Poirot's Last Words (iTV Curtain)
I find Poirot's last sentences in CURTAIN (the 11.13 adaptation) very touching, but I am not sure why.
Here's my reading of the lines -- I'd love to hear what you felt and
thought in these lines and in the final episode.
"They were good days. Yes, they have been good days."
Such strange grammar -- Poirot shifts from the past tense ("were") to the present-perfect ("have been"). Technically, both verbs are correct, but they imply two different relationships to the past. In the first, the good days are over, fixed in the long past. In the second, the good days flicker back to life, just barely. The "present perfect" implies some lingering connection to the present, some sense that the good days have only recently receded into the past.
The grammatical shift implies a shift in time, and this is echoed in the strange time that exists between Poirot's writing the letter, his death, and Hastings's reading of the letter. When he writes, Poirot knows for certain that his death is near; he knows that the good days are gone. But he is still alive -- he still has time to tell Hastings the truth, still has time to connect to his dear friend one last time. Indeed, the two speak after Poirot writes the letter. But their conversation is so strained. Part of the strain derives from Poirot's desire, and his fear, to confess to Hastings -- he confesses (it was murder, not suicide), but Hastings does not understand. He cannot hear these words in their full meaning; only later will those words which "were" spoken feel as if they "have just been," as if the months between Poirot's death and Hastings' receipt of the letter were mere minutes.
This shift in time -- the past dying to the past pressing on the present -- has always been a trope of Poirot's cases. His uncanny ability to detect the pressure of the past on the present has been the key to solving so many of his cases. Yet these last few seasons, beginning with Murder on the Orient Express, have added new meaning to the past for Poirot. These episodes have slowly unveiled Poirot's melancholy -- his sadness at the lives he has not lived, his yearning for the loves he might have shared (see Labours). In this sense, there are other sentences that haunt Poirot's letter: they *might* have been good days, if only...
But what does Poirot mean by "good days"? He looks into the camera one last time, almost smiling. Others have noted that this look is a (literal) nod to the opening credits of the old show. Like his last two sentences, Poirot's gaze brings the past back to life. Yet it can only do so as the light fades and the screen grows dark. Only in the end can the past have some renewed life, and like Poirot, we can only *live* it as memory (... or reruns).
Viewers have been complaining about the dark tone of the later episodes. Orient Express, in particular, divided viewers, partly because of its intense melancholy and religious overtones. I've been a fan of this shift, simply because I think it has added a seriousness and gravity to Poirot as a human being. Yet the shift toward melancholy has slowly been developing a debate about morality -- about the morality of murder, about the limits of the law, about the meaning of the detective who proclaims to be so certain of good and evil. Haven't so many of Poirot's great dialogues performed that certainty? These later episodes do not reject Poirot's certainty, but they do question it, as Poirot himself does at the end of his life.
Perhaps this is why the line "They were good days. Yes, they have been good days," strikes me so deeply. Are these the words of a man trying to convince himself of the truth? What was so "good" about those days? Case after case, Poirot has seen such inhumanity -- the willingness to murder for love, money, or revenge. His final case only confirms the depth of sin, with a villain who lacks even these motives. The killer *persuades* others to give in to the temptation to kill, like Iago certainly, like Mephistopheles as well. The villain *enjoys*, sadistically and yet passively, watching others kill. Like Poirot looking through keyholes, the killer looks on, from afar, as others carry out barbarity. This villain *must* be Poirot's greatest enemy, because he represents Poirot's fundamentally religious view of the world -- that anyone can be pushed to sin. Even Hasting himself, and of course even Poirot, become susceptible to this villains power of persuasion.
So what was good about the good days? The easy answer would be friendship. No doubt, many of us share Hastings's sentimental worldview; we share his attachment to Poirot, despite his friend's capacity to be so mean. This episode captured that tension very sharply, without sharing in Hastings's desire to sentimentalize Poirot. Still, we have loved these characters, not least Hastings, Miss Lemon, George, and Jap -- their return in this final season has been so appreciated by the fans. These characters have been the "good" in these days, because they represent the humanity and warmth that Poirot can sometimes fail to express.
