Agatha (1979)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) As a number of commentators have noted, the mystery of Agatha Christie’s eleven-day disappearance isn’t much of a mystery. After being told of her philandering husband’s intention to divorce her, she (to use a technical term) freaked out, crashed her car as a possible suicide attempt, found refuge at a hotel designed for relaxation, lived as someone else for a few days, mulled over her marriage and, when she was inevitably discovered, was so embarrassed by the whole thing that she pretexted a convenient bout of amnesia. While unusual, this sequence of events is not that extraordinary for a woman with her means and social standing. What ludicrous thriller Agatha does, however, is not merely tell that story—it imagines Christie (Vanessa Redgrave, quite good) plotting revenge to kill her husband’s lover, investigating the hotel’s electrical equipment and hydrotherapy tools to concoct a perfect murder. Fortunately, there’s an American (Dustin Hoffman?!?) to tempt her with an affair of her own and prevent her from going from writer to murderess. The historical re-creation is convincing and Redgrave makes for a dignified Christie, but I’m tempted to side with the Christie estate when they claim that the film was character assassination. I’m really not sure about what Hoffman is doing there, either for him as an actor or his character in general. In rushing to make Christie a would-be murderess, director Michael Apted seems unable to capture a more subtle story of betrayal and defiance—I’m almost certain that a modern take, possibly from a female writer and director, would have been far more interesting without necessarily cranking the dial all the way up to genre thriller. I mean: there’s enough of a story there to tell without inventing things out of pure pulp speculation.