Incomprehensible, Dear Watson?

Dear Lord...

I was actually pleased when a long 'phonecall interrupted my viewing of the much admired
"Sherlock" on BBC last week. It's incredibly well made but very noisy and seems to have by-passed
post-post modernism to land into a Never-Never Land of superfical psychological psycho-babble and over-dramatised
"ennui".

This week was better. No decapitations in "The Hound of the Baskerville's".
Linguists will doubtless be bored to death by the analysis of the word "hound" as I was. Even a practiced Freudian might find the flogging of the word to
be OTT.

The bickering between dear old Sherlock and John (forget the Rathbone version, much more plausibly terrifying
where "Holmes and Watson" actually managed to communicate now and again) is believable, given the stresses of modern life and the fact
that there is so much information to pack in. Not a nano-second to be wasted in this cyberfest version of what is one of television's most
oft repeated story.

Much is being made of the semi-mystical insights experienced by this generation's hero, and the illusion is maintained by the ticker-tape of
mobile 'phone text that is run, from time to time over the action.

It's the drugs, m'lud...

In fact, it's possible that the sub-text is that Sherlock may be suffering from a well documented psychological condition...
psychotic insight. Lack of sleep and drug addiction hones the senses to a sharpness never experienced in "normal" everday life by most people.

There's a nice quote about psychosis. It has little to do with the popularised paranoid delusions that lazy writers and journalist seem to think. That "the world"
out out to get one and that primitive urges may cause violence and destruction.

"A psychotic is a person who thinks two and two are five. A neurotic knows that two and two are four, but worries about it."

The latest dog eats dog version was brilliant visually. There have been complaints from some quarters about the quality of the writing,
but since it is more enjoyable if the sound is turned off, that does not seem to matter. I don't know if the producers have speeded the film up
just to add to the frenzy, but really this seems to be a silent movie with characters uttering unimportant phrases from time to time.

The current interpretation of the deer stalker behatted goon that we have all come to love, seems to be a combination of "fou savant" and analytical obsessive compulsive who, when tripping on some narcotic or other,
seems capable of seeing through the veil of reality into the very heart of the matter.


Rather than being frightening, this interpretation of one of the Mystery canon's great tradition was mostly interesting for the fine use of textures in the cinematography.

Give me "The Lady in the Water" directed by M Night Shaymalan, please.
It has a monster that could bring on a psychosis in the unwary, unlike last night's mixed dog's dinner.