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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Robert Altman delivers a heavily populated, slyly made romantic (and murderous) romp for the holidays.
Dec 26, 2001 | Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" isn't much more than marvelous entertainment -- but then, that's a lot right there. Depth is always admirable in movies, but in many ways lightness is harder to achieve. It's even more difficult when you've got a cast of some 30 characters, with a great deal of hobnobbing, canoodling and sniping (not to mention murdering) crisscrossing every which way among them.
It's a given that in any Altman movie each character in even a very large group is distinct and whole. (If an Altman movie didn't achieve at least that much, it wouldn't be an Altman movie.) And yet, even though that meshing of discrete and fully rounded characters is no less than we expect from Altman, it's a treat to get it nonetheless. Maybe it's something we've become parched for in the movies these days. Or maybe it's simply that it's great fun to find yourself plunked into the middle of a party, one at which anything might happen.
In the case of "Gosford Park," set in the English countryside in the 1930s, that gathering is a shooting party organized by the irascible and remote Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his languid, tweedy, much younger wife Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas). The guests include Sylvia's two sisters, Louisa (Geraldine Somerville) and Lavinia (Natasha Wightman), and their respective husbands Raymond, Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance) and Lt. Commander Anthony Meredith (Tom Hollander). (The titles matter because this is, after all, an English murder mystery.)
Other guests include the (real-life) composer and matinee idol Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam); a self-absorbed and howlingly American movie producer (Bob Balaban); and the imperious aunt of Sylvia and her two sisters, Constance, Countess of Trentham (Maggie Smith).
"Gosford Park"
Directed by Robert Altman
Starring Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Emily Watson
Nearly all of the visitors have, of course, brought servants, who interact with the guests both in subtle, glancing ways (like near-invisible atoms bouncing off larger chunks of matter) and in more intense, resonant ones (like trusted family members or even lovers). Alan Bates is Jennings, the butler, who, along with housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren), keeps the household running smoothly. There's also Mrs. Croft, the cook (Eileen Atkins), and beneath those three are an array of valets and personal maids -- played by actors including Emily Watson, Derek Jacobi, Kelly MacDonald and Clive Owen -- who fan out and burrow into the inner workings of the household as well as into the most intimate business of its inhabitants and guests, often without being seen or noticed. Their own business, however, is just as interesting, if not more so.
And of course, everyone has secrets -- you just don't know at the beginning who's harboring the biggest ones. And yes, someone gets killed. "Gosford Park" is "The Rules of the Game" reimagined as an English murder mystery. The conceit works because although Altman and screenwriter Julian Fellowes insist on a high degree of stylishness and fun, they also see their characters as human creatures with flaws and foibles and insecurities.
