Gosford Park Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)January 15th, 2002
GOSFORD PARK
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2002 David N. Butterworth
***1/2 (out of ****)
The setting is a palatial English country estate in the early 1930s. Multitudinous guests arrive with their valets, maids, and menservants for a weekend shooting party. Upstairs the haves hang around the drawing room eating and drinking and making merry while Ivor Novello tinkles the old ivories. Downstairs the have-nots shine shoes, hem dresses, and sit around endlessly bickering and gossiping. For a little over two hours Robert Altman's delicious "Gosford Park" unfolds with exquisite and meticulous detail. As with most Altman productions the film is populated (often times overpopulated) with more characters than you can shake a stick at but here in "Gosford Park" the cast of characters seems exactly right (there are more than 30 "significant" roles and with few exceptions each performer contributes a very personal performance). What starts out as a comedy of manners focusing on the division between the classes winds up as an Agatha Christie-styled whodunnit, but so well crafted is Altman's latest film that the murder mystery, when it finally comes, seems irrelevant (as surely does Stephen Fry's bumbling Inspector Thompson, changing the tone late in the game from the sublime to the ridiculous). That said there is--a rarity for Altman these or any other days--no gratuitous female nudity (myself having pegged Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Watson as dead certs going in). With a splendid and largely British cast headed up by Michael Gambon, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, and Jeremy Northam (as Novello), it's hard to single out any one individual performance but Maggie Smith (as the sniping Countess of Trentham), "Croupier"'s Clive Owen (as a manservant with a difficult past), Helen Mirren (as Mrs. Wilson the head housekeeper), and Ryan Philippe (sporting a convincing Scottish brogue) are all worthy of attention. After the disappointing "Dr. T and the Women" and "Cookie's Fortune" (both penned by Anne Rapp; Julian Fellowes takes over the writing reigns here), the 72-year-old Altman is back at the top of his game with "Gosford Park."
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David N. Butterworth
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