Robert Altman (extended version)

For my auteurship essay I choose Robert Altman and the three movies I choose were A Prairie Home Companion, Dr. T & the Women and Gosford Park.
I didn’t find many things in common in the movies that would tell me that Robert Altman was the director, but I did find that a theme that was at least in those tree movies; the theme was family relationships. I also found other little things in common but the family relationship was the thing that I noticed the most.
Something else I noticed in the movies is that they are kind of slow at the beginning until you get to the end and get the idea of the movie.

In all the three movies I watched there was some sort of secret that everyone knew but all of them ignored it and didn’t talk about it.
In A Prairie Home Companion, everyone knew that one of the performers died but noone wanted to talk about it because that was their final show. In Gosford Park, everyone knew that the Sir William had affairs with every woman, but everyone even his wife ignored it. And in Dr. T & the Women, everyone knew that Dr. T’s wife had some sort of mental disability, but none said anything and they all tried to ignore it.

Something else that I found in all the three movies was that all of them have a mystery, something that you get to discover either half way through the movie or nearly at the end.
In A Prairie Home Companion there was a mysterious woman that appeared to many of the people on the show, but not everyone could see her. Halfway thru the movie she is talking to the creator and host of the show and she said that she was an angel that came to look for someone; that someone was the man that died.
In Dr. T & the Women, the mystery is the wedding of one of the daughters of Dr. T. nonoe knew that she was actually gay and that her maid of honor was actually her lover. Gosford Park also had a mystery; the mystery on this movie was the killer of Sir William.

All the main stories of the three movies revolve around a group of people not just one. Also in all of them the music plays a very important part in the feel of the movie.

Gosford Park was the movie that I was most interested about before looking at it when I read what the movie was about, but I found it a little disappointing because personally I found it was a little slow and at some points boring.
The movie was supposed to be a mystery, but you don’t get to that until the end of the movie. During the whole movie what you see is how the rich people live and how they treat their employees and the relationships and conflicts between everyone.
When you get near the end of the movie is where you really get interested in the movie, because when they kill Sir William we start to see all this different stories going on and trying to find out who killed him and why and when you discover who did it, it is kind of unexpected.

These movies are the kind of movie I would not watch to the end because they are really slow and you don’t get too much of a story until the end. But I did watch them to the end and I actually enjoyed them because you get the whole story at the end, but the process of getting there is kind of long and tedious.