MovieChat Forums > Mr. Holmes (2015) Discussion > Several questions on three stories in th...

Several questions on three stories in the Movie


1. Why Holmes know the Japanese treat him, but still ate the grass? What the Japanese's father relate to Holmes?

2. What's the woman's case mean? She just pretended to kill her husband for some time to suicide?

3. The boy harmed by whispers case is just too simple.

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I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't speak English, do you?

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Language discrimination?

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Language discrimination?


Not at all. It's just your initial post made absolutely no sense at all, so I figured you were using an online translator. What is your native language?

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I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't speak English, do you?


... unnecessary and gratuitous comment.

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[deleted]

Unnecessary...AND gratuitous? How many comments are gratuitous AND necessary?

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1. The impression I got is that Holmes had studied and written about the healing powers of Royal Jelly and Prickly Ash. The man from Japan used this as a way to lure Holmes to Japan to confront him about his father but truly aimed to help him as well. I agree that this wasn't very clear in the film.

2. She knew that Holmes was following her so she devised a scheme to throw him off her trail and make him think she was planning to kill her husband but was actually preparing for her own death.

3. Is this a question? I don't think it was meant to be a big mystery - just one where the answer wasn't as obvious as it initially seemed in order to show Sherlock doing his thing.

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I just saw this movie,very good answers, thanks!

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Follow up to yr question #2: The reason why she wants to kill herself is not clear. Perhaps you care to tell us what you know about this?

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[deleted]

The movie is about depression, impending Alzheimer's and becoming useless -- and just facing one's mortality. I think the "prickly Ash" thing was remnants from the atomic bomb at Hiroshima; Ann Kermot wasn't really going to poison her husband. SHe bought the poison to use on herself -- but spilled it anyway, just to throw Holmes off of her scent because she was determined to kill herself anyway (because of severe post-partum depression -- probably NOT heavily diagnosed yet in the 1910s).

As for your 3rd point...about the boy Roger and 'whispers,' I don't understand your query.

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and also loneliness and being alone

Which is why when he understood her loneliness she asked him if he would be alone together with her.

Conceive Deceive or Leave
https://disqus.com/home/channel/conceievedeceiveorleave/

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Hmm, substitute "wasps" for "whispers," I think.

Coulson has a plan.

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The letter to the Japanese man was fictional to make the man feel better about his father deserting his family. Holmes made a remark to the boy about making his first foray into fiction writing.

He had always left fiction up to Dr Watson. What he wrote about the woman was true. He told the boy he was not much writing a story about her as remembering what happened.


I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else

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1. I'm also a bit puzzled about the prickly ash. I think the explanation is that things fade in and out of Holmes' memory. He went to Japan to get the prickly ash, and by the time he gets back to England he has it and has forgotten that the man to showed him how to find it might not be trustworthy. Later he does retrieve that memory.

2. This is what I understood about Mrs. Munro--she wanted to commit suicide and be buried with her two miscarried children. She forged her husband's signature and withdrew money from the bank to pay for the tombstones. The only thing she hoped for was that she and Holmes could get together, so she staged this as a murder plot so that he would follow her and she could speak to him. He refused, and encouraged her to return to her husband. She spilled out the poison that she had planned to take, and Holmes thought she was going back to her husband, but instead she just committed suicide in another way. Holmes felt guilt and failure about this, and so it became his "last case." What I do not understand is what, if any, role her husband played in this aside from hiring Homes to follow her.

3. I think you might be talking about the wasps? The point of this, I think, was to show that Holmes' detective powers were still there, even near the end. He was able to figure out that it was wasps and not bees that had stung the boy.

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Shirzevor
Thankyou last responder. And you didn't waste energy on identifying 'race' of the questioner. Yes indeed ... the 'whispers' of the question could have been mis-heard from 'wasps'. Very insightful anne-agard! Thankyou.

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I thought his memory loss might have been due to the fact that woman killed her self anyway and Holmes felt somewhat responsible. In the flashback he did figure out that he wanted to kill herself. Even if he was having memory loss it is hard to believe that he would forget that. He also said he gave up his practice because she killed herself. It is not unusual for a 93 year old to have some memory loss, but I don't think he was on the edge of alzheimers.

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I do have an observation that is baffling me. One of the characters stands in front of a shop window that says Ambrose Chappel Taxidermist . This same name Ambrose Chappel Taxidermist is used in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. Is there a reason for this coincidence? I doubt if it is a real place.

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I've read that it's an homage to Hitchcock's movie.

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If that baffles you, and if it is a tribute to Hitchcock, then consider this. A tribute to a director that didn't make a good picture after Psycho (but plenty before), and NOT ONE WORD OF CREDIT given to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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I think you write Hitchcock off too soon. He made Marnie and The Birds after Psycho.

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Just reading this. My understanding is that the Conan Doyle Estate is involved in a lawsuit regarding the novel "A Slight Trick of the Mind" and the movie "Mr. Holmes" (and a myriad of other Holmes-related literature). The Doyle Estate is claiming that they hold a copyright or trade mark on the actual character of Sherlock Holmes (sort of the way Disney holds that for Mickey Mouse). But so far they have not been successful in bringing lawsuits. However, if there is some kind of on-going lawsuit by the Doyle Estate, that may be why there was no mention of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

It's a shame, really, that these matters can't be solved. The original works are now in the public domain, and I would hope that the Doyle estate would freely allow fans to continue to create great art - giving their formal "seal of approval" to those items they actually deem of artistic or literary value. But they appear to really be trying to solidify their case that Sherlock Holmes belongs not to the world, but to the Doyle Estate, and that the Estate should be compensated for the character's use.

