A HAUNTING IN VENICE: DO YOU EVER WATCH A FILM TO INDULGE YOUR INNER CHILD?

By Ahona

Chiefly, this film offers an eccentric detective, a ghost story, and a reasonably layered mystery. Haunting in Venice is a very matter-of-fact film. It has a dilapidated mansion with a tragic history. It has some jarring shots and bizarre cuts between scenes (neither of which I quite understood the need for). It has a world-famous detective who is confronted by the very things he has never believed in. It has characters haunted by either the demons of their own mind or the phantoms of the house. And it has Michelle Yeoh. The film opens with detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) in Venice, as he narrowly escapes the clutches of men who have to come to him with their mysteries. But Poirot has retired. Now he opens his doors to pastry delivery twice a day, occasionally steps out to the venetian markets to buy his groceries, obsesses over the size of eggs, and has his breakfast on the terrace. So he is basically living my dream life. Of course, if I were to live here I would indulge in the stunning view from the terrace. But Poirot is more into looking inside than outside.But a friend manages to sneak in. And she hasn't come without a present. Ariadne Oliver's (Tina Fey) got a mystery for Poirot. In a cursed, haunted mansion that once housed the orphans of Venice, lives an opera actress. Having lost her daughter, this actress has now invited a psychic to hold a seance. Ariadne Oliver believes that this psychic, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) is a liar. All her magic is well-rehearsed trickery, all her claims - a morbid hoax. Except, it is practically impossible to tell how she manages to pull off a very believable seance. Poirot steps into the cursed mansion to figure out the tricks of psychic trade. And when you step into the mansion with him on Halloween night, you just think that it makes sense. It makes sense that a tragedy like this has happened here. It makes sense that no one wants to associate with this place. It makes sense that it is dark and brooding, gothic and sinister. Everything in the mansion is bricks and its people have fallen into disrepair. It is at this moment that the film transforms into a children's ghost story. And I don't mean that as a bad thing. Becoming a story that reminds you of what it felt like to read your first Stephen Kings and R.L. Stines and Agatha Christies is no mean feat. Any film that can remind you of the curious, terrified, wide-eyed child that you used to be is actually a gift. So much of the cinema we engage with today as adults speak about the wider geopolitics, the social dynamics, the crisis of human existence in an unforgiving economy. And it should. But just to have a film once in a while that is more intent on its inner story than its outer context is just... relieving. It feels like taking a break. It is quite possible that what I am interpreting as its strongest suit would be considered by critics to be its weakest point the fact that it refuses to represent, or comment on, the current state of things. I am not a critic. I am basically a really obsessive film-watcher. And in that capacity, this film felt like one of those childhood stories that informed your sense of right and wrong. What it says about science and ghosts and logic is basic, but there is a charm to the delivery. What it says about grief and insanity is already known - but there is empathy in this telling. Also, this is the only one of the three Poirot films directed by Kenneth Branagh with period-appropriate frames. The first two seemed to be stylistically too modern for it to be convincing as a Poirot story. This one actually allows the dark, shadowy depths of the mansion to paint through the frames with conviction. Too much of cinema today is about the clarity of the image. To me, it sometimes seems to add a certain sterile, clinical quality to the story. Of course, in hyper-modern works such as Severance that clarity is necessary. But here, the graininess conspires with the lurking shadows of old curses. Old traumas keep young people awake.

And somewhere between vengeful spirits and old-world detectives, hides the truth of a decaying mansion creeping through long corridors, hiding behind china cupboards, peeping through dusty mirrors. There is a sense of self-indulgence in the frames. The film wants you to believe, or at least, to feel the mystique of the night. These are all old tropes from horror films. In this film, they are used extensively and effectively. I cannot claim that this film would have had the same effect on me if it wasn't for Poirot as a character. The finest, the most eccentric, the most unintentionally comical of the gentleman detectives, Hercule Poirot is a testament to Agatha Christie's ability to create a mystery. Few writers have written such deceptively profound works under the garb of detective fiction. The wisdom in her novels is not only eternal, but also accessible. It is witty and poignant, immersive and honest. This film felt like a treat to my inner child because it is a film based on her work, because it borrows on her style. And as Sophie Hannah said about her her style was never simplistic. It was beautifully simple.