by Douglas Messerli
Julian Fellowes (screenplay, based on an idea by Robert Altman and Bob
Balaban), Robert Altman (director) Gosford Park / 2001
But here the similarities
end, as Altman’s work meanders into various concerns from the relationship
between the classes to comical jabs at a dying social fabric. Whereas Renoir’s
film points up important social issues of his own time, Altman’s movie is a
kind of nostalgically framed satire of a British institution that has long
since passed, and in that fact the latter film, although beautifully directed,
brilliantly acted, and enjoyable overall, loses most of its relevancy for
viewers of the 21st century. One might almost ask what to make of this film,
or, to turn the question around, why did Altman direct it? What did he mean to
say to us?
As in many of his films,
Altman turns down the sound level of his upstairs and, particularly, his
downstairs conversations (in this case, each actor was fitted with a portable
microphone) so that we must attend with great concentration upon the overlapping
dialogue of his characters, which, in turn, implies that the film is worth such
acuity. For the most part what we discern through our attentiveness are a
series of subtle interrelationships, sexual innuendos, and comic one-liners.
Maggie Smith’s
unforgettable portrayal of Constance Trentham, who snobbishly vents her spleen
to one and all, is almost worth all our patience. Her interchange with Ivor
Novello (Jeremy Northam) is typical:
Constance: Tell me, how much longer are you going to go on making
films?
Ivor: I suppose that rather depends on how much longer the public
wants to see
them.
Constance: It must be hard to know when it’s time to throw in the
towel…. What
a pity about that last one of yours…what was it called? “The Dodger?”
Ivor: “The Lodger.”
Constance: “The Lodger.” It must be so disappointing when something
just
flops like that.
As Ivor plays a series of
songs during a game of bridge, she says, nearly under her breath, “What a
lovely long repertoire,” and soon after discourages applause, “Please don’t
encourage him.” At another point when Morris Weissman (Bob Ballaban) refuses to
name the murderer in his next Charlie Chan movie because it will spoil it for
the dinner guests, she quips: “Oh, none of us will see it.” Witty dialogue
indeed!
The other guests,
meanwhile, battle with their host, William McCordle (Michael Gambon), and with
each other over various issues: Freddie Nesbitt (James Wilby) is fearful of
being financially ruined by McCordle’s threat to pull out of a business deal;
Constance is terrified that he may cut off her promised “lifetime” allowance;
and Raymond Stockbridge (Charles Dance) is disgusted with his common-stock
wife, Louisa (Geraldine Somerville), who is also the subject of several of Lady
Trentham’s barbs.
The quietly charged
interchanges between Mrs. Wilson (the head of the serving staff,
Helen
Mirren) and Mrs. Croft (the head of the cooking staff, Eileen Atkins) are
worthy of our attention, we realize, when later it is revealed that the two are
sisters. Croft is unable to forgive Wilson for allowing her son to be “adopted”
(in actuality, turned over to an orphanage by the dreadful host, William
McCordle) while she has kept hers (also fathered by McCordle) only to have the
child die.
The servants’ quarters are also the scene
of various sexual escapades, the most obvious of which concerns American film
producer Morris Weissman’s “gentleman,” Henry Denton (Ryan Phillippe), who, it
soon becomes apparent, is not a servant at all. Denton, possibly in a sexual relationship with Weissman—his sudden
appearance in Weissman’s bedroom late one evening certainly gives that
impression—sexually gropes Constance’s young maid, Mary Maceachran and the
servant-girl Elsie (Emily Watson), while bedding his host’s wife, Sylvia (Kristin
Scott Thomas). The first footman, George (Richard E. Grant) is “desperate for a
fag”—clearly not only of the smoking sort—and quips to another servant, Arthur,
whose offer to “dress Mr. Novello” is refused: “And now you won’t get to see
him in his underdrawers. Better luck next time.” Anyone aware of British film
and musical history would also know that the beautiful Novello was also gay. As
head Butler Jennings (Alan Bates) notes, “We all have something to hide,” his
secret, evidently, being that he has served prison time as a conscientious
objector during the War.
Obviously, in terms of
dialogue there is a great deal to attend to. But again, one must ask, for what
purpose? What should we make of this witty, deceitful crowd?
