Gosford Park

Saw Gosford Park. I now understand the attention given to Robert Altman. The film is set at an upstairs/downstairs sort of country estate. The film is filled with multilayer scenes, where in foreground one scene is going on, in the background a subplot is unfolding, and on the soundtrack we can overhear scraps of some conversation which is important to a third storyline. The action progresses smoothly upstairs and downstairs, with both inevitably neatly meshing.

The servants are clearly exploited throughout. Their sense of self-worth and dignity is clearly bound up not in who they are, but in who they serve. There are echoes of Remains of the Day, though this film is a bit more wacky. Especially exploited is the more central Mary, maid to the never-more-childishly-cruel Maggie Smith who casually commands her to stay up all night washing a shirt, only to languidly decline the freshly washed garment in the morning. She's really delightfully horrid. She has this cutesie little 'yummy-yum-yum' that she says before every meal. This is the (second) most egregious abuse of the servants in this film, but reflects the upstairs mindset. At one point one of the gentlemen is smooching with his lover when a butler enters the room. She's startled and he says "don't worry, it's nobody." Indeed.

There is a slightly painful scene where one of the guests (an actor, much despised as a performer by the old money) plays a song on the piano. The other guests can scarcely conceal their boredom, but all of the servants (who have only seen him in the cinema or heard him on the radio) stand in dark hallways watching through cracked doors and listening to echoes in stairwells.

There is another subplot where an actor goes undercover as a valet to research a role. He is supposed to be a sort of James Dean type who (it is suggested) is pumping both sexes for their money. He also kind of casually almost-rapes the maid Mary and makes advances on another maid, so clearly this is also kind of sport for him. (The subjugation of women is also on this film's mind perhaps.) Anyway, this actor's subplot seems to pay off in an exchange with a maid after he has come clean about his non-servant status. He can't understand why the servant treat him so differently. She tells him, "you can't play for both teams." This is a delightfully rich line (the implicit opposition of the 'teams,' the implied bisexuality, the explicit 'you're one of them now,' etc.)

A rich film, bursting with hidden bits and pieces that must be fit together post-viewing. It is busy and yet somehow streamlined. I loved it.