Teresa Reviews “Crooked House” (2017)

Because of our ongoing interest in all things Agatha Christie, we’ve begun watching movies based on her books.

There are a lot of them so we’ve got plenty of filmed murder in our future. The adaptations will vary wildly in quality and fidelity to the source material as I’m sure you can imagine.

I’m going to rate the films two ways.

The first is fidelity to the material. This has nothing to do with the quality of the movie since movies are a radically different medium from a novel. That is to say, what works in a novel won’t work in a movie and vice versa. We’ll use (depending on the murder weapon) little poison bottles, little knives, little guns, little candlesticks, etc.

Five poison bottles indicate the film follows the novel virtually line for line. One poison bottle indicates that while the name of the film matches that of a Christie novel, the plot was made up of whole cloth by the scriptwriter and the Christie estate should disavow all knowledge of the film (while still cashing the check).

The second rating will be the usual stars. Five stars is a terrific movie and one star means don’t waste your time other than for completeness’s sake. As always, your mileage will vary. We’ve loved movies everyone hated, despised the ‘best movie of the year’ and disagreed about plenty of others. The proof is in the watching so you may adore what we hated.

With that said, let’s get to Crooked House (2017).

For movie goodness: four poison bottles

For fidelity to Christie: four poison bottles

I really enjoyed this movie but I have to say, thank God for subtitles. It crammed a lot of plot and an army of characters into 115 minutes, while often refusing to enunciate properly. That is one of the reasons for the missing fifth star. I couldn’t always tell what was going on and thirty seconds of explanatory dialog here and a minute of clarification there would have made all the difference.

Five extra minutes of film; that’s all I ask for so I can better keep track of who is who and why I should care.

The filmmakers did do a good job of hiring different looking actors and actresses so I could figure out who was who. It’s frustrating when Hollywood hires anonymous, cookie-cutter blondes who all visit the same plastic surgeon and get their clothes from the same stylist and their hair and makeup from the same beautician. It’s darn hard to tell them apart. The same is true of the typical collection of Ken dolls, although actors are allowed a tiny bit more freedom in their appearances.

Glenn Close, playing Edith De Haviland, was a marvel. She perfectly embodied the steel-willed, do-what-is-needed, aristocratic sister-in-law of the first murder victim. I also liked Honor Kneafsey who played Josephine. Other, very talented people showed up, but they didn’t always get enough to do. Christina Hendricks (playing Brenda Leonides) in particular, looked decorative for no discernible reason. But that, I suppose, is why Aristide Leonides married her. Why else do elderly millionaires marry Las Vegas dancers? It isn’t their ability to discuss Proust.

On the other hand, our male lead, Max Irons (playing Charles Hayward), was a Ken doll. Very good looking but he came across as bland and spineless. If he and Sophia Leonides get together (left up in the air in the movie but this definitely happens in the book) you know what his fate will be. Sophia Leonides will steamroller him and he’ll learn to like it and she’ll despise him for knuckling under. Torrid affairs with manly gamekeepers and studly stonemasons will soon follow and the only thing he’ll do is whine.

I can see why people won’t like this movie. It was talky but I like snappy dialog. It didn’t race from one scene to another with frenetic jump cuts but I hate those. I enjoy a slower-paced movie where I can figure out what’s going on and not get left behind at the starting gate. It was English Country House porn on steroids which I adore. That was one crooked house those people were trapped in, with surprises behind every door. God alone knows how they keep a castle like that dusted especially since the director got rid of all the servants who should have been filling up the backgrounds with housekeeping activities. There were some changes to Agatha’s text which purists won’t approve of. I’ll get to them later when I discuss the fidelity of the movie to the novel. But I liked this movie very much and I would watch it again.

Now as to the four poison bottles for fidelity to the text.

There were changes from Agatha’s novel, but most of them consisted of amping up the interactions to make the film more dramatic and more claustrophobic. Most of them worked for me. Here and there, for you purists, the movie dialog was taken word for word from the text. Other things got shortened or truncated but that’s what movies do. They remove what can’t be filmed like inner monologues. Some characters — the tutor and Brenda — got short shrift and their subplots and story arcs almost completely vanished. Again, 115 minutes doesn’t leave a lot of room.

A major change was Sophia Leonides’ character. I remembered her from the novel as more of a clinging vine damsel-type. In the movie, she’s a ball-buster and Charles Hayward (our hero) is going to regret marrying Sophia in spades if he is stupid enough to do so. I wouldn’t argue with this change because it emphasized how crazy the Leonides family was and how Aristide Leonides knew that his granddaughter, Sophia, was a chip off the old block and the only one of his heirs suitable to control his empire. She had the spine to fight back; the rest of the family rolled over and played dead.

The other major change was in the ending. I have to be careful here so as to not reveal whodunnit and why. Suffice to say, Edith de Haviland gets a much more dramatic exit, doing what has to be done, and the movie is much better for it. This event is now front and center, instead of being reported on afterwards in a few bloodless paragraphs as happens in the novel.

Give Crooked House a try. It’s two hours of your time and you’ll have a very nice feel for how crooked the house was, what it did to its inhabitants, and what a control-freak Aristide Leonides was. It’s not a perfect adaptation. So what? I enjoyed it and I recommend it. Best of all, if you only watch your Agatha Christie instead of reading her, you’ll have a very clear idea of the plot. You won’t make a mistake at a dinner party when you discuss the novel and whodunnit and why it mattered so much.

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