Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Enola Holmes
2020 · Harry Bradbeer · Enola Holmes on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the frame leave a gap before Enola turns to you. (camera)
Giles Nuttgens keeps a little air at the side of the shot and reframes to meet her glance, so the break arrives as continuity instead of as an insert stuck into the scene.
Payoff: The compositions are built around a person standing just outside 1884, and that person is you. In the reading: out-of-field-absolute. The spot she keeps checking in with exists nowhere in the film's world, which is what the reading calls the absolute out-of-field.
Notice who Enola explains the clues to. (cutting)
Adam Bosman routes the exposition through her asides, so the explaining happens to the audience rather than to another character. Henry Cavill's Sherlock, by contrast, works things out quietly and keeps them in.
Payoff: The part of a mystery that usually stalls a film is the part that recruits you here. In the reading: the mental-image. The reading calls this the relation-image: meaning completed by a viewer holding the chain of clues together.
Watch what Enola puts on before each new move. (setting)
Boys' clothes, widow's weeds, a corset she has to work around rather than wear. The clothes stop announcing who she is and start working as equipment for crossing a policed city.
Payoff: Costume is the plot here rather than decoration, and you can follow her plan by her wardrobe. In the reading: the-gest. A posture that exposes a social relation rather than a private feeling is what the reading calls a gest.
Count the rooms and carriages Enola has to get out of. (staging)
The country estate, the railway carriage, the finishing school, a guardian's house. Bradbeer keeps staging confinements that have a door in them and a person deciding whether to use it.
Payoff: Walking out of a room is the film's basic political act, repeated until you feel the weight of it.
Listen for how quickly the music turns things playful. (sound)
Daniel Pemberton writes energetic adventure cues with period orchestration under them, and the score keeps the tone buoyant through fights, disguises and a missing mother.
Payoff: The music promises nobody is in real danger, which is the contract the film makes with a young audience.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the frames, not the glance. The composition already knows she is about to turn and look at you.