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GOSFORD PARK
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Not so much a whodunit as a why-dunit, GOSFORD PARK, Robert Altman’s most recent adventure in auditory challenges, features a stellar cast -- just about everyone from PBS British rep except Anthony Hopkins and Kenneth Branagh -- in an elliptically picaresque weekend-in-the-country highlighted by, oh yes, a murder.
From his beginnings with M*A*S*H and MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, Altman has used film mainly as a means of exploring multifaceted characters. Plots, if any, emerge as the camera rolls. In the best Altman films -- especially NASHVILLE -- the action culminates in a defining, climactic event that is powerful precisely because, in this microcosm of crisis, we know and can understand the behavior of every character. At that instant all our storytelling overhead, all our patient assembly of insights, pays off. In the worst -- 3 WOMEN; JIMMY DEAN, and others I have not had the torture of watching -- nothing happens. In between are the solid Altmans -- THE PLAYER; SHORT CUTS -- whose failings we forgive because their successes are so unusual.
As a filmmaker, Altman’s storytelling resembles that of British novelist Anthony Powell. Author of the unbelievably magnificent twelve-book series A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, an aristocratic Englishman revered in his native country and largely unknown here, a Powell concocts exquisitely nuanced and detailed portraits of characters, through extended articulate preambles, and then brings them together across a single event -- a country weekend, a dinner party -- with unexpected but far-reaching social consequences.
Unlike Powell, who is from this between-war generation and of its social class, Altman is a plain-spoken anti-aristocratic American who neither likes nor particularly cares about the upstairs house. In GOSFORD PARK, all the engaging characters work downstairs: the icy head of house (Helen Mirren), the doe-eyed newcomer lady’s maid (Kelly Macdonald, a fine debut), the lurking gentleman’s valet (Clive Owen), and even the arriviste gentleman’s valet (Ryan Phillippe, a boytoy with harbingers of some genuine acting talent). Even Jeremy Northam as a famous singer/ film star is engaging only because, though he moves among the eloi, he knows he is not of them and lives on their table scraps.
In Altman’s vision of this world, there are only oppressors and victims (“you can’t play on both teams,” says one of the maids pointedly) -- and only the victims are interesting. Except for the upper-crust women, some of whom fare a little better because they are victims of their smug men, there is not one genuinely engaging aristocrat. Instead we have a vacant taciturn war hero (Charles Dance), a grasping glutton (Michael Gambon), a philandering lightweight (James Wilby), and an archly oblivious countess (Maggie Smith). The only man who escapes class-condescending scorn is Bob Balaban’s Hollywood producer … but only because, Woody-Allen-like in his raccoon coat, pencil mustache, and constant telephone calls to the coast, he is at least genuine and unpretentious and a safe target for Altman’s recurring anti-Hollywood subversion.
What we thus see, for over two hours, is something of a distant-mirror distorted caricature of dying Imperial England: UPSTAIRS/ DOWNSTAIRS meets REMAINS OF THE DAY out of THE SHOOTING PARTY. Even though the performances are all perfectly wrought, we have a hard time caring about any of them. There are so many we have a hard time keeping them straight, since any given character can have three names (first name, last name, title) and half the time the words are hard to hear. Since you can’t tell the players without a program, print out and study a cast list -- such as available from http://movies.go.com/filmography/Credits?movie_id=43300-- before you go.
With a confusing extended family cast, a meandering story line, and hard-to-follow dialog, we seize on the actors whose performances captivate us -- Maggie Smith’s over-the-top countess, Stephen Fry’s hilariously inept detective, even Balaban’s producer -- and those whose feelings show in their faces: Emily Watson as the devoted head housemaid, young Kelly Macdonald (whose reactions serve as audience surrogate), even Derek Jacobi as the lord’s faithful long-time valet.
The mystery (such as it is) is not solvable -- or rather, it is solvable by the dullest of linear means-motive-opportunity box-checking. Instead, the puzzle -- a good one that is both solvable and satisfying -- is why our victim was murdered, and what that says (at least to Altman) about this vanished society.
GOSFORD PARK is (pale) green for its ambition and its technical achievement, as well as the beauty of its performances, every one of which is just fine, nary a word or gesture wrong. It does respect its actors and its audience (if not its subject), and it is entertaining. At his best, Altman does more … but even at well below his best, he gives value for money.