So I just imagine that I’ve got more physical inconveniences and then it all seems to work. That’s somehow using your imagination – nothing special about an actor’s imagination except that he uses
it a lot.”
The film’s plot revolves around the life of the long-retired Sherlock and his struggles to regain his memory to revisit a case that led to his seclusion. It is based on the 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, written by Mitch Cullin.
McKellen had read the books about Sherlock Holmes but feels that the film shows the detective in a different light – something that is more relatable to the viewers.
“This character was a real man. His problems and feelings are those of a man like us all – struggling with life and for him, a long life. So to get the performance right, it was more important to delve into the reality of that than going back and seeing if I’ve got the right angle on my Deerstalker.”
McKellen and director Bill Condon have worked together before on the 1998 film, Gods and Monsters. Ian was Bill’s “first and only choice” for the role right from the moment he saw the script from producer Anne Carey.
Bill is a self-confessed crime and detective novel fan and had long been fascinated with the story of Sherlock Holmes.
“I went through a period of reading a lot of them and I’ve always been interested, especially in the last thirty or forty years, how he’s been scripted in television and movies and constantly reinvented,” he says. “All of them seem to be revealing different facets of him and the way that none of them contradict each other.”
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Milo Parker
Running time: 104 minutes
Rating: PG15
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