Posted: 01/10/2002

Gosford Park

(2001)

by Parama Chaudhury

Since this is ostensibly an English whodunit in the tradition of Agatha Christie, let me first talk about what Gosford Park has in common with the numerous Poirot movies that have been giving mystery-philes like me unimaginable pleasure ever since the advent of David Suchet as the mustachioed detective. The story is a variation on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, even though the credits claim that the idea was hatched by director Robert Altman and Bob Balaban. In fact, the house in that book was called Gorston Hall: an uncanny similarity. The usual conflict between the nouveau riche and the titled penniless is ever present, as are the snide comments made by everyone about everyone else. When the lord of the manor finally dies, the question is not who had a motive, but rather, who had the opportunity. The pretext of a shooting party always means that someone can get shot—or nearly shot by “accident.” And the amount of alcohol and coffee or tea drunk provides ample opportunity for a clever someone to add his or her choice of strychnine, arsenic and cyanide. You can be sure that all of these standard ingredients are in abundance in Gosford Park.

So, is this another Murder on the Orient Express? Well, not quite. The mystery itself only serves as a central axis around which Altman positions his trademark array of intertwined stories. After the epic Nashville and Short Cuts, Altman has finally found the perfect vehicle for the form he loves so much: a menagerie of characters, each of whom has a marginally interesting story to tell, but in whom we are interested only for their part in the big picture. Kristin Scott Thomas as the icy lady of the house who married into new money, Maggie Smith as her crusty (and titled) aunt, Jeremy Northam as the matinee idol, and particularly, Emily Watson as head maid, and Kelly MacDonald as the old lady’s maid, strike exactly the right note. It’s a delight to see the talented Ms.Watson not play a suffering character for once, and Scott Thomas’s natural coldness was tailor-made for this character. At times, it seems like there are too many characters cluttering up the canvas. Other characters seem overdone, like the American director and his strange companion, played with mysterious ineptness by Ryan Phillippe. But after a point, you focus in on a few people whom you recognize to be the movers and the shakers, or at least, the most interesting people around, just as you would at a large and mostly impersonal house party. Gosford Park alternately draws you in with its intimate portraits of some characters, and alienates you with the cursory glance at the others.

Andrew Dunn’s wandering camera, dropping in on conversations willy-nilly, also finds a natural context in the backdrop of a mystery at a house party. While we eavesdrop on the upstairs guests every now and then, the most interesting tidbits are obviously uncovered in the servants’ quarters. For this reason, the servants—the downstairs part of the household—are given much more screen time than in most movies of the type. We are introduced to them early on, so we learn to trust their insights into the relationships among their employers. There are two memorable sequences that set the movie apart from the rest of its genre. When the guests arrive, the scene shifts immediately from them to their servants. Helen Mirren turns in a pitch-perfect performance as the efficient, tight-lipped housekeeper Mrs. Wilson, who prides herself, perhaps a little bitterly, on being the perfect servant. Mrs. Wilson assigns rooms to all the maids and valets, and she also assigns them names: their employers’ names, that is. So Mary Macreachran, lady’s maid to the Countess of Trentham, is to be called Ms. Trentham. The lively pace at which the entire sequence proceeds, the quick establishment of multiple hierarchies, the dim starkness of the downstairs contrasted with the magnificence of Gosford Park in the liquid light of an English autumn, and the camera’s busy yet unflustered movement all create a multi-layered atmosphere which fills you with anticipation and leaves you wanting to know more. Similarly, Altman follows the process of preparing dinner with great interest, and the careful eye to detail, the exquisite set design and the marvelous ensemble acting by the servants seduces us to get caught up in it, too.

If you watch the movie a second time, without the bated breath associated with watching a great director’s new movie for the first time, you will see it as an effort to rework a run-of-the-mill production in order to perfect the shoddy bits, to highlight the potentially interesting aspects that are usually left in the rush to provide thrills, and to give you a benchmark with which to compare all others in the genre. The strong point of most mystery movies is the crime itself, and the devious plot that is uncovered by the master detective using his or her “little gray cells.” So Altman doesn’t concern himself too much with either the murder or the discovery of the guilty party. What is most often missing from these movies, is the personal drama and the rich atmosphere that Agatha Christie was so good at conjuring up in her books. This is where Altman steps in. The ins and outs of both the guests and the servants’ lives are studied with great care. By the time the crime occurs, we are as caught up with their lives as they are, and so the crime takes us by surprise. After that point, the movie alternates between showing the interactions and relationships that had been the focus so far, and showing a buffoonish Stephen Fry playing detective. The message is clear: Altman’s work is done. He has shown us what else there might be in these movies that would heighten our pleasure. As for the anticlimactic ending, well, now in his seventies, Altman is indulging himself. Sure, we love the final showdown, but almost anyone can pull that off. Altman’s just showing us how well he can do those luscious umpteen course dinners, and the larders filled with last summer’s brambleberry jam, the ladies in their smart jodhpurs, and the naughty dalliances between the upstairs toffs and the downstairs folk. And I enjoyed his showing-off immensely.

A final note for people like me who love mysteries with minimum violence and maximum drama: don’t set your heart on the denouement. If you’re expecting the usual “I wonder who did it?” to dominate the proceedings, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, enjoy the atmosphere that makes these movies such a delectable guilty pleasure. You’ll seldom see it better done.

Parama Chaudhury is a graduate student, an ex-writing instructor and a budding freelance writer, based in New York City.

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