Altman is perhaps more
successful in conveying—what many critics have recognized as one of his major
themes—that with McCordle’s murder we are witnessing the symbolic death of the
upper class. In his visual presentation of the servants gathering outside the
doorway of the drawing room and in other spots throughout the house to overhear
the Novello’s songs, we recognize that the performer may be despised by the
figures for whom he directly performs, but he is loved by the servants. And in
that fact we recognize their love of life, their thorough and open their
enjoyment of music, dance, film and theater they will prevail just as the
“ruling class” will ultimately fade away. Altman reveals this with some sense
of nostalgia, for as disgusting as these societal figures are, unlike Denton
and Novello himself, they are the “real” thing. Like Denton, who pretends to be
a servant, Novello is an impersonator. To Morris’s question, “How do you manage
to put up with these people?” Novello responds, “Well you forget, I make my
living impersonating them.”
Similarly, ousted from her
position as a servant, we recognize that Elsie, despite our admiration for her
ability to create a new life, will perhaps also become a kind of impersonator,
an actress who, as a native to Britain, can now “pretend” to be as British as
Claudette Colbert (on the phone throughout much of the movie American Morris
Weissman, in his search for an actress who sounds “British,” asks “What about
Claudette Colbert. She’s British, isn’t she? Is she, like, affected or is she
British?”).
In the year 2001—the date
of Gosford Park’s premiere—one can only wonder, what does it all matter?
In the context of the culturally diverse world of contemporary England, why
should we necessarily care about the end of what Elsie describes as
“toffee-nosed snobs.”
To focus on the issue of
British class distinctions, I suggest, would miss the point. Although the tale
is one of British society, the real issue of this film is not about a dying
breed of high society, but the issue of servitude itself. McCordle, after all,
is also an impersonator, a wealthy businessman who has married into royalty.
Although he seemingly enjoys the superficial trappings of the landed
gentry—money and fiddling with his guns—he is as trapped in his life as any of
his servants. The “hard-hearted randy old sod,” who has impregnated dozens of
women, is detested by his wife and daughter both; although he loves guns, he
“can’t hit a barn door.” It is clear that his life in the country is a charade.
Similarly, the other
“society” figures have sold their souls for money and position, and in so
doing, have also bought themselves a kind slavery from which they cannot
escape. The Stockbridges detest one another, Freddie Nesbitt is always near
financial ruin, Lady Trentham is a penurious, bitter old woman, Isobel McCordle
a jilted lover.
Downstairs the “servants” live their
lives, as Elsie complains, “through” the upper class. The concept of servitude,
in fact, exists even beyond the interrelationships between master and servant.
In order to protect her son, Robert Parks, Mrs. Wilson is willing to sacrifice
her own life, poisoning McCordle before her son—aware only of his father’s
identity—attempts to stab him to death. When Mary asks her how she could have
known that Robert would attempt to kill him, Wilson reveals the situation of
nearly everyone in Altman’s film: she is the perfect servant, she explains,
with the gift of anticipation. She knows what her masters will want even before
they themselves know it. Asked whether she isn’t worried about her life, she
reiterates: “Didn’t you hear me? I’m the perfect servant; I have no life.”
The other figures of this
social prison may not have her “gift,” but they, like her, are without lives.
Crying out in pain for the inability to admit her existence to her son, Mrs.
Wilson is comforted by her sister and former foe, who hushes her: “Don’t cry,
they’ll hear you.” With that Altman says it all. No release save death is
possible in such a confining space.
The impersonators—loud,
irritating, graceless as they are—are the only truly free beings. As Nesbitt
bitterly comprehends, only “ruin” and its accompanying ostracization can free
him. As opposed to the stasis of estate life, where he is told several times to
keep his problems to himself, he realizes “when you’re ruined there’s so much
do.” Obviously, he means he must take care of his affairs, but the statement
also suggests a potentially larger engagement with the world. McCordle’s death
may have saved Nesbitt from financial disaster, but it has also kept him within
the bonds of internment, which he, like the others, must suffer in bored
silence. In her inability to keep quiet about events, Elsie, banned from
servitude, can now join the world at large. By leaving with those whom the
society ostracizes, the crass, loud, ignorant director Weissman, the
indiscriminate and selfish sensualist Denton, and the homosexual cinematic and
musical imitator Novello, the young girl embraces life at its most morally corrupt—if
you buy into the norms of the British gentry—but also at its fullest. In the
world to which she is ended, she will finally be permitted, if she desires, to
speak out.
In short, Altman’s focus in
this excellent film is not on the death of the British upper class, but, like
Renoir’s great masterpiece, concerns the slavery that any class or social
distinction imposes on all. Altman’s Gosford Park, I would argue, like
most of his other films, is a testament to his love and fear for Americans and
a warning against the artificially social stratifications accompanying
financial, educational, sexual, linguistic, and cultural differences.
Los Angeles, May 30, 2006
Reprinted from Douglas Messerli My Year 2006: Serving (Los
Angeles: Green Integer, 2008).
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