The latest Agatha Christie cinematic adaption is, as one might predict, a regular old whodunnit with an unknown murderer, slate of nefarious candidates, and an act three big reveal.
Sumptuously shot and immaculately acted, there is little to lament in this particular cinematic adaptation – which by all accounts, in technical ways, has much to recommend it – other than the intrinsic value of the story itself. With essentially no subtext, no broader comment on life, the world, or humanity’s position within it, the trouble in the telling is not that this movie is poorly made or even boring to watch, but that it all adds up to something pretty pointless.
I have read some Agatha Christie before and have enjoyed it. The context was an evening with friends, where each person came with an unread copy of the same play and an assignment to take on the role one of its old timey, eccentric characters.
It was a hoot, mostly, I see now, for the companionly thrill of witnessing the various levels actorly skill (or lack thereof) amongst those assembled, as well as the riotous fun of getting “killed off,” one by one, by some penultimately undisclosed criminal in our midst.
Watching the latest Death in the Nile, though, has shown me that without some superadded element like the comradery of a party, an Agatha Christie story amounts to something pretty superficial and unsatisfying.
A killer leaves a body; he or she could be anybody; until it was actually that particular somebody. That’s pretty much it.
It’s not a comment on psychology, sociology, theology, or any other “-ology,” really. It is just a macabre spectacle occurring amongst folks that never existed.
The principal benefit of sitting audience to such a story, it seems, is the underwhelming consolation of getting to walk away afterwards with two less hours of life to figure out what to do with. Which, as a reason for doing anything, it seems to me, is pretty depressing.
Do any of us really have such a glut of excess of time, that the best thing we can think to do is “kill” it piece by piece in little vacuous daydreams?
If anybody is justified in doing so, it probably the person on her sickbed. She’s miserable, in too much pain to manage much else, and could use a few hours of distraction – in which case, by all means!
But for the rest of us? I mean, seriously, folks. If the closest comparison for the quality of our everyday existence is an invalid inpatient’s, then, I daresay those two hours will be better spent figuring out how to improve our situation.
Is there somebody nearby who could use a little love? Is there some duty left undone or little piece of work you’ve been putting off? Is there something still to pray?
Or is there really so little left to happen on God’s great green happening illimitable earth, that our most imaginative recourse in any given moment is sitting inside doing the cinematic equivalent of watching daytime TV in the summertime?
Perhaps you have a perfectly reasonably desire to kill some time, in which case, such a resolutely superficial murder saga as an Agatha Christie story may just scratch that itch.
But, really, though? Even with so many other, more meaningful stories being told across a variety of media, can we really think of nothing better to do?