![]() |
Cruelty, snobbery and viciousness - just another night at Gosford Park |
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Eileen Atkins (Mrs Croft), Bob Balaban (Morris
Weissman), Alan Bates (Mr Jennings), Charles Dance (Lord Stockbridge), Stephen
Fry (Inspector Thompson), Michael Gambon (Sir William McCordle), Richard E.
Grant (George), Derek Jacobi (Probert), Kelly Macdonald (Mary Maceachran),
Helen Mirren (Mrs Wilson), Jeremy Northam (Ivor Novello), Clive Owen (Robert
Parks), Ryan Phillippe (Henry Denton), Kristin Scott-Thomas (Lady Sylvia
McCordle), Maggie Smith (Constance, Countess of Trentham), Emily Watson
(Elsie), Claudie Blakely (Mabel Nesbitt), Tom Hollander (Lt Commander Anthony
Meredith), Geraldine Somerville (Lady Stockbridge), Jeremy Swift (Arthur),
Sophie Thompson (Dorothy), James Wilby (Freddie Nesbitt)
We’ve always fancied ourselves that when Brits make films in
America – think John Schlesinger’s brilliant analysis of New York hustlers in Midnight Cowboy – they turn the sharp
analytical eye of the outsider on American society. But do we like it when
America turns the same critical eye on us? Gosford
Park is a film surely no Brit could have made, so acutely vicious and
condemning of the class system of this country, without the hectoring that
left-wing British filmmakers so often bring to the same material, it’s just
about perfect in exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty that undermines our class
system. You’ll never look at an episode of Downton
Abbey the same way again.
In November 1932, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon)
hosts a shooting party at his country house. McCordle is almost universally
despised by his relatives and peers – most especially his wife Lady Sylvia
(Kristin Scott-Thomas) – but tolerated as his vast fortune from his factories
basically funds the lives of nearly everyone at the house party. While the
upper classes gather upstairs, downstairs the servants of the house led by
butler Jennings (Alan Bates) and housekeeper Mrs Wilson (Helen Mirren) order
the house to meet the often selfish and thoughtless demands of the rich. The
house is rocked midway through the weekend, when a murder occurs overnight.
With motives aplenty, perhaps the new maid Mary (Kelly Macdonald) of the
imperious Countess Trentham (Maggie Smith) has the best chance of finding the
truth.
First and foremost, it’s probably a good idea to say that
this is in no way a murder-mystery. Robert Altman, I think, could barely care
less about whodunit. While the film has elements that gently spoof elements of
its Agatha Christie-ish settings, Altman’s interest has always been the
personal relationships between people and the societies they move in. So this
is a film really about the atmosphere of the house and most importantly how
these people treat each other. Altman despised snobbery, and in a world that is
fuelled by that very vice, he goes to town in showing just how awful and
stifling so many elements of the class system really were.
“He thinks he’s God Almighty. They all do.” So speaks Clive
Owen’s Robert Parks, valet, of his employer the patrician Lord Stockbridge
(Charles Dance, excellent). You’ve got the attitude right there: the rich see
themselves as a different species to those pushing plates around and cleaning
clothes below stairs. The idea of there being anything in common is laughable.
Slight moments of casual conversation between servant and master in the film
are governed by strict laws and carry a quiet tension.
It’s so acute in its analysis of the selfishness, snobbery,
cruelty and arrogance of the British class system that each time I watch it I’m
less and less convinced that Downton
Abbey (the cuddliest version of this world you could imagine) creator
Julian Fellowes had much to do with it. This film is so far from the “we are
all in this together” Edwardian paternalism of that series, you can’t believe
the same man wrote both. All the heritage charm of Downton is drained from Gosford,
leaving only the cold reality of what a world is like where a small number of
people employ the rest.
Upstairs the hierarchy is absurdly multi-layered. Everyone
is aware of their position, with those at the top of the tree barely able to
look those at the bottom in the eye, let alone talk to them. The rudeness is
striking. Maggie Smith (who is brilliant, her character totally devoid of the
essential kindness of her role in Downton
Abbey has) is so imperiously offensive, such an arch-snob, she can only put
the thinnest veil over her contempt when she deigns to speak to her inferiors.
