Teresa Reviews “Murder in Mesopotamia” (2002)

Teresa Reviews “Murder in Mesopotamia “(2002) and wishes they hadn’t shoehorned Hastings and Princess Rossakoff where they weren’t needed.

Fidelity to text: 3 querns

Hastings stole Amy Leathern’s lines. Countess Vera Rossakoff showed up from out of the sand but for no discernible reason.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 querns

A fascinating archeological dig completely overshadows what should be a fascinating excavation of Louise Leidner’s personality.

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

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This should have been great. Instead, it was a mess o’ pottage, the unsalted kind.

One challenge Agatha routinely faced was how to plot a woman’s murder when the most likely suspect is her husband. The answer here was to postulate two husbands.Lovely Louise (other characters in the novel routinely call her that) was widowed long ago. But did that husband truly die? Perhaps not. And if he didn’t die in that trainwreck, then he must be menacing Louise. It couldn’t be her nebbishly, nerdy, nice archeologist second husband. There’s also the possibility that husband #1 (Frederick Bosner)’s younger brother wants revenge and is behind the threatening letters.

But why should Frederick Bosner (or his brother) be so angry? Bosner was a German spy when he enthralled and married Louise, twenty-year-old daughter of an important American diplomat. The film glosses over the truth. Who turned him in? Why, Louise of course. They’d only been married a few months too so presumably they were still in the newlywed, billing and cooing stage.

Was she that much of a patriot? Maybe not. One of the many, many places the film failed was in Poirot’s reconstruction of Louise Leidner. Her personality — that of a manipulative charmer who stirs up the people around her so she can sit back and enjoy the show — is key to her murder. According to Poirot, Louise married Frederick in haste and began repenting immediately. He fascinated her, she definitely fascinated him and not just because as an important diplomat’s daughter, she got him access to high places. Except that marriage involves more than going to parties with a handsome escort. Louise quickly discovered that she didn’t like being under some man’s thumb.

Moreover, unlike in the film, Poirot examined her room at the dig and deduced that she was an egoist but not a sensualist. That is, pleasure for its own sake didn’t ring her bells. It was power, the power to make people jump through hoops for her own cold amusement.

So how to remove an unwanted husband in 1919 without social approbation? By ratting him out as an enemy spy. Louise got what she wanted: her freedom and being adored even more for her selfless patriotism and bravery.

She soon learned that she was not as free as she thought she was. Whenever she became close to another man, threatening letters arrived. In a way, the threatening letters became her get-out-of-jail-free card. She could charm and seduce and get engaged and then a threatening letter would arrive and she’d be able to break of the betrothal.

Until the day she met Dr. Eric Leidner, Swedish archeologist.

Mysteriously, no threatening letters arrived until after she married him and then they stopped. Until she decided that Dr. Leidner’s best friend and fellow archeologist, Richard Carey, needed to adore her as much as Leidner did. She wasn’t planning on seducing him, just enchanting him until he couldn’t think straight. But they fell in love, began the affair, and soon thereafter, the threatening letters began arriving again.

That’s the setup Poirot and Hastings walk into. Hastings, you say? Why yes. Our man Hastings suddenly – when there had never previously been so much as a rumor of one –has a sister with an adopted nephew just the right age to be Frederick Bosner’s younger brother. Nephew William Coleman is naturally very proud of his Uncle Arthur and has told everyone at the dig all about Uncle Arthur and his dear friend, Poirot.

Almost everything Nurse Amy Leatheran does in the novel is done in the film by Hastings. It’s sad. Amy was a fascinating narrator. She’s opinionated, professional, doesn’t take anyone’s guff, becomes Poirot’s right hand like a good nurse does to a surgeon and inadvertently reveals her prejudices and misunderstandings along the way. She also falls under Lovely Louise’s spell. All gone.

Countess Vera Rossakoff shows up too, wasting valuable screen time that Poirot could have spent interviewing witnesses and examining the remains of Lovely Louise’s life. Instead, we’re forced to watch him quiz the hotel concierge repeatedly: “Do I have a message?” “Did the countess call?” “Has the countess arrived?” What was the point of wasting precious time that could have been spent on the plot? So Poirot could get stuck with Rossakoff’s hotel tab.

The novel would be difficult to adapt. Poirot doesn’t show up until halfway through, after Lovely Louise gets her head bashed in. It’s Nurse Amy’s show. But this could have been finessed! Instead of having Hastings drag Poirot to the dig to meet his dear nephew, use the plot in the novel!

Open with the murder. Then have Superintendent Maitland call in Poirot, conveniently in Baghdad on his way to someplace else, to solve the murder. Have Poirot interview the witnesses and suspects and tell their stories in flashback form. That way, he learns Lovely Louise’s habit of stage-managing the people around her into live entertainment for her own amusement. At the same time, the audience understands Louise and learns why the Baghdad expat community call her an allumeuse.

Since no time is wasted on Vera Rossakoff, time could be spent explaining how Louise could marry a man and not realize – despite the intimacies implied in marriage – that’s she’s been with this man before. Remember, she was only married to Frederick for a few months. She’s not a sensualist. She likes slavish adoration but she doesn’t want to get hot and sweaty with her admirers. That implies that while she and Frederick may have been having sex, she was (a twenty-year-old bride in 1919!) probably laying in the dark and thinking of England. Fast forward fifteen years and she meets Dr. Eric Leidner, well-known Swedish archeologist. He’s older, bearded, stooped, a different nationality and skill-set, and nothing like the dynamic Frederick.

It’s a stretch but considering how idiotic people can be, especially when they’re completely self-absorbed, not impossible.

In my scenario, each flashback would have revealed another layer of Louise’s cruelty and manipulation as well as explained how she ensnared everyone around her. It would have explained why Mrs. Mercado hated Louise. Making Mr. Mercado into a murderer added nothing to the plot and the solution was mishandled. He’d have been better left as a mere drug addict terrified that Louise would reveal his addiction.

There’s also the subplot involving Father Lavigny. It was actually set up! Hastings asks about plasticine and notices wax adhering to a solid gold drinking cup. And then nothing. Rewriting the script to more closely adhere to the novel would have fixed that issue. Similarly, Miss Johnson got short shrift as did Richard Carey. They both adored Dr. Leidner for different reasons but not enough of their devotion and guilt showed up.

This should have been better. This could have been better if only the script paid more attention to the novel and its psychological examination of Lovely Louise and less to Hastings and Russian countesses.