The ABC Murders review – John Malkovich’s suffering Poirot
is magnificent
4 / 5 stars 4 out of 5 stars.
Scorned by the police and nursing a secret pain, the latent
violence in Malkovich’s performance is as potent as ever
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Wed 26 Dec 2018 22.00 GMT
My husband and I married across many divides – class, political,
minimal personal hygiene levels – but nothing separates us so firmly as our
attitudes to Poirot. And by Poirot I mean the bespoke-padded, neatly-pomaded
form of David Suchet, who dominated the Christie cultural landscape for a
quarter of a century. From the moment he smoothed down his moustache and
sallied primly forth as the Belgian detective in 1989 in the first of what
would become 70 episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, to devote himself to the
solving of mysteries in Art Deco properties across the land, he simply was
Hercule. There could be no other. Nor – for lo, these last five years since the
series ended – has anyone on TV dared to try.
I did understand that it was A Quality Affair but I just
couldn’t bear it. The mannered carefulness. The determined retention of the
worst aspect of Christie – the constant feeling of cipher-characters being
moved into place by an all-knowing hand, like chess pieces with Marcel waves
and costume jewellery. My husband, by way of relations-severing contrast, loves
it for precisely this.
Those of you who side with him – who hunt out repeats of The
Murder Next to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Fireguard or The Mystery of the
Missing Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph – should look away now. For last night’s
adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 13th Poirot novel, The ABC Murders, was for the
rest of us; for those who like their Christie underbelly-up and a nail raked
down its pale, fetid flesh. It is Christmas, after all.
As it has been for the last few yuletides, this new
adaptation has been gifted us by Sarah Phelps (in a few more years I’m going to
be able to relax and consider it an unbreakable BBC tradition). This year, an
extra-special treasure lies inside, in the form of John Malkovich as Poirot. Of
course there has been much disapproving muttering, especially in the village of
Much Muttering which I think is where most of the Marple murders take place.
But he is quite magnificent as a suffering Hercule, beset by flashbacks to what
seems to be his younger self during the invasion of Belgium and letters from
someone signing himself “ABC” and promising mayhem. He is not prim but careful,
watchful – of others and perhaps even himself, as although Poirot’s glory days
have passed (he even dyes his facial hair), the latent violence in this
Malkovich performance is as potent as ever.
The police and public now hold Poirot in contempt. An
Inspector Crone has replaced the retired – and by the end of the first act,
late – Inspector Japp (death by natural causes, I should note). He tells Poirot
that Japp was removed from the force when they couldn’t find any record of
Poirot being a detective in Belgium as he claimed. “People don’t like their
police being made to look like fools,” he says. It is a neat, credible and timely
demonstration of how an immigrant friend (“19 years I have lived here,” he says
at one point) can be reconceived as an enemy.
Meanwhile, ABC – Alexander Bonaparte Cust (Eamon Farren) –
is making himself as comfortable as possible in his unlovely lodgings overseen
by his even more unlovely landlady (Shirley Henderson), who pimps out her
daughter at a shilling a time “for ordinary”. He commits his first murder,
posing as a stockings salesman to gain access to the women he needs, in
Andover. Forewarned by a letter, Poirot attempts to warn the police. They
ignore him, so he finds the body himself, then proves that their main suspect
couldn’t have done it. This is not the way to a chippy inspector’s heart.
The letter about the second murder arrives on the day it is
carried out – on bonny, boozy Betty Barnard, who is also a weapons-grade bitch
who stole her sister’s boyfriend and chose very much the wrong man to sexually
humiliate when he was in Bexhill looking for someone alliterative to kill.
In one of the less petty moments of humiliation endured by
our ageing hero, Crone orders his house to be searched for evidence he claims
Poirot has been holding back about the crimes. The letters from ABC are still
coming. The latest is from Cricklewood, where Sir Carmichael Clarke is being
distracted by his secretary instead of tending to his dying wife. Cowardly cad.
On her bedside table, Lady Clarke has a photograph of herself and Poirot at
dinner. The credits roll, and you haven’t sensed that hovering hand for a
moment. Here, the chess pieces live and breathe, and we believe.
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