Sexual intrigue, class prejudice and murder among both the highborn and the low during a shooting party weekend in 1932.

A sublime comic tapestry from Robert Altman, weaving its way in and around and between the lives of two dozen characters, every vignette a sharp little masterpiece of high drama or social satire, every performance beautifully timed and realized, all of it fitting together seamlessly. Gosford Park is a spectacular movie for adult sensibilities, easily one of the best films of 2001 and a welcome highlight in Altman’s forty-year career.

Ostensibly a “whodunit” — that is, a clever literary puzzle in which everyone turns out to be something other than they first appear — Gosford Park delays bringing its murder mystery on stage for a full hour. That’s because what really interests Altman is the process of reconstructing, and then deconstructing, the British class system of the 1930s, a stratified world in transition where both aristocrats and servants gossip about each other, distrust each other, and ultimately cross boundaries in secret to satisfy their mutual curiosity. It’s a transgression against consensual reality to which neither class would ever admit when among their own kind. (more…)