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The upperclass friends and relations of Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) come at his country house for a weekend of shooting, accompanied by maids, footmen, and valets, all of whom will be staying under one roof. Sir William is a mean-spirited and self-centered conventional man, married to a worthy younger, emotionally distant wife (Kristin Scott Thomas), with many family members dependent upon his continuing largesse. The hilariously waspish Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith), who believes she has a lifetime stipend, arrives with young Mary Maceachran (Kelly MacDonald), who is trying valiantly to become a superior lady’s maid. Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), a Hollywood star, and Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), a producer of Charlie Chan movies, are the only guests without aristocratic backgrounds and inherited privilege. The atmosphere of the house, filled with venomous “friends” and relations, soon becomes even more poisonous.
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The “below stairs” lives of the servants are also fully revealed, as they part living quarters, eat meals together, tend to the laundry and cooking, and gossip about their employers. The butler Jennings (Alan Bates) and the head housekeeper (Helen Mirren) race the household and try to guarantee that no real-world cares will intrude upon the lives of their employers. Since “upstairs” and “downstairs” occasionally meet very privately at night, secrets abound, many of them secrets of long standing. When Sir William is poisoned and stabbed (“Trust Sir William to be murdered twice”), nearly everyone has a motive for wanting him tiring,.
For director Robert Altman, the significant focus of the film is on the characters, their design of life, and their values, with the execute mystery secondary. Place in leisurely November, the raze of the year 1932, the action takes site when this accumulate aristocratic lifestyle is also nearing its slay, something that the arrival of the newly rich Hollywood characters, Novello and Weissman, illustrates. Dramatic cinematography (by Andrew Dunn) emphasizes the frigid and rainy dreariness of the weekend, and suggests parallels with the coldness of the dying aristocracy.
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Interior shots notify the contrasts between the blooming and mannered lives of the “upstairs” characters and the hardworking daily lives of the “downstairs” characters, who adhere to their possess rigid social codes. Every detail seems right, and as the characters’ lives and interrelationships are revealed obliquely in brief snippets of seemingly unrelated conversations, a gargantuan portray of the upstairs and downstairs lifestyles gradually emerges. Fully developed, many-leveled, wonderfully acted, often laughable, and impeccably directed and filmed, this is a film one can survey again and again with delight. Mary Whipple
Well, strictly speaking he doesn’t of course – Robert Altman never simply tags onto an established genre; he plays with it and makes it his hold by turning it upside down. So, while the concept for “Gosford Park” may have been inspired by assassinate mysteries “Christie style” and by the likes of “Brideshead Revisited” and the BBC series about the Bellamy’s Eaton Square household, we leave familiar territory the moment we enter the estate … through the servants’ entrance; for although astronomical parts of the action assume location “upstairs,” it is manifestly told from a “downstairs” perspective.
Academy Award-winningly scripted by Julian Fellowes (himself a descendant of British nobility and therefore able to device on manifold personal insights in creating the movie’s characters), “Gosford Park” is primarily an examination of the unquestioningly favorite rules of the early 1930s’ British class society: where, beset by primogeniture and a lifestyle often beyond their means, an aristocrat’s daughters and younger sons were compelled to marry rich to enjoy their expected standard of living – making a marriage for admire considerable less spruce than one for money, even to a disliked spouse, and a marriage for savor almost akin to a crime if not combined with wealth -; where servants were a well-known element of the aristocracy’s life, even if largely treated as non-persons, banished to the basement and not even allowed to affirm if not spoken to when called upstairs by virtue of their duties (notwithstanding the almost salubrious relationship often existing between members of the two classes outside the public gaze) ; where the perfect servant’s existence was a life so unrealized that it often resulted in an overbearing interest in all aspects of his employer’s life and in a genuine emulation of the latter’s prejudices, standards and pecking orders; where nevertheless domestic service was an well-known finishing school, especially for girls, frequently employed as early as at 12 or 14 years of age; where both “upstairs” and “downstairs” the greatest transgression against social etiquette was the causation of any kind of scene, as *nothing* was to be talked about as if it were truly distinguished – requiring an immediate return to earn if a breach of decorum had occurred after all – and where itsy-bitsy behavioral patterns such as a person’s habits in pouring milk for his tea unfailingly exposed him as a member of one particular class, try as he might to associate himself with another. Yet, for all its observations, “Gosford Park” never judges: it takes each of its characters, and the entire unspoken “upstairs-downstairs” class intention at face value, leaving it up to its viewers to decide themselves what to acquire thereof.
The movie is named for the estate of Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and wife Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), who have invited friends and family to that most English of all country sports events – a shooting party. And they have all come: Lady Sylvia’s aunt Constance Trentham (Maggie Smith), her sisters Louisa and Lavinia with husbands Lord Stockbridge and Commander Meredith (Geraldine Somerville, Natasha Wightman, Charles Dance and Tom Hollander), the Nesbitts (James Wilby and Claudie Blakley) and last but not least (real-life) actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam, who also displays his outstanding vocal talent with several of Novello’s songs), along with Hollywood director Morris Wiseman (Bob Balaban), in England for research on a projected “Charlie Chan” movie, and young Henry Denton (Ryan Philippe), whom Wiseman presents as his valet. Yet, while Novello is the hosts’ halfheartedly-tolerated relative, Wiseman and Denton are instantly identified as outsiders: Not only are they American, but Wiseman is Jewish (and thus, implicitly socially suspect), a vegetarian (making him even more suspect for “fussing” over his food) and swears on the telephone; and Denton is like a flash branded disingenuous by the servants, particularly Lady Constance’s young maid Mary (Kelly Macdonald) and Lord Stockbridge’s valet Robert Parks (Clive Owen), only to incur even greater wrath both upstairs and downstairs when the corpulent measure of his deception becomes apparent.
Despised by his wife and aristocratic in-laws and also, for reasons of their bear, by his contain staff, primarily housekeeper Jane Wilson and cook Elizabeth Croft (Helen Mirren and Eileen Atkins), Sir William is found murdered after the second night’s dinner. Enter Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry) – and the movie’s enjoyable witness gains another dimension, now also taking on the mystery genre; playing with it in “Charlie Chan” and “Pink Panther” fashion, with inept policemen, matching background music and cliches turned on their head, such as the obligatory assembly of all suspects, which here occurs at the investigation’s beginning, not at its slay.
While “Gosford Park”’s many awards are undoubtedly deserved, most fitting of all is its outstanding cast’s SAG ensemble award; as all actors, including the gradual, mountainous Alan Bates (butler Jennings), Derek Jacobi (Sir William’s valet Probert), Richard E. Grant (first footman George) and Emily Watson (housemaid Elsie, Sir William’s secret paramour and the only person grieving his death) keep aside their claims to safe starring roles in the interest of the ensemble’s achievement. In addition to Robert Altman’s, his son/production designer Stephen’s and Julian Fellowes’s painstaking attention to even the smallest plot detail – including a king’s ransom in tapestry and authentic vintage jewelry – and the counsel of several advisors with real-life service experience, all actors thoroughly researched the tenets of their roles; enabling them to reply in supreme fashion to Altman’s preferred style of directing, which favors spontaneity, “mistakes” (often actually a movie’s greatest moments), constantly consuming cameras with shifting focus and overlaying, partly ad-libbed conversations over strict adherence to the script. The movie is jam-packed with information, each morsel provided only once; therefore, you not only should but actually must explore it several times to capture up on all the details you will necessarily miss initially. This is not a film for casual viewers, nor for fans of primarily plot-driven stories – but it is strongly recommended to those who enjoy comely social comment and exquisitely-drawn characters.
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