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Reviewed by Ivana Redwine
Tagline: "Tea at four. Dinner at eight. Murder at midnight." Length: 137 minutes "Gosford Park" is a drama directed by Robert Altman, and it's at the level of his best work, including "M*A*S*H," "Nashville," and "The Player." Maggie Smith, Emily Watson, and Alan Bates are among the actors in the film's large all-star ensemble cast. I watched "Gosford Park" recently on DVD and enjoyed it enormously. I'm delighted to own it on DVD because watching it repeatedly has proven very rewarding. The DVD comes with some nice bonus materials, too. Early in "Gosford Park," we meet the haughty, unlikable Constance (Maggie Smith), who is the Countess of Trentham, and her inexperienced, likable maid Mary Maceachran (Kelly Macdonald). It is largely through these two characters that we come to understand much about the fascinating world inhabited by English aristocrats and their servants between the two world wars. In November, 1932, Constance and Mary travel to a fancy country estate named Gosford Park for a pheasant hunt. The estate is owned by Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas). But the film focuses less on the wealthy McCordles than it does on their servants, including Jennings (Alan Bates), the butler; Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren), the housekeeper; Mrs. Croft (Eileen Atkins), the cook; and Elsie (Emily Watson), the head housemaid. About a dozen aristocrats gather at Gosford Park for the hunt, and most bring a servant with them. As the servants work hard to pamper the McCordles and their guests, we get an insider's view of this peculiar social milieu. We find out about the sexual relationship between the randy Sir William and the head housemaid Elsie, and we learn of the long-time feud between the housekeeper and the cook. At length we also discover an unexpected relationship between the housekeeper and Robert Parks (Clive Owen), a visiting valet. Others who attend the Gosford Park gathering are Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), a well-known film actor; Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), a Hollywood producer who makes Charlie Chan movies; and Henry Denton (Ryan Phillippe), a handsome young man who accompanies Weissman. These three characters are outside the social system comprised of the aristocrats and their servants, and thus they help us see it more clearly. One of the people at Gosford Park ends up murdered, and a bumbling policeman (Stephen Fry) investigates. He doesn't crack the case, but due to the pluck of Constance's maid Mary, we find out who committed the murder and what the motive was. But I don't believe "Gosford Park" is intended to be a whodunit—it's really a closely observed study of an intriguing social milieu. The acting in "Gosford Park" is uniformly at a very high level—as good as the best I've ever seen. However, there's no leading role in the film. Instead, three dozen actors share a roughly equal amount of screen time. Maggie Smith, Alan Bates, and Emily Watson are fine actors, and they deliver in this movie. For me, though, two of the actors are so convincing that I can't separate them from the characters they play. Those two actors are Kristin Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia and Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello, a real-life matinee idol. By the way, Derek Jacobi, who is one of my favorite actors, is in "Gosford Park," but he doesn't get much screen time and his character is not memorable. The "Gosford Park" screenplay is outstanding, and screenwriter Julian Fellowes deservedly won an Academy Award for it. The DVD features an audio track where Fellowes gives a running commentary on the film, and I really enjoyed hearing his remarks. There's a separate audio track featuring the commentary of director Robert Altman, and it is worth listening to, but I found it less informative than Fellowes'. The DVD contains several deleted scenes, which can be watched either with or without Altman's commentary. Most of these are so good that I wish they had been left in the movie. I suppose they were cut to keep the length of the theatrical release reasonably short. I really liked the DVD feature titled "The Authenticity of Gosford Park," where you can see four real-life former servants, all now in their 80s, who served as technical advisors to the film. The making-of featurette and the question-and-answer session are both worth watching, and the DVD contains a few other special features as listed below. Selected Special Features on the DVD:
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