It’s a shame they couldn’t fit in another dozen near-identical characters that I couldn’t tell apart. Feels like they weren’t really trying with this small cast.
The hour a half before the murder is bewildering. I really struggled to tell any characters apart between the rapid cuts and seemingly interchangeable melodrama. I honestly can’t remember if there were two characters is financial distress or just one. Some other new guests arrive a half hour in and I am unsure if we ever saw them again.
And then the murder happens and the movie radically changes! Nah, just kidding - it isn’t too interested in being a murder mystery and neither are the characters. It kind of gets solved by half-hearted accident.
Of course this is really a commentary on class structure. Maybe that would have hit harder if I watched this before a couple of Downton Abbey seasons, but Gosford Park ended up just feeling like a lecture on well-trod topics.
Sometimes we’ll say we love an actor so much that we could watch them read a phone book. This was kind of true for this movie - the cast was crazy stacked and I enjoyed watching them even if I couldn’t tell who was who most of time, so their words just ended up as a kind of noise. But it was a pleasant noise to enjoy for a couple of hours.
