victorian221b | New Russian Holmes director: “I kept in mind Dickens’s England”

19.11.2013

Q: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes have more than two hundred screen adaptations. Only over the past few years several new ones were released. Why make another?

Andrei Kavun: You shouldn’t ask me, really. I was offered a job and I took it on. Before I joined the project, it had another director, Oleg Pogodin, who had been working on it very closely for quite a while. They did auditions, props concept art, etc. The project was ready to be started, but the TV channel which produced it didn’t like the idea, exactly because the Guy Ritchie film premiered at the time. Pogodin’s Holmes was very similar to Ritchie’s Holmes. The same hooligan and sociopath.

Q: And you had to come up with a new image of Holmes?

AK: Well, yes. At first I turned the offer down. Then I went back to the short stories, and ideas began to pop up. I came up with an angle from which the stories had never been approached before. I was interested in the writer’s story. How the writer creates himself when he meets his protagonist. Thanks to Watson Holmes becomes the Holmes we know, and at the same time Watson becomes the Watson we know thanks to Holmes. Watson actually becomes Conan Doyle because Doyle wrote Watson as his own stand-in.

Q: There’s one thing I don’t understand: the Canon allows many things, but there’s always a constant. Sherlock Holmes is a very smart man, a cold reasoner. He’s utterly rational, even though he might be a heroin (sic!) addict.

AK: A heroin and cocaine addict a priori can’t be a cold reasoner. Because narcotics devour that cold reasoning mind pretty fast. You see, there are a lot of inconsistencies in Doyle’s stories which make it possible to interpret Sherlock this way and that. In the early stories Sherlock is 27. It’s a young man, and a rather unpleasant one—to Watson at least—it’s a man who evokes many suspicions and initial rejection, antipathy. He was not a gentleman.

Again, let’s remember the original story: Watson comes to London and he can’t afford paying rent, so he looks for a companion to share the expense. Today it would look something like this: an impoverished war veteran on a pension comes to Moscow to try and open his business. He looks for a flatmate because he can pay only ten thousand roubles (about 150 USD. Renting a cheapest flat in the outskirts of Moscow requires at least twice as much - translator’s note). Where is he going to rent a flat? What kind of flat? What his companion would be like?

Q: In the first scene Holmes appears he steals evidence and asks Watson to give false testimony at the police station.

AK: Yes, it puts Watson off.

Q: As well as everyone. Me too. A good guy can’t steal evidence and commit perjury.

AK: You know, I have no questions about that. In our country the police is not in favour. Justice does not necessarily come from the police. Justice and the law are different things, and Watson takes the side of justice. He understands that Inspector Lestrade doesn’t really care about justice. The law representatives are more interested whether Watson is Irish or not.

Q: Then my apprehension is confirmed: you made a film not about Victorian England, but about Moscow of 2013.

AK: That’s right. You know, when I began researching the history of Victorian England, so many things reminded me of the present situation in our country. The Empire which is about to fall apart. Its provinces seceding. Hypocritical morality. The expression “a skeleton in the cupboard” was coined in Victorian England. Everyone wants to be a gentleman more than he really is. Just like here and now in Moscow, everyone wants to be more respectable than they can afford.

Q: Nevertheless, you had to be authentic. Did you have consultants?

AK: Of course. But you can envision England in different ways. There’s Conan Doyle’s England, there’s Dickens’s England, and there’s England of Walter Scott.

Q: Which England did you keep in mind?

AK: Because I lowered the social status of the characters, I kept in mind Dickens’s England. What is a private detective? A person who has to rummage through the dirty laundry of others, whose services people need when they can’t go to the police. A person savvy about such kind of thing. And I was surprised by one detail. When I started to re-read Holmes, I realised that Conan Doyle’s characters have no inner life. They are masks; they don’t develop. You read A Study In Scarlet where Holmes is 27, and you read the last stories where he is about 60, and it’s one and the same character. I was interested in looking at Holmes from the Dostoevsky point of view. My characters and their relationship develop.

Q: There won’t be any continuation, of course...

AK: Of course. More than that: when Andrei Panin was alive, I was offered to shoot season 2, but I refused. For me it’s an eight-episode story. It’s a finished work for which I see no continuation. When I was offered season 2, I suggested a spin-off instead. Three years pass between episode 7 and 8, between Reichenbach and the subsequent events. I suggested that we make a story about Doctor Watson meeting Professor Challenger after Holmes’s death. But now it’s impossible. In my series Doctor Watson is actually the main character. (Source: The Hollywood Reporter)

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Some thoughts on this interview. Kavun mentions that a cocaine addict can't be a cold reasoner. I find it a curious detail. That's another point proving that Holmes is not a cold, detached mind entirely, as he himself and Watson want us to believe. He has underlying passions which lead to his using. He's an artist with his weaknesses, a Bohemian soul. In SIGN Watson warns him exactly of this, of the effect drugs produce on a mind in the long run: "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness." Throughout the Canon Watson continues to regard Holmes's drug abuse negatively until he weans Holmes from it.

Regarding Watson's initial dislike of Holmes, I understand that Kavun talks about his own take on the Canon. However, in the Canon, Watson is not put off by Holmes at all. Come on, Watson is fascinated and smitten at first sight. Holmes was an enigma that occupied his mind, distracting him from his depressive mood. Holmes stimulated him, just as he later stimulated Holmes.

I also disagree that Holmes and Watson of the Canon have no inner life and don't develop. What about Holmes's mood swings? What about his youthful recklessness and blundering in the beginning? He was rather arrogant in his views towards the police when he started, but later he came to appreciate them. In earlier stories he is often described as languid, even effeminate whereas in later stories he has a more "manly" image. In STUD he turns Jefferson Hope in to the authorities whereas in later cases he takes justice into his own hands and often sets the culprit free if he believes that it would be just to do so. In the later stories he is less harsh in his opinions, and by LION he actually mellows.

Over the years Watson learns Holmes's methods, and from an awed admirer turns into a lifelong partner whose help often plays a critical role in solving of cases. From a penniless surgeon invalided from the army he becomes a well-established GP whose practice was “not inconsiderable” by the time of CREE. Of the two, Watson is more free in expressing his emotions. He stays romantic in spite of Holmes's teasing. He has his own fits of temper, but he learns to bear with Holmes's antics because Holmes is very dear to him. In HOUN Watson is quite upset by Holmes's keeping him in the dark whereas in LADY and RETI Watson doesn't seem to mind to be a pawn in Holmes's game. He just humours Holmes, knowing Holmes's passion for the dramatic.