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Altman hits one out of the park
[Photo: USA films]
From left, Laurence Fox, Jeremy Northam, Charles Dance, Kristin Scott Thomas, James Wilby, Claudie Blakley, Maggie Smith and Stephen Fry star in Gosford Park. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 10, 2002
Gosford Park is director Robert Altman at his best, lining up a seemingly discordant team of characters into a game plan that becomes a comedic tour de force.
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How many creative lives does Robert Altman possess? At 76, the resilient filmmaker has been given up for dead -- or worse, boring -- more times than any other director. Each misfire, such as Dr. T and the Women or The Gingerbread Man, made moviegoers wonder if this maverick genius of the 1970s had deteriorated to a doddering crank with a camera.
One viewing of Gosford Park is all it takes to be reassured that Altman still has game, still played by his own rules.
On the surface, Gosford Park seems like just another slice of upper-crust life, something Merchant-Ivory could cobble together from leftover wardrobe and sets. Altman is a very American director, not necessarily patriotic but certainly independent. Like Ang Lee with Sense and Sensibility, Altman is an outsider unencumbered by British heritage, socially and cinematically. He respects corset-drama conventions but only to a point.
Underneath the ruffles, Gosford Park is precisely what Altman does best, yet hasn't done in so long. The setting, a weekend hunting holiday populated by muckety-mucks and their servants, allows Altman to employ his trademark schematics of ensemble characters living parallel stories that sometimes appear to be about nothing, yet dovetail into something remarkable. His penchant for overlapping dialogue is reduced by propriety; nobody here is rude enough to speak loudly or out of turn.
The screenplay by Julian Fellowes overflows with telling throwaway lines. Altman hasn't had such a bountiful script at his disposal since The Player enabled him to vent against the Hollywood system, a feeling that emerges again here with Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), a pushy producer of Charlie Chan movies who is injected into Gosford Park's bramble-bush plotting.
Weissman is Altman's alter ego -- heavy on the ego -- in these foreign circumstances. We meet the rest of the party through his eyes, marveling at their extravagance and gradually becoming aware of the poison beneath their purred words. The Countess Constance (Maggie Smith) is most venomous, a prim heckler of anything that isn't hers. Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a gracious host and a flirting adulterer. This matriarchal society has the men mostly puffing tobacco, shooting geese and being befuddled.
Altman and Fellowes also take their satire to a deeper level, downstairs to the servants' chambers. Weissman's butler, Henry Denton (Ryan Phillippe), also seems out of place at Gosford Park, for reasons too vital to mention except for the fact that Henry becomes a two-way bridge between the mansion floors. And just when the Upstairs, Downstairs theme is running dry, Fellowes tosses in a murder mystery complete with a daft detective (Stephen Fry) who isn't Charlie Chan. The film's focus remains on personalities and family skeletons, but it's refreshing to see filmmakers capitalize on the need for a jump start.
The cast is mostly an impeccable mix of familiar British faces, a Who's Who of Shakespearean proportions. Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi and Alan Bates lead the old guard among servants while Jeremy Northam's movie star character and Clive Owen's brusque butler represent the new generation. Casting director Mary Selway deserves credit for attracting such an exemplary lineup.
Everyone gets their choice bits of business to perform, perhaps only reaction or a brief snit, but everything counts for the moment and, possibly, the future, so attention must be paid. Fellowes eventually whittles the drama down to two people from the crowd, yet there's an impression that several alternate endings could be plotted. Gosford Park could continue brilliantly long after it seems to be over, just like the old cat who made it.
Gosford Park
- Grade: A
- Director: Robert Altman
- Cast: Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Derek Jacobi, Kelly Macdonald, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Ryan Phillippe, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Watson
- Screenplay: Julian Fellowes
- Rating: R; profanity, sexual situations
- Running time: 137 min.
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