Gosford Park

Gosford Park (2001) is set at an English country house in 1932. Guests arrive for a shooting weekend, each bringing a servant. The host is murdered and everyone is a suspect. But the film is not much interested in solving it; the subject is the wall between upstairs and downstairs. Robert Altman's method defines the film. It was shot with two cameras in perpetual motion travelling in opposite directions; none of the actors knew when they were in frame, so everyone had to hold their character at every moment. The sound was recorded simultaneously too, and the dialogue overlaps. Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay, having never written a feature. Altman called him and asked for characters and stories; the brief was simple, a country house in the thirties with a murder somewhere in it, but really an examination of class. Fellowes went on from this film to create Downton Abbey. He won the Academy Award for Original Screenplay. The film had seven nominations and lost Best Picture and Best Director to A Beautiful Mind. It cost 19.8 million dollars and grossed around 87.8 million worldwide, the highest of Altman's films after M*A*S*H. It runs 137 minutes. Good for: ensemble storytelling, films about class, and Altman. Less good for: there are far too many characters and following who is who in the first half hour is hard. The overlapping dialogue is tiring even with subtitles. As a murder puzzle it is weak, and the solution is delivered quickly at the end.