Teresa Reviews “The Clocks” (2011)

Teresa reviews “The Clocks” (2011) and finds it ticking along like a fine Swiss watch.

Fidelity to text: 3½ knives

Plenty of condensing, some added characters to replace removed ones, plus German spies!

Quality of movie on its own: 4 knives

Much improved motivation and guilt thick enough to spread with a knife.

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

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

The Poirot series lives in a timeless world where it’s almost always a sunny day in early June soon after 1935. There’s rarely a mention of what everyone in England is afraid of: the next European war.

It’s easy these days to think that Europe has always been at peace or at least the citizens haven’t been trying to slaughter each other. Not true. Prior to the Great War, the 43 years between 1871 and 1914 had been the longest interlude without open shooting. That’s only been surpassed by the post-WWII period. Seventy years without continent-wide warfare until today. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

My point is that historically, the natural state for Europeans is to be up to their eyebrows in blood. Which is why it’s a bit odd that the Poirot series ignores the events of the time. It’s true that no one had any idea what would actually happen. The citizens dreaded the coming war but they thought, as everyone always does, that it would be a repeat of the last one. The Great War – vividly within living memory — was a gruesome, drawn-out slugfest. Men died by the thousands in muddy trenches to gain a few feet of ground. If you were a civilian living well away from the battlefields, you’d probably be safe enough.

So it was really nice to watch a Poirot where there’s actual concern shown about what’s lurking in the shadowy future. Citizens spying for Nazi Germany were a good updating of the novel’s citizens spying for the Soviet Union. The rationale was much the same. The brave new world is inevitable so why not get out in front of it?

Thus, Miss Pebmarsh transforms from a fanatic who abandons her own daughter and is devoted to Lenin to a fanatic devoted to preventing any mother’s sons from dying as hers did. She refuses to believe her chosen future might be the worse choice. I did wonder why she remained Miss Pebmarsh when she had two sons who died in the Great War. Very few cultures at that time celebrated single motherhood. But she was Miss instead of Mrs. A minor point, but an odd one.

Similarly, Mr. Ramsey transforms into Mr. Mabbut. Ramsey loathed England and loved communism enough to cheerfully betray England and abandon his wife and kids. Jew-loathing Mabbut’s so afraid of the Russians that he’s happy to betray England no matter how it imperils his kids. Different motivation, same result in the end.

The story opens in the lower levels of Dover Castle, where Naval Intelligence is keeping an eye, naturally, on England’s borders. There’s a mole in the agency sending critical documents to the Germans. Lt. Colin Race, Col. Race’s son, is tasked to find the mole. Sadly, he’s too busy winning money at poker to listen to his girlfriend, Fiona, who called him to say she’s watching the spy steal papers.

Fiona and the spy die tragically. Like Miss Pebmarsh, Colin’s eaten up with guilt for something he could have prevented.

He’s not alone. Plenty of people fail to pay attention and are punished for it. Inspector Hardcastle and the constable ignore flighty Nora Brendt and she’s murdered because she knows something. Hardcastle has a hard time paying attention to Poirot, despite his being vouched for by Scotland Yard and Naval Intelligence. Hardcastle and his constable aren’t paying attention when they tail Merlina Rival by car, and she gets murdered practically in front of them.

It’s easy to ignore unimportant people when you’ve got more important things to do. It’s easy to use unimportant people. By definition, if someone’s unimportant, they don’t count. That’s why business owner Miss Martindale (who’d be mortally offended if you told her she had the same lack of morals as a treasonous spy) could set up her employee Sheila Webb as the patsy in the scheme to steal an inheritance. Sheila’s a nobody from nowhere, with no family or friends to help her. She’s also a tart, conducting a lonely affair with a client on company time. She clearly doesn’t deserve a moment of consideration.

But when you think that way, pretty soon everyone who isn’t a close friend, cherished relative, or a high-status person who can help you up the ladder becomes a worthless nonentity who can be sacrificed for the greater good. This thinking is how you end up with heaps of corpses: sacrifices are necessary to bring about the shining city upon the hill.

Not your sacrifice, naturally. Someone else, who is unimportant.

This is also why I didn’t object to Colin’s infatuation with Sheila. Yeah, his girlfriend just died tragically and he should have spent more time grieving, rather than falling for the next damsel who needed his attention. But he did grieve, to the point where he hallucinates Fiona’s presence. He’s guilt-ridden because he ignored Fiona when she needed him. Having a terrified damsel run into him, begging for help with a murdered man, was a way for him to atone. If he helps this girl, it might, in some small measure, expiate his guilt. She needs him! He won’t ignore her, like he ignored Fiona.

And Sheila does need Colin’s help. The typist found the dead body in Miss Pebmarsh’s house, with multiple clocks in the room, and every policeman knows that the person who finds the body is often the cause of that person’s death. Hardcastle thinks so, especially after Miss Pebmarsh denies making the phone call requesting Sheila Webb’s services. Other citizens tell Hardcastle that they’ve seen the dead man in Sheila’s company. According to her employer, Sheila’s got loose morals and shouldn’t be trusted.

The conclusion is obvious. Knifing a man isn’t something a respectable, important citizen would do. She must be guilty. Sheila’s guilt is made more obvious when Colin discovers the stolen clock and the bloody knife in her hand bag.

Lucky for her that Poirot is suspicious. Unlike Hardcastle, Poirot pays attention. He listens to what people say to him, drawing them into disarming conversations as though they actually mattered. He makes the people around him feel important and valued and, as a result, he gets information that Hardcastle misses.

The neighboring Mabbut girls search the garden for Poirot and provide spying evidence. The crazy cat lady doesn’t just provide a critical piece of evidence (a mysterious laundry van), but she also, like Hastings, says something that clarifies the situation, turning it onto its head so it can be viewed in the correct orientation. The cat lady says that the mystery man went to Miss Pebmarsh’s home to be murdered. Most of all, Valerie Bland (Miss Martindale’s co-conspirator in the inheritance scheme) admits something that directly contradicts what she’d claimed earlier about her background. She lives in Dover to be near her sister, which Poirot discovers is Miss Martindale.

Poirot recognizes that Sheila Webb matters. If she doesn’t matter, then no individual matters. Innocence or guilt can be assigned as needed to get things done, to make things work, to build the shining city upon the hill of bones.