Agatha and the Truth of murder by Tom Dalton - Nine out of 10

Agatha and the Truth of murder by Tom Dalton

Nine out of 10

The bestselling writer ever is not the author of Game of Thrones – the “winter is not coming” not yet anyway – but Agatha Christie, the author who has mysteriously disappeared in 1926 and that absence is the subject of this film and at least one other motion picture – Agatha, released in 1979, with Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave, wherein Mrs. Christie travels to a spa.

In this new version of the disappearance, the famous writer is approached by a desperate woman who wants to solve a murder case and although the author replies that this is for the police to investigate, she has reasons to try and get away from the home where her husband wants a divorce, given that he has an affair which we learn has been consummated on a…golf course.

The film seems outstanding for this viewer and it seems to confirm the fact that the British school of acting is not just one of the best, but the best, considering that actors we do not know anything about prove to be able of superb performances, worthy of Golden Globes and other awards.

In some of the introducing scenes, we see the two most famous and popular writers of crime novels, Agatha Christie aka the marvelous Ruth Bradley and sir Arthur Conan Doyle aka the solid Michael McElhatton, talk about the secrets, with the man suggesting that a source of inspiration would be…designing a golf course.

Later on, when the heroine would be missing, the outré Arthur Conan Doyle – a proponent of the Spiritualism movement - organized a session to find the author by invoking supernatural help – in another very good film, Houdini, we see the British writer trying to convince the illusionist that he has psychic powers, only for the two of them to clash over the subject.

When Agatha Christie is missing for a few days, her case causes a national hysteria, with the parliament, the media and the population demanding extraordinary measures, an incredible police force is summoned to search for her, to the annoyance of Detective Inspector Dicks aka another splendid actor, Ralph Ineson, who would say to the authoress that he is chagrined to fine her only ten pounds, for he wishes he could make her pay for the whole expensive and futile operation, which would have included the army, if her absence were to be prolonged.

Florence Nightingale Shore is murdered on the train and her friend – we would learn that the two had been in fact lovers – enlists the help of Mrs. Christie, who devises a stratagem to catch the killer, wherein she pretends to be a legal representative that has the task to find who is the person that would inherit the sum of nearly two hundred thousand pounds, left by the late Florence.

Daphne, Travis aka the formidable Blake Harrison, Randolph aka the superb Tim McInnerny – seen before in the Blackadder series – are just a few of those who claim a right to obtain the fortune and the disguised writer is supposed to interview them all, before deciding who has the proper papers and profile – in fact, she is looking for alibis and the murderer of Florence.

As happens in detective novels, another murder takes place, Daphne’s father falls on the ground, in front of the mansion, in full view of some of the members of the group that expect to become rather wealthy – at that time, two hundred thousand would have been the equivalent of over two million today.

Agatha Christie talks in the beginning of the feature about the problem she is experiencing, for many of the readers have become so adept at identifying the author of the murders after the first few pages – there is no reason to read a few hundred pages, when you know after the first chapter the essential of what is about to happen – Randolph would make the same claim about The Killing of Roger Ackroyd, albeit he proves at the same time that he is probably bluffing, for he does not even know the title, calling the dead character Peter Ackroyd.

The writer makes a serious mistake in the role of ad hoc detective for she is wrong in her choice of suspect and soon after she has to face the impressive detective Inspector Dicks, who is only interested in the “fresh” murder and not the other, older case that is not under his jurisdiction, up to the point where he has a talk with the author – he tells her he has known her real identity very early in the inquiry – and they both reveal some intimate aspects, about the imminent divorce in her case and the fact that his wife had given him the clap, for the man.

Meanwhile, one of the main suspects seems to be Travis, a man with a rude manner, an ease that seems to be more than misplaced and excessive, given the circumstances, also accused of another murder, albeit not charged and released when the evidence clearly confirmed he could not have done the horrible act

Franklin used to be a cleric, but he had been fighting in the World War and became so disabused, disgusted, terrified by what he had seen that he has abandoned the priesthood and considers the government, the officials responsible for millions of crimes committed on the battlefield.

He is accompanied by his mother, Pamela, and another man who seems to fit the profile of the suspect in the killing of Florence is Zaki, a man who first claims he is French, then denies that, although he shows a kindness and generosity that can be explained by deep feelings for Daphne, the girl he wants to protect when the fact that they have a killer in their midst becomes clear.

The boot of a soldier has been found in the blood left at the scene of the murder on the train and this means that first Travis was not responsible for it – he has not taken part in the war, as he states with nonchalance, he preferred to be a war profiteer, dealing in the black market to death in combat – and second, that either Zaki or Franklin could have done it.

Eventually, the detective decides to help in the solving of the case that is not his concern – in spite of being angry initially with the missing writer that had so many of his colleagues mobilized and thus rendered investigations and other more pertinent problems difficult to deal with – and there would be no answer as to killed one or the other of the dead in the film, but it must be stated that the end is intriguing and the solution to the cases inventive.