Enola Holmes - 2020

I liked it, it was nice and of course I love the feminist theme. The actors were all good, all of them, even the young ones, they were all good. Even Miss Hamilton, I mean, it’s a character I feel hard against but the actress is very good so I didn’t miss a moment of her scenes, luckily they weren’t drag out too long. 

As usual, I’d like it if at least once they made a movie where the hero wins because he’s smarter and more skilled, instead of just lucky, but I’m still waiting for that to happen. In real life, when the bad guy has the advantage of surprise and also a loaded gun in his hands, things would not be so easy, but in movies that always happens, and the bad guys always have bad aim or bad luck or both. 

Regarding Enola’s deductions, yes, they are often almost too much, and it would certainly be if not for her name. These are the Holmes we’re talking about, so if one watches their stories one must accept that they function like that. Otherwise don’t watch it.

Details: 

First, she introduces herself looking right into the camera. Both her brothers left home when she was very young, and she was raised by her mother alone. They were extremely close, and her mom was rather unconventional. They played tennis inside the house, no matter if they broke a few things here and there, they did reading, chess playing, fighting, always together. 

Then Enola turned sixteen, and soon her mother left. Without a word, she just wasn’t there anymore. 

At this point the Holmes brothers come back to look into it, and since Sherlock’s a genius she really hopes he’ll sort it out in no time, but all he can deduce is that she left on her own, nobody forced her, and that she’s not coming back.

Mycroft is very unpleasant since the first look we get of him, and he only gets worse; this is probably the most unpleasant Mycroft I’ve ever seen. He’s rude to Enola because she’s a bit of a wild thing, and he is angry that their mother kept asking for money, supposedly for house expenses and Enola’s education, but it turns out that they never had much servants (there’s only one woman who brings them tea) and Enola studied at home, alone with her mother and their library. Including books on women and feminism, which Mycroft take as an indication she was mad. Not a feminist that one.

Mycroft also thinks that Enola is too wild, and that she needs to be tamed (broken, he says) in order to become an elegant young lady who can fit into society and become a good wife and mother… you know how it is. He plans to send her off to a finishing school under headmistress Miss Hamilton, but she doesn’t want to. She finds clues left by her mom, very critic that one, but these people are Holmes so… anyway, Enola finds some money and decides to escape, run away to find her own future like her mom always wanted her to do.

She dresses as a boy using Sherlock’s old clothes and plans to go to London on a train.

This is where things start getting complicated. She gets into a compartment where a fugitive marquess is hiding in, and as far as she’d like to listen to her mother’s advice and leave him behind in order to value her safety, she can’t do that and she saves him from a man trying to kill him, but jumping off the train with him. Together they make it to London, but then she insists on going their own way. Luckily she got him to cut those hair he had at the beginning, he was a bit ridiculous, he looks much better later. Of course, it is quite stylish, and she did it using a knife…it’s always like this in movies, incredible :-p

In order to disguise herself now, she plans to act like an elegant young lady, therefore she buys a dress and a corset and rents a room. She starts looking for her mother, She pays a few papers to write her incripted message then she goes to meet a woman that uses to correspond with her mom. But mom doesn’t want to be found, she has work to do, she is fighting for ladies rights, votes to all people. Enola finds a place full with gunpowder and stuff, and she understands her brothers were right on something at least: mom is dangerous and she does have a plan, and is not coming back.

The bad man finds her here, almost drowns her because now she saw his face clearly even if she doesn’t know where the marquess is, and they fight, and after he tries to stab her (saved by the corset), she causes an explosion to escape.

While the amount of gunpowder there I expected a chain of explosion quite serious, but apparently that’s not the case… nothing is told on the matter though.

She realises now that the marquess is in serious danger, so she wants to help him. She dresses as a widow to meet his family and learn more, and says that she’s Sherlock’s assistant, but Lestrade is there and denies that, and they refuse to talk to her - his mother and her brother, that is. His grandmother finds her again later in the woods looking into the kid’s stuff. He appears to be ore intelligent that she gave him credit for.

Sherlock meets Edith as well, to ask about his mother, and gets a lecture on how he doesn’t know what it is to be without power, and how he is not interested in politics because he has no interest in changing a world that suits him so well. How the new riform bill is important.

Enola looks for him, to warn him, tells him they must work to find out more about it. It is incredible that after the man on the train tried to kill him, he’s still reluctant to believe that someone wants to kill him…  she takes him to her room, but the woman she paid for the dress and the room sold her out for the reward and now Lestrade is on her. She holds him off the time necessary to let the boy escape, but then Lestrade catches her and delivers her to Mycroft who sends her right off to the dreadful finishing school.

She receives a visit from Sherlock, who honestly acts horribly. He had traced her own steps, he found the gunpowder and the bombs, which means despite everything it didn’t blow up. Nice words on how he cares for her, how their mother thought she was extraordinary, and mostly how the choice is always hers, how society can’t control her… yeah yeah, very nice, and yet he leaves her there. She got lucky she had a bit of money and the marquess comes to help her, and she has luck on her side, otherwise what could she possibly do? A regular girl, what could have done here? How to make her own choice and not let society control her when she was locked in a dreadful school, locked into her own room, punished if she didn’t conform, what could she have done alone? He just left her!!!

Anyway, she thinks a lot and comes to the conclusion that the family wants the marquess dead because he’s a lord, and he has a right to vote on the new riform bill, where every single vote counts. So after he helps her break out, they go to his house to find it empty, save for the murderer with a rifle.

He shoots at them many times, and again the heroes get away because of luck more than skill, since he doesn’t manage to hit any of them until they are ready.

She insists on the same old move while fighting with him, the same one she never managed before, but now when it counts she does it right and he falls smashing his head in a bad way, and dies shortly after. It turns out he wasn’t his uncle but his grandmother, an old lady who didn’t want England to change one bit, and so she shoots him, but he had time to prepare, meaning he pulled a McFly on the woman and hid a plate under his shirt before he was shot, hence his survival.

Sherlock goes to Lestrade with the solution to the marquess case, only to learn that she got there first. He goes out looking rather proud, the best scene of his in the whole movie.

The riform bill is passed, by one vote. His vote was decisive.

Finally Enola receives a visitor, her mom is in her room, and they finally meet again and hug a lot.

She couldn’t say where she was going because it wasn’t safe, and she left for her because ‘she couldn’t bare to have this world be her future, so she had to fight’, and ‘you have to make some noise if you want to be heard’. She tells Enola that she’s the one who actually helped change the world, with the marquess. 

They separate again, and she tells us now that she has found her own path, she lives alone but is not lonely, and she is ‘a detective, a decipherer, and a finder of lost souls’. 

‘Her life is her own and her future is up to her’.

Enola- Milly Bobby Brown

Sherlock- Henry Cavill

Eudoria (mom)- Helena Bonham Carter

The Killer (He has a name but personally I never caught it in the movie)- Burn Gorman

Miss Harrison- Fiona Shaw