Whodunit

 

WHODUNIT

 

          In a famous essay, the crime novelist Raymond Chandler remarked of the classic British detective story, “it has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”  The form, as Chandler suggested, remains fixed, stuck in the grip of conventions so often repeated that its readers—I am one of them—know what to expect and are perfectly happy about it.  Almost any imitation of the great days of the past, the Golden Age of detective fiction, qualifies as self-referential, as they say in the literary racket.

  Agatha Christie of course dominates all the innumerable practitioners of the form, which underlines the appropriateness of the allusions to her work and, fleetingly, her presence in See How They Run.  Directed by Tom George, the movie confronts and essentially discusses the conventions and traditions of the (mostly) English mystery.  In a voiceover narrative Adrien Brody, playing a wiseass American film director, Leo Kopernick, comments on the story, explaining the differences between two approaches to detective fiction, the British and the American, and pretty much disparaging the form that unfolds before us.  Set in 1953, the action opens with a celebration by cast and crew of the one hundredth performance of Agatha Christie’s most famous work, The Mousetrap, which in fact seems likely to run for a hundred years. 

Kopernick wants to make a movie based on the play, only with sex, nudity, and violence, following in the great American tradition.  He discovers that he can’t get the rights for film until the play finishes its run, not knowing of course at that time that it actually might run forever.  Although he appears several times in flashbacks and his voiceover continues through much of the movie, he actually becomes the victim whose murder must be solved.

Instead of the usual brilliant amateur, the investigation depends upon the work of two Scotland yard officers, Detective Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Saorise Ronan), whose names suggest some of the in jokes in this essentially comic work.  A far cry from the tight lipped professionalism of the Yard, Stoppard is a drunk who muddles through his work, barely escaping the censure of the commissioner; Stalker is an eager beaver rookie who jots down everything she notices and everything Stoppard says, not always a wise or useful practice.

In flashbacks and in the course of the investigation, the narrative introduces a variety of eccentric characters, all associated with The Mousetrap , and proceeds through a number of often farcical sequences.  The solution to the mystery, which probably few members of the audience by that time really care about, finally takes place in—where else?—Agatha Christie’s country house, another reference to the tradition of the form.

Although hardly the sort of mystery story that entrances millions of readers, See How They Run manages to sustain a certain level of interest through the  travails of the mostly bumbling and frequently inebriated Inspector Stoppard and the contrasting diligence of Constable Stalker.  Ultimately, I doubt if anyone otherwise finds the puzzle itself satisfactory or its resolution acceptable.  The film works best as a mildly entertaining commentary on its tradition and even on itself.