Her niece, played with an ice-cold distance by Kristin Scott-Thomas, embodies
aloofness, selfishness and casual cruelty.
Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam, superb) – the one real person
in the film, and a film star – is treated like a jumped up minstrel player,
with characters falling over themselves to make snide comments about his
career. His guest Morris Weissman (an excellent Bob Balaban), a Hollywood film
producer, is treated with similar contempt – when reluctant to divulge details
of the film he is in England researching (a Charlie Chan film) for fears he
will spoil his plot, the Countess bluntly informs him “oh, none of us will see
it”. Later, as Novello plays the piano (essentially singing for his supper)
only the servants are pleased – most of the upper classes endure it under
sufferance (“Don’t encourage him” the Countess says when there is a smattering
of applause). You can see why, after only a few hours in the house, Weissman
whispers to Novello: “How do you put up with these people?”
The servants themselves are bits of furniture, or barely
acknowledged at all. Altman doesn’t shoot a single scene without a servant
present, but this often hammers home their irrelevance to the upper classes
(it’s made even more effective by seeing actors like Bates, Jacobi, Grant,
Macdonald, Owen and Watson essentially being treated as extras). There are no
bonds between upstairs and downstairs at all. Any upset witnessed on either
side is responded to with silence. When Emily Watson’s Elsie (a brilliant
performance of arch awareness of her place) momentarily forgets herself and
speaks out at the dinner table, it’s treated like she has crapped on the floor
– needless to say her career is finished.
The servants however echo the pointless rituals and
ingrained hierarchy of their masters below stairs. For ease (!) the house
servants insist the visiting servants are only addressed by the names of their
employers not their own names. At their dinner table, their seating reflects
the hierarchy of their employers. Many of the servants are more grounded and
“normal” than the upstairs types, but they are as complicit in this system
continuing as anyone else. They simply can’t imagine a life without it, and
accept without question their place at the bottom rung of the house.
Ryan Phillippe, later revealed as an actor masquerading as a
servant (for research), immediately shows how hard it is to move between the
two social circles. The servants despise him as a traitor who may leak secrets
about their views of the employers. The guests see him as a jumped up intruder,
even more vulgar than Novello and Weissman. His later humiliation is one of the
few moments that see both sides of the social divide united (it’s fitting that it
is an act of cruelty that reinforces the social rules that brings people together).
The focus is so overwhelmingly on the class system – with
Altman’s brilliant camera work (the camera is never still) giving us the sense
of being a fly-on-the-wall in this house – that you forget it’s a murder
mystery. Here the film is also really clever, archly exposing the harsh
realities of the attitudes held by your standard group of Christie characters.
Dance’s Lord Stockbridge in a Christie story would be a “perfect brick” but
here we’ve seen he’s a shrewd but judgemental old bastard. The film throws in a
clumsy Christie-style incompetent police detective, played by Stephen Fry. This
is possibly the film’s only real misstep as Fry’s performance touches on a farcical
tone that seems completely out of step with the rest of the film. But the
Christie parody is generally wonderful, exploding the cosy English world the
public perception believes is behind Christie (even if the author herself was
often darker than people remember!).
It’s a hilarious film – Maggie Smith in particular is
memorable, from cutting down her fellow guests, to judgementally tutting at
shop-bought (not homemade) marmalade – but it’s also a film that creeps up on
you with real emotional impact. Kelly Macdonald is very good as the most
“everyday” character, who takes on the role of detective and has superb
chemistry with Clive Owen’s dashing valet. But the film builds towards a
heart-rending conclusion – a conclusion that, with its reveal about the darker
side of Gambon’s blustering Sir William, feels more relevant every day – that
shows the secret tragedies and dark underbelly of these worlds, with a
particularly affecting scene between Atkins and Mirren (Mirren in particular is
such a peripheral figure for so much of the film, that her final act
revelations and emotional response carries even more force). It’s heart rending.
Gosford Park is a
film continually misremembered as either a cosy costume drama or a murder
mystery. It’s neither. It’s a brilliant analysis of the British class system
and a superb indictment of the impact and damage it has had on people and the
country. Hilarious, brilliantly directed by Altman with a superb cast – it’s a
masterpiece, perhaps one of the finest films in Altman’s catalogue.
No comments:
Post a comment