The Krays was awful, The Game very overrated, and not much else of a chance to make up for it (as I've been watching The Shield all week). A poor week with regard to both quantity and quality this week, save for two candidates: the highly recommended In The Bedroom, which missed out on a Top 100 place, and....

Gosford Park
(2001/Altman/GB)

It's 1932 in rainy rural England and the setting is Sir William McCordy and wife Lady Silvia's country home. The owners of the house have thrown a weekend of bird shooting, dinners and parties, cardgames and some splendid, enviable piano-playing for their many friends, a batch of upper class, stuff-lipped folk who bring along their maids and servants for the ride. As the guests gather upstairs, the servants work, converse and gossip downstairs. Then the murder occurs....

Despite what the film claims, this is NOT "Robert Altman meets Agatha Christie". The murder occurs an hour into the film, and the anticipated whodunnit never delivers in the way it suggests throughout. In fact, the murder should never really happen in the film. The preceding hour is one of the finest, interesting and original hours I've watched in recent months.

The pacing is a delight as we hurtle through a hectic opening twenty minutes, sacrificing getting to know characters all that well in order to show the grand scale of the party ahead. But then we do get to know the characters, mostly through the verbal exchanges of the gossiping others. We never really get to know the characters with real depth though, which is a shame, as it certainly looks that way in the first half of the film.

The overlapping dialogue and long-take filming that goes from one batch of gossipers to the next is a treat to watch. The different characters and how their mutliple storylines interwine are brilliantly written for, and acted out with such ease that it makes this film one of the freshest and compelling films to come out of the 21st century. It hasn't really got a story in the first hour or so, but the conversational tone keeps it going at a splendid pace--very much like Magnolia--as the storylines unfold with secrets, lies, deciet, romance, and....

Murder. And this is where the Agatha Christie connection comes (it turning, or at least attempting to turn, into a murder mystery). The thing is, while Christie's novels do, I suspect, pick up the pace after the murder, this film runs a bit sour and lacking. The conversations are no longer there, the editing more snappy and not as easy flowing, the acting a bit dry, and the characters unrealistic in their reaction to a death at the house--it seems as if nobody cares, not even the dead's spouse.

It isn't a turn for the worst, so long as you are expecting it. If you want a murder mystery, you'll be crying in disappointment, but luckily the enormous ensemble cast keeps this going until the surprisingly downbeat ending. But the pace and absorbingness with which it delivers itself disappears somewhat; the introduction of Stephen Fry's inspector gives it potential newfound zest, but it leads nowhere and you wonder why they put him in.

But you shouldn't hold it against the film too much--Altman himself said he wasn't really bothered too much about the murder part (and this film would have been even better had it not included it, and instead just continued with its fastpaced and interweaving conversations and developing relationships).

I must say, the wit with which it is written, the freshness with which it is directed, and the pace with which it is edited, with a subtly restrained score, combined with some impressive characters development and splendid acting, this is a fine film that shows Altman as a great filmmaker (it's my first Altman film, coincidentally).

8.5/10
****
#46

Mick

ive seen it, i didnt like it ** of ****

I liked Gosford Park, but I wouldn't go so far as to put it in my Top 50. At any rate, good review. Keep up the good work.

Nice review.

If you like Altman be sure to check out The Player, Mcabe and Mrs Miller and Nashville.