Film Review: GOSFORD PARK ***** (out of 5)
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.
At first, the camera moves restlessly from one pairing to another, crossing invisible social borders, eavesdropping on snatches of amusing exposition here, finding telling moments in hallways and corners there, then suddenly pulling back to include panoramas of conversation, Altman playfully conducting bits of business as if they were music and shaping a rich, impressionistic picture of English country life between the world wars. Naturally, a few clues to the upcoming mystery are being dropped along the way, but it is the sheer joy of observation that really drives this movie, a confident vision of life as a fascinating carnival with a dozen interesting sideshows to the main attraction. When the mystery finally arrives, it is merely one more balancing act in the director’s humanist circus.
It has been years since Altman achieved this level of mastery over a style that is almost wholly his own invention — what might be called the multiple-character, historical-pastoral-comedy-tragedy. The last great American iconoclast of his generation and just about the only one of them left working, he usually takes on genres like the Western, or the war movie or the detective thriller, to explode their conventions, when he isn’t discarding expectations completely. The cinema of Robert Altman is generally one of confrontation, demanding that the audience let go of their assumptions about what movies should do, or what they can’t do, and see things in a new and invigorating way. When he is at his most original, as in Nashville (1976) and Short Cuts (1993), he is a trickster of a showman, offering up scathing three-ring murals of American self-indulgence and delusion, tempered only by the occasional indulgence in a forgiving wit. In his darkest films — such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) — nothing is forgiven, and he shows us an indifferent universe populated by hopelessly optimistic losers.
But since he made Short Cuts, there has been a palpable change in his movies, certain signals that perhaps Altman would lighten-up in his old age. He is more likely to play a genre straight and let the bitterness slide, allowing a story to do what stories normally do, while he concerns himself with deepening his characters. In Gosford Park, an uncharacteristically Anglophilic subject for this most American of directors, Altman transcends his mystery tale by simply letting it be, navigating conventions with tongue-in-cheek while using the genre for his own kaleidoscopic ends. There is no question the filmmaker’s sympathies lie with the underclass: most of the satire arises “upstairs,“ in the drawing- and dining rooms, filled as they are with trivial concerns of manners and appearance, while the great dramas underscoring this world are played out “downstairs,” in dark kitchens and cramped servants’ quarters. By the time the film is over and the answers to the mystery have been revealed, who done it has become much less important than who didn’t, and the only sense of melancholy we feel is at the necessity of leaving such a marvelous gathering of people. Gosford Park is as wide and deep as a good novel or miniseries, embracing both the light and the dark of human nature, sending an audience back out into the world with the sensation that life goes mysteriously on.
The cast includes many of England’s best actors at this particular moment, with enchanting turns by three generations of women: Maggie Smith’s clueless, needy countess is a riot; Helen Mirren shines as a cruelly efficient housekeeper; and chameleon-like Emily Watson dominates all of her scenes as a worldly-wise head maid. Among the men, Altman favorite Richard E. Grant is hilarious as a mischievous footman; the always underrated Alan Bates is wonderful as a devoted-but-conflicted butler; while American Bob Balaban, who conceived the film with Altman and helped produce it, gives another dry performance as a producer of bad Hollywood movies.
A true cinematic event that demands multiple viewings. Great screenplay by Julian Fellowes, fabulous widescreen camerawork by Andrew Dunn, accompanied by the usual dense and frenetic Altman soundtrack.
Gosford Park:
directed by Robert Altman; screenplay by Julian Fellowes, from idea by Robert Altman and Bob Balaban; director of photography, Andrew Dunn; edited by Tim Squyers; music by Patrick Doyle
with: Michael Gambon (Sir William McCordle), Kristin Scott Thomas (Lady Sylvia McCordle), Maggie Smith (Constance), Bob Balaban (Morris Weissman), Helen Mirren (Mrs. Wilson), many others
2 hr., 17 m.; USA Films, rated R
release date: premiered December 26 in N.Y. and L.A.; opened wide January 4
NOTES:
HIS FOURTH COMEBACK: Robert Altman (b. 1925 in Kansas City) began his career nearly fifty years ago in the grueling world of series television, directing hundreds of episodes for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza and many others. Always at odds with the powers that be in Hollywood, he emerged as a major filmmaker with the low-budget M*A*S*H, which became the sleeper hit of 1970. In the intervening thirty years he has consistently been a director whom critics love and the suits fear, mostly because his films rarely make money. In the executives’ defense, it must be said the quality of his output is uneven, ranging from unwatchable (The Gingerbread Man, 1998) to very enjoyable (Cookie’s Fortune, 1999) to this latest masterwork. One of the great improvisational stylists, he often encourages actors to depart from the script and embellish their roles.
WHAT TO SEE: other Altman masterpieces — M*A*S*H (1970), Nashville, and The Player (1992), a film Altman himself called his “third comeback”). Worth a look — McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974), Vincent and Theo (1990), Short Cuts.
HOW, AND WHY, HE DOES IT: The elegant chaos of an Altman soundtrack imitates the babble of our everyday world, but it also mimics consciousness in its selectivity, scanning constantly for relevant details. It is achieved by “miking” every actor in a scene and recording dialogue on multiple channels, the director just off camera in headphones, manipulating the sound levels, so that no one is ever quite sure during a take whether they’re the focus of a particular moment or not.
MR. DEPENDABLE: Bob Balaban (b. 1945) comes from a family of film exhibitors and studio executives. A graduate of Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe, he made his film debut as the naïve gay hustler in Midnight Cowboy (1969). He’s a quirky, intelligent comedian, a veteran of over fifty films, always working, hardly ever noticed. In 2001, besides his writing-producing-acting duties on Gosford Park, he managed to assay the role of Enid’s hapless father in Ghost World as well as small roles in The Majestic and The Mexican.
OSCAR WATCH: nominated for 7 of the big ones — Best Picture, Director (Altman‘s fifth nomination in this category), Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress (both Mirren and Smith), Art Direction, and Costume Design.
