I’ve got to hand it to Millie Bobby Brown. She managed to realize a fantasy most avid young readers have had at one point or another. Growing up, she and her sister were fans of a childrens’ series called Enola Holmes by Nancy Springer, which re-imagined the Sherlock Holmes canon through the lens of the great sleuth’s teenage sister -also a detective. Then she went and became a big star on Stranger Things, and decided to use her new-found clout to will her dream movie adaptation into existence, waiting a few years just so she herself could age into the title role. Legendary Pictures got behind it, as did Netflix (eager to keep her in-house) and she wrangled some decent talent both in front of and behind the camera, with her sister and herself serving as producers. She even contributed significantly to the script by Jack Thorne -this is HER passion project. As a kid who read a lot myself and often imagined how I would make a movie of what I was reading, I can imagine the enthusiasm this whole endeavour must have garnered for her. And I can vicariously share it.
Enola Holmes is directed by Fleabag’s Harry Bradbeer, and Fleabag is clearly a big influence on the film. It employs the same narrative structure involving the title character expositing and commenting directly into the camera, though without a lot of the sideways glances or perfectly timed expressions that Phoebe Waller-Bridge turned into an art. The very modern winking sarcasm and self-aware sensibility used in these moments is also notably borrowed from that program, yet aesthetically the film owes as much to Victorian-set TV dramas with the occasional dose of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes -not in the action scenes, of which there are few, but in some of the editing and pacing choices that look to reflect the styles of more kinetic directors.
It’s not a very lived-in world nor a very large one, but there is a charm to it. The London of this movie is the storybook London of something like Paddington (though not nearly as colourfully engaging), and the countryside where Enola grows up, that of a Jane Austen film. In this, the movie is afforded a semblance of the kind of period-set childrens’ films of the 1990s where atmosphere and whimsical ingenuity were often more important than the generally low stakes -like Newsies, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Madeline, and perhaps most especially various Annes of Green Gables.
The stakes aren’t terribly low in Enola Holmes, one of the two mysteries she’s simultaneously solving involves the life endangerment of a boy viscount called Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge). But even with this and her other enterprise -solving the disappearance of her political revolutionary mother (Helena Bonham Carter)- it’s difficult for the film to really break out on its own and become more than merely a Victorian Nancy Drew. Enola’s mystery solving is less observational than her brother, it’s more about finding patterns, decoding, and solving riddles -scrabble tiles play a big part in this. Without necessarily discounting the validity of this approach to detective work though, it certainly reads as more juvenile, and at odds with the films’ more serious ambitions, especially with regards to its political subtexts. There’s a thematic dissonance too in how the script so often stresses Enola’s individuality, her empowerment and desire to make her own way in the world distinct from her brothers -and yet she is pretty blatantly pursuing the same career trajectory and consequent reputation as Sherlock.
Sherlock is played by Henry Cavill in this film, and it’s one of the more interesting performances of the character, and one of the better ones from Cavill. Sherlock has the closer relationship to Enola, or at least more empathy than the exceedingly snobbish Mycroft (Sam Claflin), their kindred spirit coming from their mutual flair for deduction. He’s a degree kinder and more emotional than the character has traditionally been played too, and Cavill demonstrates the same classical charisma that worked for him in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and which until now he hadn’t really recaptured since. The other stand-out performance from the film of course is Brown herself who, in spite of deficiencies in script, tone, and theme, is clearly relishing the role she no doubt wanted to play for years. Her enthusiasm and determination is palpably infectious, and it’s nice to see her acting with her own accent for a change, and in a part that’s far less heavy than what she usually has to play on Stranger Things. There are also noteworthy turns from always reliable British staples Burn Gorman, Frances de la Tour, and Fiona Shaw; and Susie Wokoma has a small but significant part as ones of Mrs. Holmes’ collaborators, who seems mostly there to call Sherlock out on his self-sustaining politics.
The political themes that underscore Enola Holmes are probably the films’ biggest gesture to modern adult audiences, particularly the very stark fact that the vital Reform Bill in the House of Lords needs the vote of the young Lord Tewkesbury to pass -and this is what has put him in danger. The progressiveness of the young vs. the conservatism of the old (both in people and institutions) hangs over a number of aspects of the film, and it makes clear that the old ways are dying out for a bright future being brought about by the likes of Enola, Tewkesbury, etc. It’s terribly transparent and simplified, but that’s to be expected given who the film is speaking to. And I was impressed with its willingness to condemn “impartial” beneficiaries of unjust systems (typified in Mycroft), and with just how radical Enola’s mother is, essentially trying to force twenty-first century feminism on the nineteenth, but not sparing her from criticism of her methods.
The messaging is a bit shallow for adults, as much of the film is, but it hits a lot of the right notes for kids. In that respect it has a lot in common with last years’ The Kid Who Would Be King, which also took a youth-focussed contemporary spin on a public domain British canon. Enola Holmes isn’t wholly an unnecessary Millie Bobby Brown vanity project; there is definitely an audience for it, and I think the film does well enough by them that they’ll retain it if the rest of us don’t.
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