Agatha and the Truth
of Murder
Director: Terry Loane
Year: 2019
Rating: 7.0
This film has rather a lovely conceit that I quite
enjoyed. In 1926 Agatha Christie was already a famous mystery writer though
at that point in her career she had only written six novels - three with
Hercule Poirot and none yet with Miss Marple - but her latest The Murder
of Roger Ackroyd was a huge bestseller and is considered a one of a kind
mystery . She had been married for twelve years to Archie Christie with one
child when she found out that he was in love with another woman and wanted
a divorce. Agatha was extremely upset and went for a drive one evening, they
found her abandoned car and she disappeared for eleven days. The entire country
went into a frantic search for her. When she reappeared she claimed amnesia
- and whatever she was doing in those days is still a mystery with many theories
but no proof. Hopefully, shacked up with a 20 year old Italian gigolo.
The fact that no one knows what Christie was up to allowed a fictional recounting
of what may have occurred in the 1979 film Agatha with Vanessa Redgrave and
Dustin Hoffman. In that one Agatha creates an elaborate plan to commit suicide
with her husband's mistress in the same room. This film takes the same literary
license (without the consent of Christie's heirs) to give another version
of what took place during that period. Murder. Mystery. And a solution.
In this one a woman is killed on a train (4:50 from Paddington with Miss
Marple) and the crime is never solved. Six years later the female companion
of the murdered woman comes to Christie and asks her to help find the killer.
Initially, Christie demurs but having writer's block even after consulting
Arthur Conan Doyle who suggests she design a golf course (Murder on the Links
with Poirot), she decides to help out. Put her little gray cells to work.
She comes up with an elaborate plan to gather all the suspects together in
a large house under false pretenses (And Then There Were None) with Christie
in disguise and a search for the killer. Of course, another murder takes
place.
Being a fan of Christie and in a long term project to read all her Poirot
and Marple books (up to One, Two Buckle My Shoe in 1940), I very much enjoyed
the idea. The mystery is ok if not brilliant but I thought the actress who
played Christie (Ruth Bradley) was terrific and since this was a TV movie,
I would not mind seeing it turn into a series. In real life, Christie was
divorced in 1928 - to get away she went to Istanbul and then on a friend's
advice to Baghdad on the Orient Express where she met an archeologist and
married him in 1930 and lived happily ever after - or so the story goes.
But not only is the Christie angle based on a historical event but so is
the murder. On January 10th, 1920 Florence Nightingale Shore (related to
Florence Nightingale) was discovered on the train beaten to an inch of her
life. She died a few days later and a national manhunt looked for a man in
a brown suit but the crime was never solved - until now! The companion in
the film - Mrs. Rogers was in fact the friend of Nightingale (pictured above).
So interesting in how the writers took these two different events and created
a script out of them.
