Quarantine Battles: Sherlock Holmes puzzle vs. Sherlock Holmes movie

This may be my final Quarantine Battle. The premier of Victoria has announced that small groups of people can start getting together, and I got my first email yesterday about laying the groundwork for returning to work.

Which is leaving me feeling kind of odd. I should be jumping for joy, but I kind of feel like I should have "done a lot more" during quarantine. You know all those people who learned to bake? Yeah, my one attempt to make a pavlova was a colossal failure. You know all those people who read all the great works of literature? I read Watchmen and about 75% of a Philip Roth novel. You know all those people who can now play piano and juggle at the same time? I can't. I can only do the juggling part.

But while I try to come to grips with my strange indifference to returning to reality, albeit on a gradual basis, I do have one last funny thing I can shoehorn in under the banner "Quarantine Battles."

One thing we did do during quarantine was slightly increase our pace of doing puzzles. About 18 months ago, my wife and I found that a dormant love of puzzling lived within us. Before about September of 2018, I couldn't have told you the last time I'd done a puzzle of any variety, let alone a 1000-piece one -- possibly never.

Well, what I refer to as "the Harry Potter Paraphernalia" puzzle changed it all. See below to understand what I mean by that name:

We just finished our sixth since then, which is not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, and involves a couple four-month layoffs. We just don't have an ideal puzzling table and we hate working around the puzzle when we're trying to sit four of us at the dinner table. But given that the previous nearly 45 years of my life had zero such puzzles, it's a lot.

And we've now finished two during quarantine, which has been a good distraction.

Here's the one we just finished:

Parts of it were very easy, as there's a lot of text, and you can tell pretty easily if a piece is a good candidate or not -- does it finish the sentence or doesn't it? And the puzzle designer had the courtesy to include about 12 distinct typefaces, making the task easier.

But the word "Sherlock Holmes" itself? That was my burden, and it certainly was one. Every bit of that lettering looked like every other bit, all green and ornate and flowery. That last is not metaphorical; there are actually flowers (and vines, and leaves) embedded within the two words. I fought that part of the puzzle long and hard, and ultimately won.

When we finished on Saturday afternoon, I decided there was no better time than Saturday night to watch Guy Ritchie's eponymous 2009 film, which I'd never seen. (And what kind of Guy Ritchie kick do I think I'm on, anyway? I've seen this and RockNRolla both since quarantine began.)

I thought it had the chance to be a very delightful sort of escapism, which would pick up where the puzzle left off. And in truth, there were some things about Holmes that I wouldn't have known if not for reading them on that puzzle, which did appear in the movie, such as the motto "Facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts." Though to be honest, I can sound that out either way, semantically, to make one sound like the superior approach over the other.

But I found the beginning of Sherlock Holmes to be very rushed in its setup, what I like to refer to as "feeling like it's starting in the middle of a sentence." I think part of the problem, which is consistent with Ritchie's obvious mandate in making this movie, is that we are introduced to Holmes in a "man of action" context rather than a sleuth context. First and foremost, Sherlock Holmes should be a detective. In fact, even though I know the character boxed and fenced, I tend to think of him as a bit stiff. Here, in the opening scene, he's taking out adversaries with dual batons that he uses kind of like nunchucks -- there may have even been some parkour in there. That's not the type of Holmes I imagine.

I guess I prefer Robert Downey Jr. when he's playing Robert Downey Jr. (i.e. Tony Stark, as that is essentially a variation on Downey's real personality) than playing a Character with a capital C. Exhibit A might be the movie I saw earlier this year, Dolittle, where he's really Trying Something, though I still don't know what. Sherlock Holmes is not as much of a caricature as Dr. Dolittle, but I do feel like he labors a bit when he's trying to interpret somebody rather than just being the character. Jude Law seems more natural, and I don't suspect Watson is actually too far off his real personality.

There's some nice filmmaking here, though also some empty style, and I enjoyed the choice to set the climax on the under-construction Tower Bridge. In a rare bit of fidelity to actual history, the Tower Bridge was indeed being built during the time that Sherlock Holmes was first active, according to the books. In all, though, I found this film lacking in substance, and indeed quite forgettable. Its attempts to make Holmes a bit of a slapstick figure seem as ill-considered as its attempts to turn him into an action hero. I usually don't believe it when a character is totally above the fray, but I feel like the character of Sherlock Holmes might and possibly should be the exception to that.

Compared to the glorious literary density of this puzzle, with its bits on all the key characters, its psychological analysis of Holmes by Watson, its rich illustrations and its other tidbits of information on the man, his times, and the crimes he solved, Sherlock Holmes is empty indeed.

Victor: The puzzle.

Okay, this is has been fun, even if it's only been going on for the last week.