-I couldn’t understand a DAMN world anyone was saying. Except for the American guy. Look, nothing against the British, but it is the same GODDAMN thing evertime- I just canNOT understand what the hell they are saying!
Maybe we should sub-title British movies? Hey, maybe we need to subtitle our movies for THEM. I’m cool with that. Just because we speak the same language doesn’t mean we can understand one another. So, already I am lost when . …
-There’s TOO MANY CHARACTERS- AND HALF OF THEM LOOK ALIKE! Who were those two younger guys who showed up later? Three of the women had the same hair color AND HAIRCUTS! There were two fat maids with the same haircut! EGADS!!! My head was spinning one hour into this crap!
-Now the POSSIBLE spoiler:
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I think we can all guess there is a murder in the movire . . . which takes place NEAR THE END . . AFTER ENDURING ALMOST 2 HOURS OF EAR STRAINING AND “WHO IS SHE? WHO IS HE?” . . …AND AFTER THAT THE SOLUTION TO IT IS SO UN-INSPIRED, A RIPOFF. . . aaaargh . .
Look, there are some things I liked. I loved the dictotomy between the servant class and the upper class. I enjoyed how in many ways the servants were actually as snobbish as their employers. I loved Maggie Smith who the critics raved about, even though she was in the flick for like, 5 minutes?
In short, Gosford Park in another unitelligible, overrated British borefest that I got suckered into renting because these critics, eager to try and impress their “art” buddies took a phony liking to it. It’s this decade’s “English Patient”.
Like I told my wife, "Just because they talk funny doesn’t make them smarter than us. ":smack:
I admit I just got done watching the movie myself. It was BORING!! At least Vinnie only rented it. I made the mistake of buying the POS. I can’t believe Ebert gave it four stars.
I love these kind of character studies. I found the accents difficult, and even after I grew accustomed to it, i think I missed a word every now and then. And I really like the way the characters are introduced and you’re allowed to get to know them. In some ways, I think the plot kind of got in the way a little. I wanted to learn some more about the characters, and who killed then old man wasn’t all that important. except that you got more of the stupid, upper-class police inspector and the smart, lower-class policeman. Anyway, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about!
Oh, and I really loved Short Cuts also by Altman, which is a three-hour movie in which nothing I can tell you about happens. Loved it!
If your TV is set up for it **Vinnie **, you can always turn on the closed-captioning option. Gosfords Park isn’t the sort of movie where the visuals are severly impaired by the captioning. If you saw it on DVD, just turn on “English Subtitles” before starting the movie.
Actually, I too liked the movie except for one part… but I didn’t have a problem with the murder. Instead I didn’t care for the mystery where we find out that person A is has some familial connection to person B by way of person C through situation D.
My favorite line in a movie full of good ones: “But Bill isn’t like that really, he…” Oh, shit! :eek:
When this film came out, someone here posted an observation (and I apologize for not looking up who it was), but the film was similar to the experience one of the visiting servants would have going to the estate.
You get to a strange place with a whole bunch of people whom you never met and you have to figure out who does what and why.
You should probably just stay away from British films, and stay far, far away from Scottish, Irish and Australian films too.
I was born and raised in Kansas, but I had no problems with the accents, or with keeping track of who was who (though I didn’t catch everyone’s name or exact relationship on first viewing). I just went with the flow and enjoyed the movie for the quirky characters and interesting situations.
I thought it was fascinating and though it wasn’t a top favorite from last year, I could completely understand why it got the awards and nominations it did.
My favorite Altman film is The Player. That’s in English.
You need to realize that the film is not about the murder it is about the realtionships between the servants and the served. Who does the murder is not important, that’s why you never really find out who did it.
A brilliant film. Looking forward to seeing it again.
BTW, all this is MY humble opinion; if you loved the movie, that’s great, but IMO:
I guess what happened here is:
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Robert Altman film;
Great cast, I will admit:
then, THE MOVIE SUCKS, but many critics are afraid to say so because of who is involved. “Free screenings? Not after what you said about OUR movie!”
And please, don’t give me “the writer was developing the characters before the murder took place” bit; the murder angle seemed so contrived, so thrown in there. The movie clearly had a weak plot, and if it were not for the cast, would be straight to video. I read interviews with some of ther cast who said that they didn’t even know the plot of the movie when they got to the set, but they trusted Robert Altman and wanted to work with him. Gee, why does that not suprise me?
The credits said “Based on and Idea by Robert Altman” and some other dude . . . . too bad it was an idea never fully developed properly.
It’s okay to say . . .a movie directed by Robert Altman and with the great Maggie Smith in it . . sucked . . it’s okay! REALLY!
BTW are their REALLY subtitles in it? I told my wife their had to be she said no, it was an urban legend.
Not that it would have made ANY difference since the plot was too weak.
Sadly, it is advertised as a murder mystery, pretty heavily, i might add. i was waiting for he murder to happen forever when i saw it in the theater, and had already figured out who did it by the time it happened. The servants/masters thing got annoying real quick. Yes, the servants are second class people, we get it, tra-la-la! The only redeaming thing was Maggie Smith’s character, it was brilliantly played and deserved the oscar nom, but best picture nom? i don’t think so. People who are desparately looking for hidden subtext are looking too hard. Try pointing out subtext from the old Flash Gordon serials instead, i’d be a lot less challenging. All IMHO, of course. 3/10
Try watching it on a plane, like I did. I estimate I was able to make out every other line. Still, I did get the gist of the movie, I was able to follow the plot, and I still thought it was a big waste of time. Even for a plane ride. I thought that when you made a character study, the characters were supposed to be interesting – these were all “Upstairs, Downstairs” stereotypes.
