This is one of those typical Merchant-Ivory productions during which the frequency of my own escapist, suicidal thoughts came at a much faster clip than anything resembling action in the movie. At one point, I thought about digging my fingernails deep into my scalp, right about where my hairline and forehead converge, and ripping my own face off. Watching these people go through the routine machinations of living, you just want to pull your hair out. It simply could not be more boring.
Ivory breaks the movie into parts, which adds a lovely touch of incoherence to the boredom.
The fact that Bill is a writer, and a dying one at that, is supposed to excuse the fact that the movie circles around the mundane like a vulture around the carcass of a rotting animal. It's Dead, Jim. It's Dead, Jim.