Holding out for a hero in 2024
In a jaundiced age, screen heroes are often coated in irony. That is a shame
The setting of “Hallowe’en Party”, a whodunit by Agatha Christie, is, she writes, “an ordinary sort of place”. “A Haunting in Venice”, an extremely loose screen adaptation released in September, moves the action from a nondescript English village to a palazzo on the Grand Canal, stirring in witchery and a séance. Yet amid the added glitz and ghouls, in one important and telling way—typical of a leery, disillusioned age—the film dims the story’s magic. Like other popular franchises, it undermines its own hero, Hercule Poirot.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Holding out for a hero”
From the December 23rd 2023 edition
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