Since this is the first Poirot film I'm talking about, I'll say now that David Suchet is the best Poirot ever, so perfect in this role that Poirot comes right out of the pages for me :-) There's just the little detail that he doesn't put his head on one side as the book character does in certain moments, aside from that, he's right out of the book. In this film there's also Michael Fassbender as George :-D
The story:
Richard Abernethie is dead, and his will reveals the great surprise that George, the one they always thought would inherit everything, was actually disinherited. The family attending the funeral: Maude is the wife of Richard’s brother Timothy, who is an invalid and a tyrant and doesn’t do anything. Helen is the widow of Richard’s younger brother Leo, and George is her son. Rosalind and her sister Susannah are his cousins. (Is she called Rosalind or Rosamund? I hear Rosalind but I read Rosamund..). There’s also Richard’s younger sister Cora, who nobody has seen in years, and she’s the one who “properly puts the cat among the pigeons” blurting out: “he was murdered, wasn’t he?”. The next day Cora is brutally killed with a hatchet and Poirot is asked to investigate.
Ms Gilchrist was Cora’s companion and she did the light dusting and the cooking in the house, but she doesn’t think of herself as a servant. Surprisingly Cora left everything she had to Susannah.
The will turns out to be a fake.
Susannah works with the Church and plans to go to a mission in Africa, and yet when she visits Cora’s house, now hers, she treats Ms Gilchrist like a servant, giving her her luggage to carry, even though Susannah is much younger than her. Big words about doing good and helping others, but she’s just another spoiled brat, in my opinion.
Rosalind is an actress like her cheating husband Michael.
Poirot invites them all to stay at Richard’s house, so that he can study them all and hear them chatting. They all dine together at the same table, and yet Maude asks Ms Gilchrist and not one of the house-servants to prepare the tea and some food for her husband, which was not only inappropriate but damn rude, and nobody said anything. At night, Helen looks at her reflection in the mirror and suddenly realizes what it was that she had noticed about Cora, something odd, and she called their lawyer Entwhistle as the only one she could trust, but she was struck on the head before he could tell him anything.
George admits to them that he had faked the will to disinherit himself, and then says to Poirot “I killed him”, because they had a fight the day before Richard died, and George was so angry that he shouted at his face. He had discovered why he was always Richard’s favourite. Helen and Richard had apparently fallen in love years before and George was his son, and George was very angry to hear this, and could not forgive any of them.
The ending sees Poirot as his usual, reuniting everyone in a room to make his big speech:
Timothy was not really an invalid, but something of a thief, although it’s not clear to me what he stole or wanted to steal.
Ms Gilchrist kill Cora because she wanted her paintings. Cora had found a Rembrandt without realizing it, but Ms Gilchrist knew that she could make 5000£ with it. She had covered it with a painting of her own, and then had disguised herself as Cora to attend Richard’s funeral and plant the suspicion that he had been murdered. This way, when Cora was killed the most likely suspects were Richard’s family and not her, because it was believed that she had been killed because she knew who had killed Richard. With that sum of money she could have opened her own little tea shop, become free and independent.
Helen recovers and is quite well.
At the end, Susannah leaves for Africa, feeling that her relationship with George is wrong since they’re cousins, and he’s sad... the movie doesn’t explain what kind of cousins they are though, first cousins? Not from the Abernethie side for sure. Was it really so wrong for them to be together? Sure George drank too much, but it’s not clear if it’s just now because of all that is happening or if that’s his usual habit. It's different from the book. In the movie George is good, charming, sexy and in love... and she leaves him to go to Africa. I wonder how long will she be able to endure it, I guess the little princess will run back home in no time.
It's the same story of the book: after Richard Abernethie's funeral, Cora is brutally murdered and Poirot investigates, but there are many little changes here and there, although nothing substancial: they changed some of the characters' occupations, added a bit of romance that was absent from the book and the original story, and a bit of drama. Entwhistle becomes a younger bachelor with a thing for Helen, George is Richard's natural son, Susannah and George share a difficult love... which of course I understand: how sexy is Michael Fassbender?? I mean, in the book I didn't like George at all, but here! Oh, he's so... come on, how stupid of Susannah to go away from him! Different times I guess. Anyway, no reason for me to add pictures of him here, I really do think pictures don't do him justice, they're too plain, without blood, if you know what I mean. There are poster-men, and then there are sexy men like this one... ... ... ... ...
George-Michael Fassbender
Rosamund-Fiona Glascott
Helen Abernethie-Geraldine James
Susannah Henderson-Lucy Punch
Cora & Miss Gilchrist- Monica Dolan - I really liked this actress here, she was brilliant, I loved how she talked when she first met Poirot and how she turned into Cora at the end, otherwise we’d never believe it was her :-p
She was really good, I must look her up.
ITA dopo le esequie
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