Movie Review – Gosford Park (2001)

Movie Synopsis:

A wealthy gentleman decides to invite his large family and friends together to his estate for a weekend shooting party. It is sure to be an enjoyable and exciting time, for the shooting and for the discussions and debates that are sure to happen amongst the opinionated crowd of people.

As the servants prepare for the large festivities, and as the guests arrive to the estate, one begins to see a variety of frayed relations and power struggles in the groups.

But things go too far, when someone is murdered. And the suspect list is very long indeed.

Movie Review:

This British film starring a high-calibre British cast was really a two-plot tale of the rich vs. servant classes in Britain and a mystery-murder case.  Interestingly enough, the film was successful in one aspect while completely off on the other. 

On the bright side, the film did an expert job of demonstrating the life for servants “Below Stairs” in a large, rich household.  The relationships the valets, butlers, and kitchen staff have with each other and with their “masters” are portrayed in insightful ways.  Robert Altman and Julian Fellowes (who went on to create the famed Downton Abbey) do an expert job of showcasing the disparity of the two types of people in a large household such as this. We see the working class, the wealthy, and how they relate to each other in person and behind their backs. This leads to interesting results to say the least. The lessons learned, and the different actions of the servants depending on who is around was both humorous and sobering. 

On the other hand, the film was billed primarily as a murder mystery, and one would expect some suspense in the film, and a plot that brought us to the murder in due course.  However, while the film did well describing relationships and social lessons, it failed in building suspense and creating a mystery atmosphere.  In fact, any action in the film was subdued and treated as an afterthought in the middle half of the film.  Given the murder didn’t happen for an extremely long time given what our expectations would be, the audience was left bored in the mystery regard of the movie.  If the film had been able to interject more suspense, mystery, and action throughout the film instead of in the last half, then this would have better balanced in the film and created something truly exceptional. As it was, while there was great characters and social lessons and rich vs poor intrigue, the film was flat in the highly-billed mystery component.

One must comment that the acting was superb, with stellar performances from an array of actors including Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Stephen Fry, Ryan Phillippe, and Michael Gambon, among many other talents.

Overall though, the slow pace on the murder mystery side of the plot really dragged this otherwise fascinating movie down.

Overall: 3 stars out of 5 stars.