Where is the short cut between Westminster palace and Tower Bridge?

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2010)

Sherlock Holmes has been so standardized that this new film is absolutely thrilling and fascinating. Of course we can look at it as a "touristic" guide to 19th century London, with mud, crime, squalor, bleakness, and it is true little of the top class or upper society. This London has been shown very often from Oliver Twist to Dracula or Elephant Man. But that is definitely not the main interest of this film. Then there is the fight against crime. There are two types of criminals. Lord Blackwood who is trying with a secret society that believes in human sacrifice to frighten the populace to establish the fascist rule of the upper class who wants to reestablish a total and absolute centralized power that has never existed in England anyway. And then there is the scientific crime that tries to transform crime into a fine art, the eighth fine art of this world but whose objective is only stealing and getting all the most beautiful stones, gems and the biggest piles of money they can, but with the beauty of a wizard. Lord Blackwood is another Voldemort and in a way Irene Adler and her boss are criminalized Harry and Hermione Potter. But that is of little interest except that it creates a phenomenal action. What is most important here is the relation between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, a full and absolute homo-friendship. They cannot live without each other. They cannot even survive without each other. They realize that homo-friendship in their action against crime. But the film is extremely clear and careful to show that this is only a friendship between two souls and that the only male element in that friendship in the male action, and by male I mean violent and disruptive, physical and muscular. And the film shows how these two men are obsessed each one by a particular woman. Dr Watson will be able to satisfy his sexual hunger by marrying his Mary, but she will have to become the go-between of the two men. She will have to bring her husband, soul and mind tied up, at the feet of Sherlock Holmes for one more batch or episode of adventure every so often. Dr Watson can love Mary only if he can love Sherlock Holmes and take part in his capers and adventures. On the other hand Sherlock Holmes can only survive in this life if he is chasing his own love in the person of Irene Adler and sexual contact can only be submissive on Sherlock Holmes' side. Irene will take advantage of him sexually when he has been reduced to passivity by some kind of soporific drug and Sherlock Holmes loves it and he will go on running after her and he will only get the satisfaction of holding her tight to prevent her from being cut in two lengthwise by a belt saw. That's only utilitarian physical contact whose sexual dimension has been evacuated by the danger. And the key to his liberation is under the cushion for sure but he is handcuffed to the bed and as nude as a new born baby with all his hairs standing up on their roots when the chamber maid arrives. This homo-friendship is exactly what Walt Whitman described so well in his poetry, particularly in his Calamus songs. The attraction between two men that makes them partners in life for some active and material objective with no sexual dimension and with two women around them who are making them dream of sex and run after their skirts but who have to bring them together regularly for their sexual energy to be reloaded by some adventure against some criminal, like Moriarty. Beautiful modern film that is talking to us of the emotional relations between people, man and man, woman and woman, man and woman, woman and man, in a very harsh world slowly edging towards fascism but always avoiding this deadly end. The most extreme advocate of eugenics and social Darwinism was H.G. Wells at the end of the 20th century: the only non Caucasian whites who were tolerated were the Jews provided their intermarried, and all alcoholics, mentally and physically handicapped people had to be gotten rid of. Hitler was only different from that objective as fort his position about the Jews. That's the society that is reflected in this film but from an iconoclastic point of view that is praising emotional relations between beings as founded on nothing rational, just love. And don't forget you can and must love your worst enemy.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 CrÃ©teil, CEGID