Enola Holmes (2020 on Netflix)

[Greg]

Milly Bobby Brown stars as Sherlock Holmes's sister, Enola in this very woke tale of a missing British Lord and the people trying to kill him. Henry Cavell plays a not very convincing Sherlock Holmes.

Production wise it's well done, but it doesn't feel like a clever picture. Sherlock was always about deducing information from clues the rest of us didn't see. Except for one small scene, that part of the lore of Sherlock is missing. They just seem to be on an adventure and not a very smart one.

I like 11 better in this picture that I have in recent forays, maybe it's because she talks with her regular accent for a change? There is a lot fourth wall breaking at 11 talks to the audience about what she is doing. She is also very emancipated. She's been educated in an eclectic manner by her mother so she knows all sort of things including Tai Chi which she has quite mastered (Maybe it's Jiu-Jitsu?) It's all very precocious.

Sherlock himself is dumb. Superman doesn't really pull it off. but I guess his role is just to show how clever Enola is. But since she doesn't come across as remarkably clever, that makes him appear even less so. He does do a lot of Superman furrowed brow, though.

Helena Bonham Carter is in there as well playing the fey english woman as well. Her motivations are always murky and never clearly delineated.

I'll give it a mighty meh.

[Drunk Monk]

She's been educated in an eclectic manner by her mother so she knows all sort of things including Tai Chi which she has quite mastered (Maybe it's Jiu-Jitsu?) It's all very precocious.

It should be Bartitsu or Sufferajistu
http://www.kungfumagazine.com/index.php?...ticle=1018
http://www.kungfumagazine.com/index.php?...ticle=1264

Helena Bonham Carter is in there as well playing the fey english woman as well. Her motivations are always murky and never clearly delineated.

I'm in. Assuming my ninjas pick this up. They're hiding right now. They have to do that every once in a while, to shake off the man.

[Greg]

She opens a book with jiu-jitsu on the cover.

[Drunk Monk]

Bartitsu and Sufferajitsu were based upon Jujitsu. Thus the 'jitsu'. There wasn't that much documented on either style. It's been reconstructionalist, mostly by steampunkers lately, and a little from the movies I posted above. 

I should really watch this. I could probably sell Den on a story about it. But my ninjas are scattered. 

[Greg]

Maybe if you just referred to them as pirates, they would be more accessible.

I'm sure that's true, but the book in the film (Let's not go for historical accuracy) says Jiu Jitsu

Enola Holmes does push a lot of Nerd buttons. It does have Caville. It does have Milly Bobby Brown. Anything Victorian these days has a Steampunk feel.

[Drunk Monk]

Here's the article I would've written if I had the time and Netflix.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
The Martial Arts of “Enola Holmes”
The new Netflix movie [i]Enola Holmes[/i] stars [i]Stranger Things[/i] actress Millie Bobby Brown in the title role as Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister.  Based on the popular book series by Nancy Springer, the movie is the first mainstream production to feature suffrajitsu-style action as a major plot point (not counting the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it self-defence training scene in the 2015 movie [i]Suffragette[/i]).
The first martial arts shout-out comes very early in the film.  During a montage in which Enola admiringly describes her famous older brother’s many talents, viewers are treated to a cute animation based on Bartitsu founder E.W. Barton-Wright’s 1901 “Self Defence with a Walking Stick” article.
Bartitsu (or “baritsu”, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle rendered it) was immortalised in Doyle’s 1903 short story [i]The Adventure of the Empty House[/i], in which Holmes explains that he’d used the art to defeat his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, during their infamous battle at the brink of the Reichenbach Waterfall.  The animation is especially notable in that Barton-Wright’s face has been replaced with that of [i]Superman[/i]/[i]The Witcher[/i] star Henry Cavill, who plays Sherlock Holmes.

Having absconded from the Holmes family estate in search of their mysteriously missing radical suffragette mother Eudoria (played by Helena Bonham Carter), Enola makes her way to London where her investigations lead her to a women’s jiujitsu class taught by Edith Grayston (Susan Wokoma).  Edith’s first name is clearly inspired by that of Edith Garrud, who was the first female professional jiujitsu instructor in the western world.  It’s worth noting that Helena Bonham Carter’s character in [i]Suffragette[/i], self-defence instructor Edith Ellyn, was [i]also[/i] named in honour of Mrs. Garrud, at the actresses’ own request.  [i]Enola Holmes[/i] is, thus, the second film in which Carter has been cast as a jiujitsu-fighting suffragette!

Allowing for the artistic license of portraying a women-only Japanese martial arts class in London during the year 1900 – the Bartitsu Club was open for business then and did offer women’s classes, but it would be another nine years before Edith Garrud started her “Suffragette Self Defence Club” – the  class itself is highly accurate.  The trainees’ uniforms are period-accurate hybrids of Japanese martial arts do-gi and Edwardian ladies’ physical culture kit and even the mats on the floor are typical of the quilted style used in circa 1900 gymnasia.  The techniques being practiced by the jiujitsu trainees in the background of this scene are also entirely plausible for this time and place.
Retiring to the school’s office, Edith and Enola engage in a wary parlay – Edith clearly knows much more about Eudoria Holmes’ whereabouts that she’s prepared to reveal – and an impromptu, semi-playful physical challenge during which the frustrated Enola attempts a takedown nicknamed the “corkscrew”.  This occasions another quick pictorial interlude, featuring a section of a (fictional) book titled [i]Jujutsu: The Martial Art[/i], whose cover may well have been inspired by the (real) [i]Fine Art of Jujutsu[/i], which was written by Emily Diana Watts in 1906.


We’re treated to a quick riff through the pages – which are montages of photographs from actual early 20th century jiujitsu magazine articles – and then a step-by-step guide to performing the corkscrew manoeuvre, which will clearly be significant later on in the story.


After some further skullduggery, Enola finds herself engaged in a desperate back-alley fight with walking-stick wielding assassin Linthorn (Burn Gorman) who is stalking her friend, the young Viscount Tewskbury, Marquess of Basilwether (Louis Partridge).  This is, by far, the movie’s most elaborate and spectacular fight scene, well-choreographed by stunt co-ordinator Jo McLaren:



Although Enola again fails in attempting the corkscrew technique during this encounter, the astute viewer suspects that she’ll pull it off in the end … which is exactly what happens when, after many more machinations, she finds herself again at a disadvantage in taking on the same assassin, this time in the shadowy hallway of Viscount Tewksbury’s family manor:

Having rescued the hapless Tewksbury, it only remains for Enola to solve the Mystery of the Missing Mother – which does happen, after a fashion, though we suspect that there is more to discover in that regard during the inevitable and welcome sequel.
In the meantime, here’s a featurette on the fight scenes of [i]Enola Holmes[/i]:

[Greg]

If only someone hadn't given me the brush off at the suggestion a month ago......

[Drunk Monk]

If only I could still afford Netflix...

[Greg]

There's that. The fights were pretty poor.

[Drunk Monk]

i wanna wrassle with helena in a floofy victorian dress...

[Greg]

Why would you wear a floofy dress to a fight? Nope. Don't need to know.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Why would you wear a floofy dress to a fight? Nope. Don't need to know.

To hide his knickers, of course.

[Greg]

Did I not just say I don't need to know?

[Drunk Monk]

It's Helena. I'd knicker up for her. She's been my goth crush forever...

[Greg]

She looked good as a Chimp