The 93 Per Cent Problem

AFRENZIED Sherlock Holmes opens his door a crack and peers out at Dr. Watson with sharp, glittering eyes. Years of heavy cocaine consumption have finally taken their toll; Holmes is paranoid, obsessed with the belief that his arch-enemy Moriarty is after him. The Seven Percent Solution, the most recent in a flood of Sherlock Holmes films released in the last few years, depicts a Holmes who still has all of his marvellously keen powers of perception but who has lost his grasp on reality. The detective master-mind who embodies the power of rationality, who penetrates the most obscure and baffling mysteries and restores them to intelligibility, has become a victim of his own delusions.

The concerned colleague and friend Dr. Watson decides Holmes must be cured of his addiction. Using Moriarty as bait, he lures Holmes to the house of a Viennese doctor who has become notable through his success in curing patients of drug addiction. There, Sherlock Holmes and his historical contemporary Sigmund Freud, the world's two greatest investigative minds, join forces to unravel a mystery. While undergoing treatment for his addiction, Holmes pursues the case of Freud's beautiful ex-patient Lola Devereaux (who has been abducted). Freud, meanwhile, seeks to explain the enigma of Sherlock Holmes himself.

The conjunction of two such legendary figures is a wonderful premise for a film. Freud's place in history has reached such dimensions that he is certainly as much of a mythic character as the fictional Holmes. Their pooling of talents promises to be a mystery buff's paradise. Each man in his own way dispels the mysterious: Holmes reveals the order in the rational, objective world while Freud illuminates the power of the irrational in the sphere of the subconscious. The cooperation of the two great detective minds in cracking the case of the missing Lola Devereaux and Freud's probing into the secret of Holme's personality to determine the subconscious source of his addiction give us mystery on top of mystery. It is a powerful proposition for a film. Add to it a star-studded cast that includes Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Arkin, Nicol Williamson and Joel Grey, to name a few, and how can you lose?

The Seven Percent Solution shows that you can. It proves once again that fine actors and an ingenious plot do not necessarily make a good movie. The very cleverness of the movie's conception proves its undoing. Director Herbert Ross concentrates so much on conveying subtle layers of correspondences and contrasts that the movie is ultimately stifled by them. One is meant to enjoy all the delicate ironies of the situation presented, but because the movie consists of nothing more, it ends up being tedious. It suffers, we suffer, from the detached way in which scenes and situations are presented. The director never becomes involved with his material. He plays a game with the characters and situations and we too are meant to enjoy the technique and craftsmanship of the film rather than be involved in it. Ross strives for the light touch; as a result, however, while the film has humor, it's never given enough punch to be truly funny. We notice the humor, but we don't experience it. Similarly, the film as a whole is too inhibited to be exciting. Even an old-fashioned swashbuckling scene--Holmes dueling on the top of a train with Devereaux's abductor--lacks suspense. It's played for camp. The Seven Percent Solution is a study in half-tones; Ross apparently feels that nuance is more important than color.

Despite the self-consciousness that hampers it, the movie is impressive in its gloss and technical accomplishment. Film is inherently an effective tool for the mystery genre, and Ross handles it with artistry, capturing all the richness of detail and scene that fall within its purview. The camera models Holmes himself. In the movie's opening, a demented Holmes speeds across Europe in pursuit of Moriarty. He leaves London's Victoria Station with its throngs of people and loud, smoke-bellowing engines and passes into the gleaming green Austrian countryside. With his bloodhound Toby on the scent of Moriarty, he rushes into Freud's house where the doctor is already expecting him. The detective casts a comprehensive glance over the interior of Freud's study and, knowing nothing about Freud, is able to reel off all the particulars of the doctor's life. Holmes's display of his astounding deductive power is the tour de force, but the entire sequence is wonderful, replete with a variety of connotations that Ross conveys forcefully. He demonstrates a gift for focusing in on a situation and subject and exploring its dimensions, and effectively exploits screenwriter Nicholas Meyer's entertaining sense of the ironic. (Meyer also authored the best-seller on which the movie is based.)

Nevertheless, the slow, deliberate pace of the movie leaves one gasping for oxygen. The whimsical intellectuality of the movie rapidly becomes cloying. The mystery's conclusion--where the last piece in the puzzle is fit into place--is a little too cleverly predictable. Through hypnosis, Freud finds that the secret of Holmes' personality and the reason for his cocaine addiction is explained by a childhood trauma. What else could one expect in a movie about Freud as precious as this one has become, but a reenactment of the Oedipal drama?

Some fine performances compensate for the tedium of The Seven Percent Solution. Laurence Olivier is wonderful in his brief appearance as Moriarty. In the very pettiness of his personality there are the seeds for the drug-crazed Holmes's perception of him as a titanic power of evil. Alan Arkin portrays a surprisingly endearing and benign Sigmund Freud with none of the brooding, neurotic quality one might expect. Arkin's Freud is all kindliness and sanity. Vanessa Redgrave is an appropriately haunting and romantic Lola Devereaux and Nicol Williamson makes a fine Sherlock Holmes, the civilized British gentleman with a passion for fair play at all times. Even in his berserk moments, he remains the aristocratic eccentric. Though gifted with a passion for precision, he is still the ultimate amateur.

Holmes' character lends its tone to the movie. Such a thoroughgoing evocation and spoof of detective dilletantism does have intrinsice entertainment value. But parodying parody has its pitfalls, and mockery--even self-mockery--can become its own affectation. The problem with The Seven Percent Solution is that in its constant pursuit of dry wit it becomes dessicated.