Film review - Gosford Park (From Western Telegraph)

Film review - Gosford Park

Directed by Robert Altman Starring Kelly Macdonald, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillipe, Kristin Scott Thomas,Stephen Fry and millions of others! Released on February 1st. (Cert. 15, Dur. 130 mins)

Robert Altmans films are odd. His credits to date include Mash, The Player, Pret A Porter, Short Cuts.

His films are typically about a huge number of people with at least one different story line each. Then they come together, or dont, in the finale. He is a master of this style that is now popular with many other younger filmmakers. Altman,though, always ensures a dose of reality with his settings and his characters.

While Altman fans will get everything they expect from Gosford Park it is un-Altman-like in that its his first British film (with a huge cast of British talent) and that its got a classic murder mystery plot thats wrapped up neatly in the end.

Gosford Park is set in 1932 in the English country house estate of Sir William McCordle (Gambon). Its a film of two halves really. Altman himself describes it as a "an upstairs downstairs murder mystery." For approximately the first hour we watch the guests and hoards of servants arrive for a weekend of shooting anything nature will offer the landed gentry. This is the upstairs downstairs bit as we are dragged swiftly all over the huge house meeting the masters and the servants, seeing how they treat each other, and how they shouldnt treat each other, though our meetings with them are fleeting. Our attention is drawn especially to a servant called Mary, played by Kelly Macdonald. Mary is being groomed to become head servant. She bares witness to all sorts of shenanigans upstairs and down and somewhere on the landing in between, where somebody meets someone they shouldnt and just as we are getting totally confused, by what we are seeing, Aaaaaagh! Theres been a murder!

This is where the second half of the film starts. While whats gone on so far is not ignored, we are too well versed in the ways of Agatha Christie not to recognise a Cluedo mystery when we see one. Enter Stephen Fry as a flat-footed detective investigating the murder. It is soon obvious that he hasnt got a Cornettos chance in a microwave of solving this crime.

Mary the maid, however, whether she wants to or not, is discovering not just the key to the crime, but more importantly the secrets of generations worth of impropriety that dogs the strong class distinctions of the society.

Altman has managed to make a really stylish examination of the way the world worked in the Thirties in the English feudal countryside. I think the relevance of Gosford Park today is, though it may not always be so obviously delineated or uniformed 60 years on, the game of life and the roles we are asked to play within it cannot mask the fact the we all share the base and natural human urges. The hopes, ambitions, desires for affection and revenge etc. run through all of us whether we are bringing the slippers or waiting for them to be brought.

Gosford Park is a loose piece of story telling. You have to let it happen to you rather than study it. It looks beautiful and the amazing cast list is a thespianic picnmix.

This is good quality movie making. Just too interesting all round to dismiss. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I dont understand all of it but still!