Teresa Reviews “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case” (2013)

Teresa reviews “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case” (2013) and thought it was a fitting send-off for the little Belgian detective.

Fidelity to text: 4½ poison bottles

Very close, including dialog.

Quality of movie on its own: 4½ poison bottles

Outstanding, except for a scene in the book dropped from the movie. Adding that back would have gotten this episode five poison bottles.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.

What a fabulous sendoff this was to David Suchet, Hercule Poirot, and Agatha Christie. Beautifully cast, acted, shot, and a haunting Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prelude’ (Opus 28 No. 15) as the leitmotif throughout the score. Listen to that melancholy piano music, the slow drip, drip, drip of tinkling notes, and try not to feel that an era has ended in sadness.

But every era ends! Get over it! This series had to end too, twenty-five years after The Adventure of the Clapham Cook in 1989 started it all, introducing us to Suchet’s masterful portrayal of Poirot and Hugh Fraser as his faithful friend, sounding board, and sometime assistant, Captain Arthur Hastings.

It could have been dreadful. Bathetic, awash in fake sentiment, trite, and worst of all, completely rewritten by some hack so Poirot lived to hunt murderers another day and the studio could continue raking in the bucks. But justice triumphed and Poirot went bravely into that good night, knowing he’d executed a man whom the law could never touch.

Remember, since Stephen Norton didn’t commit the murder himself, merely worked upon the nerves of agitated, desperate, susceptible people, he’s not guilty. He didn’t pull the trigger. His false counsel was so sly and careful that even if his victim accused him in court, it’s all unprovable hearsay. An astute policeman could tie Stephen Norton to a series of unrelated murders, but he’s always in the background. His hand never touches the gun, the poison bottle, the knife. He’s just … unlucky in his choice of friends and acquaintances. His being on the scene is coincidence and can’t be proved otherwise.

In the novel, Poirot states that he knows of at least five murders that Norton was involved in and believes there were more. Truthfully, just in the five murders Poirot knows about, there were ten victims. The murder victim (who in every case had it coming which is why Norton succeeded) and then the victim of Norton’s lying advice who was executed by the Crown. Or committed suicide. Or had their life ruined by suspicion and ugly rumor. Add in the circle of family and friends who’ll never be the same and you’ve got a lot of victims.

Poirot knew the risk he ran. He murdered Norton, thereby breaking his own moral code and risking his soul to eternal damnation. But what else could he do? He’s not Batman, condemning thousands to millions of innocent victims to death at the Joker’s hands because he’s too damn dainty to shoot a rabid dog. There was also the risk that if he didn’t pull it off, he’d be accused of murdering an innocent birdwatcher, something the Joker would do.

He chooses to save other, innocent lives, accepts death, and trusts his soul to God’s judgement.

There was so much to love in this episode. Styles was a shadow of its former glory; the walls bare of sold art and the rooms echoing because furniture was gone. That’s not the only reason Styles didn’t look like you remembered. The producers used a different location for the mansion than the one they used to film The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The season is autumn, the end of the year and cold, dreary winter is on her way. Color, life, and joy have drained away from Styles and its inhabitants.

Poirot isn’t the only person at Styles with a problem. Hastings, called from Argentina to assist on their last hunt together, is mourning his wife. His daughter is there too. Judith is not his only child; the novel mentions three others. She’s the youngest and the one he understands the least. He worries about her and he should.

Judith appears to be ready to have an affair with Major Allerton, a heartless cad. She has no desire to listen to her father suggest that perhaps a man who callously uses and abandons women is not the best prospect. It’s easy to see why Hastings doesn’t understand Judith. She’s nothing like him. She’s a eugenicist, stating publicly that useless and ailing people should be killed. Gently, because doing otherwise would be cruel, but she means it. I hope she never has a disabled child. According to her lights, they’re unfit to live. Hastings considers human life to be sacred. If anything, the film softened Judith. She’d leave bodies piled high in her wake if she ran the world the way she thought it should be run.

She carries a torch for Dr. Franklin, genius scientist with exactly the kind of ailing, invalid wife that Judith thinks should be put out of her misery, incidentally benefiting everyone else. They’re two peas in a pod. In the novel, Dr. Franklin cheerfully says:

“Lots of people I’d like to kill. Don’t believe my conscience would keep me awake at night afterwards. It’s an idea of mine that about eighty percent of the human race ought to be eliminated. We’d get on much better without them.”

I have to wonder who he expects to grow his food, keep his electricity and water flowing, and scrub his shining city upon the hill. Like Judith, the film softens his character.

It’s no surprise when Babs, his wife, is poisoned. The question is who did it. Poirot says suicide and the coroner and the inquest agree. Later, Dr. Franklin admits that Babs wasn’t the suicidal type but he doesn’t want to know the truth. Maybe because he suspects Judith murdered his unpleasant wife. With Babs gone, they’re free to marry and head off to Africa. But they’d always have a cloud over their relationship, each wondering what the other did. Norton would triumph again.

The one flaw was removing the reconciliation between Toby and Daisy Luttrell. They’re the elderly couple running Styles as a guesthouse. They’re on the verge of penury, struggling to do something they were never trained for, and snapping at each other. He thinks she’s a bossy harridan and she thinks he’s an incompetent spendthrift. They’re both right. Norton plays Toby Luttrell like a harp, saying exactly the wrong thing in his hearing about spineless men being bullied and how real men would never let their wives use them as doormats.

So it’s no surprise when Toby Luttrell shoots Daisy, mistaking her for a rabbit. Or so he says. Afterwards, the film shows them at dinner, at opposite ends of the table as if nothing happened. The novel goes into detail about how Toby was distraught over shooting Daisy. Poirot points out that Toby missed because he didn’t want to kill his wife. He loved her and she loved him. He also points out Norton’s power. He manipulates people in the heat of emotion to do something they’d never otherwise do.

Which is why Norton manipulates Hastings to murder.

Poirot ends his life and the series in triumph. He saves Hastings from his folly, removes an untouchable rabid dog, and ensures the innocent no longer suffer.