Throwback Thursday-Gosford Park (2001)

I don't really want to make this a long post, so I will get right to the point. Today won't be a full-on review, because this movie is over 10 years old, but I do want to kind of convince you to try it out since it's one of my all-time favorite movies. Firstly, a little bit about the movie:

Summary from IMDB:

"Multiple storylined drama set in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guest and downstairs servants at a party in a country house in England."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280707/

"Gosford Park" is a quintessentially Robert Altman film that follows in the footsteps of "Mansfield Park" and, more to the point, "Upstairs Downstairs", but really is its own beast. Altman was one that didn't dwell on the small details, he was more about capturing the soul of the moment. His movies always were made with lots of ad-libbing from the principles and essentially the art of the conversation. Sure there is a murder mystery involved which serves as the "plot" to drive the story (or really stories) and ensure that no one leaves while the various storylines (that mostly revolve around motive) play out, but it is the conversations between the various characters that really defines the narrative. What's kind of cool is that it is almost entirely shown from the servant's perspective. There is ALWAYS a servant around listening.

What I absolutely love about "Gosford Park" is that nothing is blatantly spelled out for the audience. Everything comes down to gestures, stretches of silence, reading between the lines, and snide, under-handed remarks. You have numerous storylines that twist and turn around each other that sometimes relate one to another and sometimes do not. They all play out well and without leaving a bunch of loose ends. Sure, some are left for the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that's intentional. Especially because, even though I've seen the movie probably 15 times, every time I see it, I make new connections and epiphanies as to what is really going on. It's hard to even keep track of who's who (since the servants are mostly called by the name of their "upstairs" counterpart) and how they are related to each other in the first viewing, but it gets much easier on repeated viewings. The writer of the movie (who won an Oscar for this) is who writes "Downton Abbey" so if you like that, you might really like this movie.

The actors are all superb. Many you know well like Maggie Smith (Prof. McGonagall!), Ryan Phillipe, Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth II), Clive Owen (who shoulda been Bond), and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore!); others like Charles Dance (Tywin), Tom Hollander (Pirates movies), and Bob Balaban (several Wes Anderson and Christopher Guest films) you'll go "Hey! It's that guy that was in that thing with...". Then there's the people that must only be famous in England. Still, they all are great in their respective roles. No one stands out as particularly bad, though Phillipe is out of his depth with the rest of the cast.

I really don't have much more to say about it. Watch it and see for yourself. If you don't like it, sorry to have wasted your time, but if you like tight scripts with lots of dialogue and don't mind a movie where nothing really "happens" other than conversations, then see it.

Damn, now I'm going to have to watch it AGAIN...