Agatha (1979) was an imagining of where Agatha Christie went during her eleven missing days.
The film starts with all of the claustrophobia and depression that comes with the end of a relationship. At a signing, the celebrated mystery writer is closed off and in her own head. Agatha (Vanessa Redgrave) is in a horrible state when her husband (Timothy Dalton) leaves her for her his secretary and ends up wrecking her car. All of this is reality except that they did not mention her child who was in the care of her trusted friend and secretary Charlotte Fisher (Fisher isn’t a major character in the film, but she was important to the real Christie so I feel she should be mentioned here).
Wally Stanton, a fictional American reporter played by Dustin Hoffman, immediately dives into the investigation. Meanwhile, Agatha checks herself into a hotel near a health spa where she thought the secretary would be. Weirdly, she uses the mistress’s last name as her alias. The start of this film is not particularly intriguing other than Mr. Christie being tailed by reporters and investigators. Otherwise it is many scenes of people ordering food in restaurants and drinking tea.
About 35 minutes in, you start to see Agatha Christie the writer coming out as she writes down ways to kill people from things she sees around the spa. Also, there’s finally some jazz music. I know it’s England in the 1920s, but c’mon! Stanton finds Agatha at the hotel with a little help from Charlotte whose worries about her friend/boss. He does not give Christie his real name or tell her that he knows who she is. Instead, they enjoy the frivolities and he appreciates that she looks happier than she did at the book signing at the beginning of the film. I just have to add that Redgrave in heels is a full head taller than Hoffman and kudos to the filmmakers for not putting him on a box. Now, Stanton is writing a piece on her without her knowledge, yet he treats her with kindness. Awkward, awkward kindness.
Stanton is clearly attracted to Christie. He is also worried for her. I won’t give away the ending just know it might trigger some people. It’s a tad on the melodramatic side and involves CPR which wasn’t widely in use then. It does give Stanton the opportunity to make feel Christie feel better and that her life is still full of possibilities.
I really do not think this is even close to what happened to Christie during those eleven missing days, but it made an okay story. However, if Agatha Christie had written it, there would have been more poison in those many restaurant scenes.
Oh. And the theme song at the end is awful. Just awful.
