They're both stylized and fleshed out -- the marvelous Emily Watson's housemaid, for instance, is the picture of a cutie-pie working-class girl who just may have the goods to become a movie star, but she also gives us plenty of cues about her thoughts and feelings simply in the way she averts her eyes or pads wearily down to the bath in the servants' quarters.

In fact, most of the pleasures of "Gosford Park" come not from trying to figure out whodunit but from watching the characters take shape before your eyes, their tics, petty quarrels and deceits -- and their basic humanity -- molding themselves into high relief. Since Altman is dealing with such a large ensemble here, not all of the characters are equally memorable. But even the minor ones have at least a flash of distinctiveness.

The picture also has a grand and wry sense of humor, particularly in the way Balaban's hotshot movie producer, bored by the tea-drinking noble folk around him, keeps rushing to the phone to ring Hollywood with his latest inspiration for the cheapie Charlie Chan mystery he's working on, oblivious to the intrigue that's unfolding all around him.

Maggie Smith and Kelly MacDonald are wonderful as a countess-and-maid team, with Smith, like a schoolgirl draped in matronly jewels and furs, begging the fresh-faced MacDonald (a fine, sweetly unconventional actress, also seen in "Trainspotting" and "Two Family House") for the latest gossip among the servants. (Smith, in particular, is wonderful here; she gets laughs with her light, squirrelly touch -- you sometimes forget what a terrific comic actress she is.) Jeremy Northam is sleek and witty as Novello, the most assertively charming house guest, always ready to have a seat at the piano whether people want to hear him play or not.

Helen Mirren's head housekeeper might have been a caricature -- Mirren sure works that ramrod carriage and cracker-crisp enunciation -- but by the end of the movie you see her reserve as something richer and more complex. And with his brooding good looks, occasionally capped off by a know-it-all-smile, valet Clive Owen wears his dignity like a silk cravat. He's a downstairs Heathcliff.

"Gosford Park" is filled with small but splendid performances, like miniatures painted on ivory: As Sir William and Sylvia's daughter, Camilla Rutherford shows off a powdery vulnerability that's nonetheless grounded in intelligence and decency; Claudie Blakley is the awkward, misfit house guest who can't afford a maid, causing the others to talk behind her back, but whose lit-up face alone reveals more about her than a weekend's worth of yapping does about the rest of them.

Shot by Andrew Dunn, the whole picture has a rich, misty, slightly faded look, and Altman's characteristic overlapping dialogue means there's usually a lot going on at once. The revelations at the end may not be earth-shattering, but that's not the point. "Gosford Park" is so craftily made that it can't help pleasing. And although Altman is a great filmmaker, this movie doesn't have the feel of a grand and imposing work of art being handed down to the little people. It's more like a sly wink between the filmmaker and his audience. The only thing separating the upstairs and the downstairs is, after all, a set of stairs.

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