Gosford Park (2001)

Gosford Park was the last film by Robert Altman to be nominated for Best Picture. A nominee in 2001, it features many of the traits of Altman's best films: a huge cast, lots of overlapping plots, and an overarching plot that ties everything (seemingly, allegedly) together. It's a great deal of fun to watch some of the best actors in Great Britain in these parts. How can you go wrong when you have Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson, the list goes on. One of my favorites in this film is Stephen Fry, who plays perhaps the most inept inspector ever in the history of filmic detective work. The only misstep, sadly, is the use of Ryan Phillippe as an American actor trying to pass himself off as a Scottish butler. He just doesn't seem up to the task when placed in company such as this.

The film itself is very stylish. It's set during a weekend hunting party at a country house in England. All of the guests are wealthy (more or less), but all of them also have a grudge against the man who has invited them all to stay at his home. When he is found dead in his study, about halfway through the film, it changes from being a comedy of manners into a mystery. The transition is a bit awkward from my perspective, and I recall not enjoying it as much as everyone else did when it first played in theaters because it seemed like two movies had been sutured together somewhat haphazardly. (I also couldn't hear the dialogue clearly, a common problem in Altman films--and, yes, I know that is one of his signature marks. That doesn't make it any easier to hear it.) Each time I have seen it subsequently, I have eased up a bit on my initial assessment. I still don't think it's one of Altman's best, but it's certainly better than most of the films being made these days.

The parts of the film that I like the best are those involving the servants. They seem more real to me than the wealthy people. It's all very Upstairs, Downstairs, isn't it? But the servants have more honest moments of emotion than the guests at the party do. One of the best scenes is when the servants huddle around the various doors leading into one of the parlors. Ivor Novello, the great film star of the 1920s and 30s, is playing the piano and singing inside. The wealthy are best represented in this scene by Maggie Smith's Countess, who just seems annoyed that all of the noise is disrupting the card playing. The servants, however, are enraptured. They close their eyes and move in time with the music. Some even break into dance. It's one of those moments that reveals the true joy that popular entertainment can provide. They are the ones who are making Novello famous. It's quite a commentary from Altman on who the audience for films (and popular music) might be: the working classes with their need for escape now and then, not the stuffy upper classes who feel that the mass media are beneath them.

I must admit, though, that despite all of the pleasures found in watching the great performances by those in the roles of servants and butlers and maids and cooks, I love watching Smith as Countess Trentham. She's always been one of my favorite actresses, and I don't think she has ever been bad in any movie she's in. You know that even seeing her in a small role, like the one in the Harry Potter movies, will likely provide you with a chance to smile at the skill with which she performs. Here she's a woman who has always lived a life of leisure, a lifestyle that might have ended had not her host died before executing his plans to reduce the amount of her "allowance." Smith overpowers the rest of the cast in every scene she's in. And only she can deliver a simple line like "Difficult colour...green" and make you understand just what a cutting remark it is. I have sometimes wondered if they write dialogue with people like Maggie Smith in mind, and that's why she (and others like her) always gets such great lines. Or perhaps she just has an incomparable quality that makes her every line great, no matter how it was written to be delivered.