A Haunting in Venice   

The latest of the Kennneth Branagh-Poirot films deals with the supernatural - and Poirot's loss of faith. Would Agatha Christie have objected to this? By Jonathan Vaughan-Davies 

I am an unashamed fan of a good old fashioned murder mystery. For me the mastery of mystery is the devious mind of one Agatha Christie, and the “little grey cells” of her creation: Hercule Poirot!
 
Can I get an “amen”?
 
I was introduced to Poirot through the genius of David Suchet’s near-perfect version, and so I was really intrigued to hear that Sir Kenneth Branagh was taking on the role!
 
Three films later and we see a different version of the character with some interesting (if mixed) results.
 
The latest of the Branagh-Poirot films is A Haunting in Venice, which was released for streaming just in time for Halloween.
 
If you saw the trailer, you’ll immediate notice that the tone of the series has completely shifted gear. Imagine it was possible to lift Poirot out of his world with a giant character magnet and drop him straight into a horror movie and you’ll get close to the feel.
 
The film plays so fast and loose with the original short story (A Halloween Party) that it’s difficult to even describe it as an adaption. It’s a complete reimagining – the title, setting, and pretty much everything is changed other than the names and the fact that it takes place at a Halloween Party!
 
In truth, the movie wasn’t quite as dark or scary as the trailer suggested, and will do little to appeal to horror movie fans – but was nevertheless a daring move for the series and one I think that (for the most part) works quite well.
 
At this point you’re wondering why I’m boring you with all this…
 
Well…… I’m so glad you asked…
 
One of the other reasons I was so keen on watching the movie was to see how they might allow the supernatural aspects of the story to play out. A central theme of the story is the loss of a child, and an important scene takes place at a séance. Poirot has been invited by a friend (Ariadne Oliver) to watch the medium perform and attempt to spot the ruse and reveal the fraud.
 
She hooks him with: “I found something. I’ve looked at it from every which way. I am the smartest person I ever met, and I can’t figure it out, so I came to the second.” Referring of course to Poirot, whose ego cannot help but come out of retirement and accept the challenge.
 
You may or may not know that Agatha Christie was a Christian, and her character Poirot is a devout Catholic. But her own childhood experiences of faith were mixed. Her parents were Anglican, but she described her mother’s faith as having “bounced around” through a certain period of her life – first bouncing into Catholicism then Unitarianism through to Zoroastrianism before finally returning...

“much to my father’s relief, to the safe haven of the Church of England, but with a preference for ‘high’ churches.” 
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Agatha Christie)

 
This interest in Zoroastrianism she describes as: “brief but vivid”, and introduced Agatha to the possibilities of occult spirituality. This theme is one she often revisits in a number of her detective novels.
 
However, in her stories the “psychics” are often (if not always?) exposed as fraudsters and she didn’t mind revealing a method or two of theirs along the way too, making her an unpopular target of theirs back in her day.
 
Knowing all of this background, the film makes even more interesting viewing.
 
If anything, I think the film leaves certain questions open to interpretation and leaves the viewer to decide for themselves what is real and what is not...

 

The Case of the Missing Faith...

However, it’s not that change that I think Agatha Christie would most object to.
 
At one point in the movie Poirot explains:

“I would welcome, with open arms, any honest sign of devil, or demon, or ghost. For is there is a ghost, there is a soul. If there is a soul, there is a God who made it. And if we have God, then we have everything. Meaning, order, justice. But I have seen too much of the world. Countless crimes. Two wars. The bitter evil of human indifference. And I conclude, no. No God. No ghost… no mediums who can speak to the dead…”

 
Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot has lost his faith. He says as much in one scene to which someone replies: “How sad for you.” His only response: “Yes, it is most sad. The truth is sad.”
 
But for Agatha Christie’s Poirot his belief in the “Bon Dieu” ('Good God' in French) is a powerful driving force in his need for both justice – but also mercy. This tension is played out incredibly powerfully in his final case: Curtain.
 
The sad truth is though, that the human cruelty and suffering that two world wars inflicted upon countless millions did have a murderous effect on the faith of so many. And the question of suffering still hangs a long, dark shadow over the faith (and faithlessness) of many.
 
So why not Hercule Poirot?
Why not Agatha Christie?
 
I believe Agatha had her own answer to that question in two sources.
 
When her wandering mother finally came home to her Christian faith, one book that helped to anchor her was: The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. She always kept a copy of the book beside her bed – a habit that Christie kept up after her mother’s death, and also wrote into another of her famous characters: Miss Marple!
 
Inside her mother’s copy was inscribed the words:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
(ROMANS 8.35-38)

 
Branagh’s Poirot was right, the world is full of: “Countless crimes. Two wars. The bitter evil of human indifference.” And Agatha knew that the bitter evils of human indifference tragically endure, but she also knew that if we have God – then we have everything in His inseparable and all-conquering love.
 
As we read in The Imitation of Christ:

“As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not - now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But the wise who are well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what they feel, or from what side the wind of instability blows.”
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST (Thomas a Kempis)

 
The second source of hope came early on in life from a teacher’s words to her class that she says stayed with her all throughout her life:

“All of you,” she said, “every one of you—will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Cana, know the peace and happiness that it means to be at harmony with God and with God’s will.

But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life . . . . ” Years later [those words] were to come back to me and give me hope at a time when despair had me in its grip.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Agatha Christie)

 
A suffering-free life might be possible if you able to cultivate the attitude of absolute indifference to everything and everyone. However… “If you love, you will suffer…” but in the moments of intense suffering, to “hold on then to the belief that that is not the end.”
 
That’s real hope. That’s real faith.
 
Perhaps Branagh’s Poirot right after all when he said: “if we have God, then we have everything.”
 
Let me end this blog like Agatha ended her stories, by letting Poirot have the final word. This comes from An Appointment with Death:

“There is nothing in the world so damaged that it cannot be repaired by the hand of the almighty God.
I encourage you to know this, because without this certainty, we should all of us be mad.”

 

The Revd Jonathan Vaughan-Davies is the Minister at Bethel Baptist Church in Whitchurch Cardiff. This piece originally appeared in his church's blog, and is republished with permission