I'm not taking sides - it's a complicated issue. But I know that I've enjoyed many stories not authored by ACDoyle that I would not have been able to enjoy otherwise.

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I think he actually repressed his memories because they became too painful to endure. Uncovering the memory of his memories caused him to find redemption and put his life in order...it was the ultimate case!

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Several explanations have been offered for Ms. Munro's actions, but none of them quite work for me. She seemed quite capable of committing suicide in the end and with no interference from Holmes, so what was the point of the elaborate ruse to convince Holmes that she was plotting to kill her husband? If she wanted to throw Holmes off the scent, she had a perfect opportunity to elude him when she left the music teacher's garden and could have made her deals with the stonemason and chemist undetected. Yet she deliberately waited for Holmes. If she did this in order to speak to him, why didn't she just visit his office? And if she wanted to speak to him, why did she get up and walk away from him after the palm-reading (she could not have been sure that Holmes would stop her as he did). It simply doesn't add up.

I have not read the book upon which this movie was based, but I get the feeling that her plan might've been more clearly explained there. Unfortunately, as often happens when a book is converted into a movie, subtle but key plot points might've been lost in the script-writing or film-editing process.

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Mrs. Munro was his housekeeper. The wife of the man who hired him was Ann Kelmont.
Mrs. Kelmot was suffering from the miscarriages, and when she found joy in the armonica, her husband was convinced that she was delusional and forbade her the music lessons. He also refused her request to have headstones for the miscarried babies. She didn't feel understood or that her feelings mattered to him, so she felt she had lost every reason to live out her life to her natural end. Then she found Mr. Holmes to be sympathetic, and wondered if they might be lonely together. When he rejected that, she either decided to commit suicide anyway, and/or distraught, without really thinking about it, stepped in front of the train.

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This mistake has been made so many times I wonder if the responders paid any attention to the movie. And, if you didn't pay enough attention to know the characters, maybe you shouldn't be commenting on it.

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I, too, can make no sense of your words and I, also, assumed English was not your first language. The comment is neither gratuitous nor unnecessary. It is quite necessary to let the question asker know a reason why his question has not been answered and give another chance to ask again.

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However, the first respondent said nothing that you suggest was meant, which is why their response was gratuitous and unnecessary.

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#1 It's part of his character, the English Gentleman in him would never want to give offense. In 1947 Japan there was limited resources hence the horrible soup.

#2 She realized that she needed to give Holmes a false trail to follow because her plan for suicide was not yet ready. Holmes would not have been able to hear her ask the Station Master about when the Express Train (the train that would be going through the area at top speed with no stops scheduled) was running. Her true plan all along was to kill herself by train.

#3 The case was only simple to him. But this was a critical part of the whole story.

Holmes was not feeling the effects of Alzheimer's. He was suffering from the long term effects of not coming to terms with his guilt over the death of Mrs. Klemot. He had a real chance to act on Mrs. Kelmot's final desperate opening to abandon her plans if any other option from her despair, the true understanding of her agony by any other soul, presented itself.

This being presented by the one person who could help, the world famous Sherlock Holmes. Even he seemed not to understand her need, so she truly felt at that moment alone and with no option but death.

He was only 58 when he left his life to move to the countryside and solitude. His 35 years of almost total seclusion, keeping to his bees, not exercising his mind, not coming to the terms of his guilt. That is what was taking it's toll on his faculties.

He knew there was something missing, but the psychological block was like amnesia. He had to come to terms with the block, realize it, accept it, so that he could move on. Any injury untreated will only get worse.

Young Roger helped him with that. He was like therapy, he opened up his curiosity and exercised his mind again. As he started to remember he began healing.

The case of the Wasps, which Holmes discovered from the window marked the return of his' old self. Those skills of observation, showed the old master was still there inside. Remember not the mother, the Dr., or the Inspector was able to see what was plain to Mr. Holmes.

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Watched the film yesterday, really nice film.

I have one question, that letter Mr. Holmes wrote to Umezacki (please forgive me if I am spelling it wrong) at the end of the movie about his father, telling him that his father worked for English government or whatever, was that true? Did he really remember meeting his father? Or is that just an imagination just to make Umezacki feel better, because in the end Mr. Holmes felt that staying to too true path might hurt people, from the experience of what happened to that lady?

Thanks in advance.

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[deleted]

Watched the film yesterday, really nice film.

I have one question, that letter Mr. Holmes wrote to Umezacki (please forgive me if I am spelling it wrong) at the end of the movie about his father, telling him that his father worked for English government or whatever, was that true? Did he really remember meeting his father? Or is that just an imagination just to make Umezacki feel better, because in the end Mr. Holmes felt that staying to too true path might hurt people, from the experience of what happened to that lady?

Thanks in advance.

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As I was watching the letter writing scene, I first thought that it was all the truth, however as I continued to watch, and saw the way Holmes was pondering over the name of the country/district that the man's father was sent to, and then chose Malay after seeing it written on the spine of the book in his cupboard, it became a little clearer that he was just being kind to his old friend. Therefore I concluded that it was mainly fictional.

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For what it's worth, the book makes it clear the Umezaki story is ENTIRELY fictional.

He realized while still in Japan that Umezaki required closure (that's probably also when figured out the same was true of Mrs. Kelmot)

So he carefully constructed a story that would be credible, consistent with actual history, yet not subject to unraveling should Umezaki try to investigate it further. He combined actual stories of spies working for Mycroft and attributed them to Umezaki's dad.

Then, once he'd gotten the story was straight in his head, he just went over to Umezaki's room and told it to him in person

It was a fascinating read, because it showed Holmes's brain working in reverse - constructing a fiction that could withstand the scrutiny of Holmes himself

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