Review: Gosford Park

Robert Altman's Gosford Park is a chatty, uneven slog of a film. This film is a weird mix of British nobility and some typical Agatha Christie novel - when it works it dazzles and when it doesn't its hard to stay awake. And it works so rarely.

A group of British nobles spend their weekend for shooting at Sir Williams (Michael Gambon) and his wife,  Lady Sylvia's (Kristin Scott Thomas) lavish country manor in 1932. Guests include Williams' sister, Constance (Maggie Smith), Sylvia's two sisters along with their husband, actor Ivor Novello along with Hollywood film producer and some others whose name I don't care to write. A murder happens. The host is killed. Who killed poor Sir Williams?

Guests also brought along their one or more valets with them. So in short you have so many characters in the film that you can consider a separate exercise to keep track who's who in the film.  Most of the upper class nobilities have almost similar names. Same is the case of the servants and valets - they are double in number and they are addressed by their master's surname. Confused?

Anyway, the film proceeds in a leisurely manner. Lazy mornings (breakfast on bed), chatty afternoons (or a single case of countryside shooting gig) and spicy evenings (gourmet food and secret sex). For over an hour, we see so many characters speaking of mundane things or things which simply are dispensable in context of the film. These conversations would have mattered if characters had any strong background story - baring a few. Above all, you have to figure out who the hell they are talking about. At least I had to.

But the main plot (which isn't actually the "main" focus unfortunately) - involving Helen Mirren, Clive Owen and Michael Gambon is profound and moving. Also among the herd of actors, Mirren, Maggie and Kelly truly gave an outstanding performance, perhaps their roles were written FOR the film not for filling up the scenes.

Gosford Park is hard to follow - maybe Altman intended it to be like this. I didn't enjoyed it. Maybe its my fault - I should have paid attention. But I wanted to switch off my TV just after 20 minutes. And that isn't good, is it?

2.5/5