GOSFORD PARK
Rated R for language and some sexuality
Starring Michael Gambon, Kristen Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Jeremy Northam, Derek Jacobi, and Stephen Fry

CineSight Rating 1/2

Director Robert Altman's latest ensemble piece, GOSFORD PARK, is set in the luxurious English country house of the same name on a chilly November weekend in 1932. Sir William McCordle (Gambon) is hosting a weekend shooting party. The various guests arrive with servants in tow to take over the house. While the guests are sipping drinks and making small talk upstairs, their servants downstairs are a whirlwind of activity, anticipating all their employers' needs or whims.

Among the guests there is a certain amount of back-biting, whining, wheeling and dealing, but nothing remarkable until a murder is discovered in (surprise, surprise) the library. Once the police arrive, both upstairs and downstairs are in a scramble to cover up their pasts, secrets and indiscretions.

Altman (THE PLAYER) is an undisputed master of ensemble drama. He allows the camera to wander around the scene, capturing a whisper here and a snatch of conversation there, until the plot and subplots are all brought to light. You can't be a passive viewer of an Altman film and hope to get much out of it. His intention is to make the audience pay attention to details and to think. And GOSFORD PARK is no exception. He uses the convention of an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery in order to put the British class system under his microscope. Altman is careful to give us all the clues we need to unravel the murder mystery (including a requisite couple of 'red herrings'), but his main purpose is to focus on relationships; the jockeying for position between those of a similar social class, the two-way relationship between an employer and a servant, and even the class system within the servants' own subculture.

Much of GOSFORD PARK's cast is likely to be unknown outside of Britain, but nonetheless are excellent across the board. Sir William and his guests are generally a snobbish crowd. Meanwhile, the servants exchange more gossip about their employers' confidences and dirty laundry than you pack into a tabloid. It is really impossible to pick out one particular performance since the entire cast works as a unit. However, Maggie Smith's portrayal of the savvy but tiresome Lady Constance who proudly proclaims that she doesn't have a 'snobbish bone in her body' is perfect.

While the movie doesn't have all the twists and turns of a true Agatha Christie, it is an exceptional character study and examination of that period in British history when the empire was truly finished and the days of a life in service were numbered. Robert Altman rightly deserves the Best Director award he received for the film at the Golden Globes.