"They were good days. Yes, they have been good days."
Such strange grammar -- Poirot shifts from the past tense ("were") to the present-perfect ("have been"). Technically, both verbs are correct, but they imply two different relationships to the past. In the first, the good days are over, fixed in the long past. In the second, the good days flicker back to life, just barely. The "present perfect" implies some lingering connection to the present, some sense that the good days have only recently receded into the past.
The grammatical shift implies a shift in time, and this is echoed in the strange time that exists between Poirot's writing the letter, his death, and Hastings's reading of the letter. When he writes, Poirot knows for certain that his death is near; he knows that the good days are gone. But he is still alive -- he still has time to tell Hastings the truth, still has time to connect to his dear friend one last time. Indeed, the two speak after Poirot writes the letter. But their conversation is so strained. Part of the strain derives from Poirot's desire, and his fear, to confess to Hastings -- he confesses (it was murder, not suicide), but Hastings does not understand. He cannot hear these words in their full meaning; only later will those words which "were" spoken feel as if they "have just been," as if the months between Poirot's death and Hastings' receipt of the letter were mere minutes.
This shift in time -- the past dying to the past pressing on the present -- has always been a trope of Poirot's cases. His uncanny ability to detect the pressure of the past on the present has been the key to solving so many of his cases. Yet these last few seasons, beginning with Murder on the Orient Express, have added new meaning to the past for Poirot. These episodes have slowly unveiled Poirot's melancholy -- his sadness at the lives he has not lived, his yearning for the loves he might have shared (see Labours). In this sense, there are other sentences that haunt Poirot's letter: they *might* have been good days, if only...
But what does Poirot mean by "good days"? He looks into the camera one last time, almost smiling. Others have noted that this look is a (literal) nod to the opening credits of the old show. Like his last two sentences, Poirot's gaze brings the past back to life. Yet it can only do so as the light fades and the screen grows dark. Only in the end can the past have some renewed life, and like Poirot, we can only *live* it as memory (... or reruns).
Viewers have been complaining about the dark tone of the later episodes. Orient Express, in particular, divided viewers, partly because of its intense melancholy and religious overtones. I've been a fan of this shift, simply because I think it has added a seriousness and gravity to Poirot as a human being. Yet the shift toward melancholy has slowly been developing a debate about morality -- about the morality of murder, about the limits of the law, about the meaning of the detective who proclaims to be so certain of good and evil. Haven't so many of Poirot's great dialogues performed that certainty? These later episodes do not reject Poirot's certainty, but they do question it, as Poirot himself does at the end of his life.
Perhaps this is why the line "They were good days. Yes, they have been good days," strikes me so deeply. Are these the words of a man trying to convince himself of the truth? What was so "good" about those days? Case after case, Poirot has seen such inhumanity -- the willingness to murder for love, money, or revenge. His final case only confirms the depth of sin, with a villain who lacks even these motives. The killer *persuades* others to give in to the temptation to kill, like Iago certainly, like Mephistopheles as well. The villain *enjoys*, sadistically and yet passively, watching others kill. Like Poirot looking through keyholes, the killer looks on, from afar, as others carry out barbarity. This villain *must* be Poirot's greatest enemy, because he represents Poirot's fundamentally religious view of the world -- that anyone can be pushed to sin. Even Hasting himself, and of course even Poirot, become susceptible to this villains power of persuasion.
So what was good about the good days? The easy answer would be friendship. No doubt, many of us share Hastings's sentimental worldview; we share his attachment to Poirot, despite his friend's capacity to be so mean. This episode captured that tension very sharply, without sharing in Hastings's desire to sentimentalize Poirot. Still, we have loved these characters, not least Hastings, Miss Lemon, George, and Jap -- their return in this final season has been so appreciated by the fans. These characters have been the "good" in these days, because they represent the humanity and warmth that Poirot can sometimes fail to express.
