A lot of upper-class toffs go to the country house of William McCordle (Gambon), accompanied by their various servants. The first half or so of the movie is the interaction between all of these people as we get introduced the various interpersonal conflicts - a lot of the toffs are actually broke, but "broke" to a noble means something different than to one of the people "under stairs." The servants move about invisibly but of course they listen to everything and talk about it, and meanwhile one Henry Denton (Phillippe) is taking notes; he's an American actor posing as a Scottish valet to Morris Weissman (Balaban), a film producer.
But the closest thing we have to a POV character or a protagonist is Mary Maceachran, an actually Scottish maid newly in service to the Countess of Trentham (Smith), and who knows enough to do her job but little enough that we can learn a little through her. And then McCordle is stabbed, the police show up in the personage of Inspector Thompson (Fry) and Constable Dexter (Ron Webster), and proceed to do fuck-all because the Inspector is an idiot.
It turns out that McCordle was stabbed by Parks (Owen), his illegitimate son through housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Mirren); he had a habit of impregnating the girls who worked in his factory and then giving the babies to orphanages, but claiming to the mothers that they were adopted by good families. So Parks stabs McCordle, but was actually already dead, having been poisoned by Wilson herself. But that's just what actually happened. Like any good murder mystery, there are multiple people who very good motives for killing William, most of them financial.
But really, the murder is incidental. It's given no more gravity in the movie than any other conversation, and the pheasant hunt actually takes up much more time and plot focus as the toffs blather about what to wear and how much they hate each other and the servants scamper about making it all happen. The movie isn't really a murder mystery, because our sleuth, Mary, doesn't have to jump through the usual hoops to figure it out, just she...pays attention, and both Parks and Wilson readily confess when she asks.
Gosford Park was an Oscar nom in 2001, which is why I saw it. The performances, cinematography, scenery, costumes, and script are amazing, and I don't remember if I complained about the Oscars not having an ensemble cast award at the time, but they need one. (As it was, Smith and Mirren both got nominated, but the movie won for Original Screenplay.)
I have two complaints. One is that the sound mixing makes it hard to understand the dialog. Characteristic of Robert Altman films, there's a lot of overlapping dialog, meaning you get snippets of conversations, and that's fine, but when there's only two characters on screen their dialog can be hard to catch because it's fast and usually quiet. I had to turn on subtitles so that I wouldn't miss details, which leads me to my other issue.
These people are all identical! I can keep the actors I know straight - I'm not going to confuse Ryan Phillippe or Bob Balaban or Kelly Macdonald or Clive Owen for anyone else. But Lady Sylvia (Scott Thomas), her daughter Isobel (Rutherford), her sister Lousia (Geraldine Somerville), and her other sister Lavinia (Natasha Wightman) are all pretty white women of similar ages and remembering who they all are and what relationships they have, not to mention who all the white men hanging on them are, is a lot when you also have to remember who Mrs. Wilson vs. Mrs. Croft (Atkins) is. I have to imagine at least some of that is deliberate, and another Altman hallmark is a big ensemble cast and a lot of named characters, but Gosford Park very much trusts the audience to keep all this shit straight.
For all that, though, the movie is well-paced and never boring, it's funny without being a full comedy and thrilling without being a full murder mystery. That's a damn hard needle to thread, so well done to the late Mr. Altman and company.
My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Gun
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