"Gosford Park" (2001) - Movie Review

The class system depicted in the “Gosford Park” in 1930’s British is partially a compelling harmonious working of industrial process and crass slavery shined with classy mannerisms. A film with a screenplay as challenging as “Memento” in linear narration with a humungous casting and a brilliant camerawork may not be the best drama but as its representation is a strongly attired conservative smugness. Very high in the artistry of storytelling, the classification of servants and owners builds into a shield for us to care for emotional characters. But for a storytelling, precise in exploring the intricacies, gossips and scandals among the riches and their servants, it pierces than slicing the system through the behavioral patterns of humans, which of course is ironically unpredictable.

The film pushes the audience amongst the people inside a big house. The residing members of the house or hosts are Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), his rich wife Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) and their daughter Isobel (Camilla Rutherford). Of course there is a team of maids running the chores, reading the needs and preparing the dishes, clothes, foods and what not. They are the worker bees constantly pecking their work with the classic style invented particularly by the English. They work.

We are confused on exact identity of people. We are a stranger in a land of unspoken ethics and a chain of systematic rituals of well laid master-slave functionality. There are two outsiders like us, Mr. Weissman (Bob Balaban) and his servant Henry Denton (Ryan Phillippe). They are equally astonished but also secretly soak in to the hedonistic comfort these people demand for. The list of the cast and their part are learned through gossips. Director Robert Altman makes us listen through the hollow walls and talk among the laborious workers. Their life is surrounded by their masters and their existence is validated by their scandals, affairs, failures, success and death too.

Starting off as a drama and a clinical study of this conservativeness in its own cadre, it then subplots in plots and branches off to teeny tiny details which then comes useful to make some sense. But the murder mystery is not the film and when the event happens, as with the people in the house we too shed off the loss of a person and get on with the film as they do with their life. In the sense, the minimal awareness we get of the murdered person is nothing but contempt and spite of a boring life full of frustration. More than the person, the gossip is where we learn about him and we fall in to that scheme of small talks and big laughs of the inability of a man’s character.

There is couple of characters which not alone constitute the film’s advancement into a drama and thriller but really dissect and gives the perspective from either side. Ryan Phillipe as Henry Denton says that he is from Scotland but his accent is suspecting. He instantly makes a name among the servants gaining the praise and attention of Lady Sylvia. He gives an alternative view later in the film which is funny and sad. So much have this caste of social status laid upon generations and generations that the sect has imbibed into their nervous system. They respect and obey their masters but they cannot allow them in their posse. A strange discrimination.

Seeing this gathering reminded me of the South Indian marriages in India which sometimes happens in a big house but largely in a big marriage hall. Apart from the widened hall there are rooms with closed doors guarding the rants and cribs of the kin, cousins and friends. In these one or two days of celebrating the financial status and some human emotions, the prosperity of the gathering has its moments. In “Gosford Park” that moment never happens because the masters and servants have been like that for so long that this culmination of their rigorous work-reception routine pushes them to the limit which in turn reflects as a boredom of life. There is no affection or love in the entire film except in the end.

The screenplay of course won the Academy award for Julian Fellowes. Fellowes juggles with the characters while Altman with the cast. I am wondering whether there developed a class amongst the actors while filming. I would not be surprised if it had. The camera moving from the corners and the stairs through the darkness towards the light sometimes makes us gasp for breath due to the stretch of long walk. The film’s cold characters have an effect upon ourselves and we do not attach much to the film. There are secrets which thickens the plot and there are sexual taboos on those times happening in a rather open manner behind closed doors. But more than that the film is the stay we really go through among a chilling set of people who in their own class and trait cross the barriers in night and pose a complete façade of their existence in day light without any difficulty.