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But is our and Hastings's definition of "good" the same as Poirot's would be? As the detective would say, so curtly, "No." His days have been good because he is "Hercule Poirot," the consummate genius. The days have been good because there has been no dearth of murder afoot, no scarcity of clever villainy to outsmart. That is the moral paradox of Poirot's final lines, captured by the sly nod he gives us as Hastings reads his words. For their meaning may escape Hastings but surely not us -- we, like Poirot, and like this final villain, have craved murder, so that we too can exercise our "grey little cells." Is this not true? And if it is true, then we have expressed the very potential for callousness about "little lives" that Hastings's daughter does in this episode. And we yearn to watch that callousness, again and again, like Norton.
Despite all this ambiguity, I find myself nodding, yes, they have been good days, because I still see Poirot and his world as a fundamentally moral one. I cannot forget the force of Poirot's anger at the beginning of Orient Express -- nor can I forget the intense creeping doubt that grows on his face at the end. As in that episode, Curtain shows us Poirot's commitment to morality to the very end. In this respect, he is different from his enemy. Norton smiles at his own death, because he has "won" Poirot's soul -- and he gets to enjoy one last voyeuristic glimpse of murder and his own grandiose powers of persuasion. By contrast, Poirot remains faithful to the last, even in his willingness to face eternal punishment.
Where Norton and Poirot *are* the same is, finally, in their use of language. Norton stutters; Poirot trips over the English language. Yet ironically, both are masters of language. Norton persuades the innocent (?) to give into their desire to kill; Poirot persuades the guilty to give into their desire to confess. Every episode has climaxed with such a persuasion -- a lengthy, fascinating performance of wit that reveals the "solution" to the murder, yes, but also forces the guilty to expose themselves. They are compelled to penance. In this, Norton is Poirot's opposite. And this is why Curtain could not end with Poirot giving one more dazzling performance -- there is no one but himself who must expiate. Indeed, Poirot is now the one who must confess his crime -- and this is why his letter must be read aloud, witnessed by Hastings and us. Yet the tone of the letter is morose, sweet, and melancholic, not at all the confidence of the lovable narcissist. And so, Poirot concludes this confession, "They were good days. Yes, they have been good days." More than anything, the "yes" wavers, like the candles that light his writing, because it cannot truly combat the doubt that Hercule, Hastings, and we surely feel.
However, there is one more point: "Hercule Poirot." He signs this letter with a period and an underscore. What is quoted in this gesture is *every* time Poirot has spoken in the third person. In fact, this verbal tic was addressed in the previous episode (The Labours of Hercules), when one character asks Poirot why he refers to himself this way. For the character, Poirot's habit is an expression of his egotism. But Poirot explains: "it helps Poirot achieve a healthy distance from his own genius." Of course, this 'explanation' is itself an expression of egotism -- there seems to be no end to Poirot's self regard! And this is one reason we love him -- he is so vain yet also so justified in his intellectual self-regard. After all, Poirot is *always* right. In Curtain, however, the signature does not repeat these gestures of egotism. Perhaps the underscore does. Perhaps. But the period, and the signature itself, suggests a final accounting: when he dies, Poirot will face his god, and he will finally be forced to speak in the first person. He begs Hastings for assurance; he begs God for forgiveness. But Poirot knows (in his Catholic cosmology) that his mortal sin may not be forgiven -- and that he will have to be held accountable for himself.
Was it a good idea for the series to become so intensely religious? Arguably, it has obscured the whimsy and sweetness of the early series. For some, it has distracted from Poirot's other qualities. For many, the overtones break too far from the source material, like many other aspects of the series (see the debate over Big Four). But for me, the morality has only amplified the humanity of Poirot and his world. As I have been suggesting, the morality allowed the show to slowly reveal the deep ambiguity that underlies the certainty of Poirot's worldview. This ambiguity is not part of the source material -- Agatha Christie's characters are famously flat in their desires, motivations, and beliefs. This flatness enabled Christie to focus on the complex strategies of plot and deception. But perhaps the greatest triumph of Curtain as an adaptation -- and the conclusion of Poirot-- is that the show asks us to reflect on our pleasure in all those "good days" of casual murder. What is lost in sacrificing the humanity of characters for the pleasures of the murder plot? And, in our own endings, will we be able to say with certainty that our days were, and have been, so good?