Ordeal by Innocence (2018)–Who is Blameless?

Ordeal by Innocence opens in the luxurious library at Sunny Point, the estate of wealthy heiress Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor).  On Christmas Day she is found face down in a pool of blood. Almost immediately  their ne’er-do-well son Jack is charged with the murder, found guilty, and imprisoned. Evidence pointed to Jack’s fingerprints on  an artifact used to bludgeon her to death 

But who would want Rachel dead?  Rachel had an impeccable standing in the community, using some of her wealth to adopt five children, set up a trust to support other orphans, and dedicate her life to philanthropy.   However, all is not what it seems.

Fast forward to eighteen months after Rachel’s murder and Jack’s murder  while serving his prison sentence.  Arthur Calgary, a mysterious vagrant, arrives claiming to be Jack’s alibi the night Rachel was murdered. Now the true identity of the murderer is in doubt.  And is Jack, now deceased,  innocent of his stepmother’s killing? Rachel’s husband, Leo (Bill Nighy)  is planning to marry Gwenda, his much younger, beautiful secretary, the next day.  The wedding is abruptly halted with the arrival of Calgary.  The entire household is freaking out.

As Arthur Calgary reveals more details of his insistence that Jack was not the killer, the Argyll family’s secrets and lies are exposed and the devastating backstory of each sibling is  slowly revealed. Each of the five siblings suspects one of the others for their adoptive mother’s murder. 

And there is always the conventional belief that “the butler did it” and here we have the loyal housekeeper and nanny, Kirsten, who has suffered for years under both Rachel and Leo’s dominion.

For Agatha Christie fans, this book-to-screen adaptation is perhaps worth watching. For the rest of us, not so much.

Availability: Netflix

Note: Perhaps the most  interesting and original subtext of Ordeal by Innocence is Christie’s  fear of the atomic age, at its height during the fifties.  Christie proves unexpectedly attentive to the anxieties of a new modernity in the post-Second World War/Cold War era.  Creating the Arthur Calgary character as a  psychologically and  socially ‘wounded’ hero, due to the war, is unusual for a Christie murder mystery.