Gosford Park | Review

Gosford Park is a succulent whodunit type of murder mystery film-fashioned after those Agatha Christie mysteries and in part, inspired by a childhood favorite board game of mine-Clue (I have yet to see the film version!). There’s the English mansion, the possible murder weapons, the cast of players, the cigar-puffing buffoon of an inspector and a large array of young and old aristocracy with their flamboyant mannerisms and polite nastiness. The other set of players are those who also live under the roof that don’t par-take in duck hunting-and I’m not talking about the dames…you see, it was quite trendy to have a servant, or in this case, many servants at one’s disposal in the pre WWII era. The fun of watching such a film is witnessing the behavior of the two classes, examining the inter-mingling that goes on between all the characters and parlaying that with the obvious absurdity of such a system. Oh and it gets messy, the dispute of family riches, the adulterous affairs and sibling rivalry transforms itself into the juiciest of gossip which travels around the corridors at the speed of sound. Altman uses a low-key humor throughout- sometimes hard to decipher especially with all the voices overlapping. One room during a party contains more than one conversation and Altman uses this and the many, sometimes heavy, British accents to create the smoke screen, which is needed for such a film. He uses the entire ensemble of actors at his disposition, (as seen in his other films such as Short Cuts and The Player), and at times there are five or six characters in a shot and sometimes it’s as if he squeezes in the whole cast of characters into one. With so many characters, it does get a little dizzyingly; it will take a couple of minutes to figure out names, titles and faces set up in a chaotic manner. Each frame contains distractions and within those distractions are possible suspects and possible motives. What is great about the acting is that when an actor is not utilized in front and center dialogue, they are on the sidelines chatting it up, the sort of thing you’d expect to see under one roof- I always found it strange whenever you see two characters in a loud nightclub chatting with the background sound at zero. There are some fine performances (by a cast too lengthy to name), but nobody really comes out and steals the show, -with a sort of equilibrium of great acting in which the audience gets only small does of. There is a sort of intrigue about each one of them.

Altman’s direction is superb, and the camera work is especially good in this film, every scene is detailed in and out of the rooms and whenever the viewer is transported to the downstairs, there is this feeling that we can light up a quick cigarette and hear the latest news as well. I love how the screenplay takes the servant, narrative and viewer up and above ground-the contrasts of the worlds accentuated by lighting, sense of space within the frame and set design. I liked how the camera seems to graze of the surface of the table or bounce off the walls, or hide behind glass panels-giving that impression that we too are in on the secrets. I loved how the film is composed, how the screenplay takes the time to set things up, to introduce the characters and their individual agendas/conflicts-and this lasts all the way up to the midway point of the film-rather than laying it heavy on the viewer from the start, we get back-of-the-baseball-card-statistics on personality traits of the opposing and home teams. And what exactly does Altman do? He gives us a little more than the simple set-up of murder-suspect-motive-case solved scenario, he lets the film seep out bits of information, never making a big issue out of anything, basically he avoids using the big signals and when it comes time to disclose the actual series of events- there are no “a ha’s!” . Conceived almost from birth, written by, directed by and produced by Altman; Gosford charms, it intrigues, and the more the narrative progresses with a similitude of subplots the more the film showcases itself as a brilliant picture. This latest Golden Globe nominated film is like a fine wine, and though I haven’t seen Altman’s M*A*S*H or Nashville, I would think that he has gotten better with age. Gosford Park is among my favorites of the year-a must see!

Rating 4 stars