Well I guess these things are a matter of taste. I had trouble following the films for the first half hour or so but after that everything was reasonably clear.
Overall I liked it a lot; it was a superbly intricate portrait of class relations at that time, the acting was, of course, a dream and I thought the ending was very satisfying , if a little melodramatic.
I had read the reviews so I never went in expecting a straight murder mystery; Altman was just using the structure of that genre to study the society of that time.
Incidentally the Gosford Park is very close in theme to Renoir’s Rules of the Game, which is generally considered a masterpiece but which I didn’t really like that much. I found Gosford more enjoyable.
I saw it in the theater and had no problem understanding. But at home the combination of not wanting to have the TV up too loud and my poor hearing is a bad combination. We tend to watch EVERYTHING with the English subtitles on.
Note that while the subtitles track on a DVD is preferrable (because they are usually in the black band on a letterboxed edition), if there are no English subtitles you can usually still find Closed Captioning for the Hearing Impaired through the TV settings rather than the DVD player. Closed Captioning, though, isn’t so concerned about presentation.
Saw it in the theatre when it first came out. It isn’t the accents that made it hard to hear. The voices simply weren’t recorded (or perhaps played back) loudly enough.
I’ve read that Altman let the actors improvise their way through most of the scenes, which might explain the sound problems. If the sound guys didn’t know WHO was going to be speaking at any given time, or where they were going to be standing when they said it, they might not have been able to properly mike the scene.
Despite the hearing problem, I did enjoy the movie. Not Oscar potential but it kept my interest.
This movie is grossly overrated, probably because of the names involved.
The characters were under-developed. To the extent they were developed, they were cliched. The servants/aristocrats dichotomy was hackneyed. The murder mystery was poorly constructed. The “solution” was unsatisfying because it came out of left field.
I have never understood (and I guess I will never understand) why Robert Altman is worshipped. I suppose it’s because his movies are filled with entertainment industry in-jokes, and, well, Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood. The bastard even managed to slip Hollywood insiders into an English murder mystery. :rolleyes:
Speaking of Hollywood, did anyone else find the repeated use of the word “fuck” by the Hollywood director jarring? I don’t think the word would have been used in mixed company in that era. (But that’s another pet peeve of mine: Hollywood’s love affair with the word “fuck.” Pathetically juvenile.)
If this film “wasn’t really a murder mystery” and was really a movie about the class system, it failed on that score as well. Nothing but cheap cliches. You want to see a film about English manners and the divisions between the servant class and the aristocracy, rent Remains of the Day, a far, far superior film.
I find Robert Altman to be a very difficult film maker. I always react strongly with his work. So I either HATE the movie (Nashville, Ready to Wear)* or really love it. (The Player, Gosford Park)
Vinnie do you like any other Altman films?
I don’t think the critics give anyone a free ride. There might be some tension if they give a bad review but there is always the next film.
*Not going to mangle the French spelling of the real title.
Ridiculous. Critics bash movies ALL THE TIME and still get in to see the next one. Maybe they said it was good because, well, maybe it actually WAS good.
I’m supposed to say a movie I thought was pretty good sucks because YOU can’t understand English and keep rough track of characters. Hoo boy!
Don’t you worry, Pluto Nash will be released soon.
That would be Bob Balaban, who played the American filmmaker. You know, the only dude you could understand.
I had to deal with the film from a presentation standpoint, and we got some complaints from people (mostly the elderly) who couldn’t understand the dialogue. The thing is, the sound of the film seems to have been deliberately mixed to muffle some of the voices. If you look at the film the way BobT (or whichever poster originally said it) suggested, it makes for an interesting consideration. Not only do you get the view perspective of an overwhelmed observer (such as Mary Maceachran) but you get the sound perspective too.
Maybe that’s stretching things but I would never put such an idea past Altman.
My old man was an Altman fanatic. He thought that the Altman was one of few directors who could capture the wonderful real dynamics between people. His favorite Altman films were MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Nashville.
When the old man died, he had been to see three dogs by Altman (his words) which were: Short Cuts, Ready to Wear, and Kansas City. As much as he liked the man as a director (who had directed his favorite film: McCabe) he felt that the pretentions had come to dominate the films. The last decent Altman film, he said, was The Player. When I went to see Gosford Park, one of my questions was how the old man would have viewed it.
I think he would have liked it.
It is clearly not a Merchant/Ivory-type production where all of the interesting interacition is directed towards a denoument between the major players. Instead, it has Altman’s seal, which is an interest in all of the parties playing a role in the story.
Maggie Smith was wickedly funny because, as rich as she was, she was cashed out and relied on her maid to inform her of her financial future, more or less. I found the romance between the footman and the maid terribly erotic. The fact that there were sisters downstairs was, in my opinion, evident quite early. The murder was merely a mcguffin (I think I spelled that right and if I didn’t, you can look up Cecil’s column). The film had Altman’s stamp all over it.
And I think he served himself well. I think the old man would have liked it.
