If you're into murder mysteries, you might not like Gosford Park. It's a mystery, alright, and there is a murder; but, they're ancillary to the film. If there is a puzzle, it's the question of how the British nobility managed to survive as long as they did on their cachet of social prestige, why their indolence, concupiscence, social isolation, and wanton self-destructiveness didn't drive them to extinction, like the Romanoffs, long ago.
Both the servants and the nobility hate each other. A valet describes Lady McCordle as a `snobbish cow, completely `useless.' Another valet ridicules his master as thinking that he's `God almighty,' to which a maid replies, `They all do.' The upstairs nobility are all hopelessly incompetent; for example, when the butler demands the whereabouts of a guest from his valet, the valet replies: `I washed him and I dressed him and if he can't find his way to the drawing room, it's not my fault.' The upper classes are viewed as `pathetic.' The nobility, on the other hand, though they use their servants as sex toys and as their personal conduits of gossip, treat their servants as if they were burdens to be borne. Lady Trentham is typical: in the process of `breaking in' a new maid,' she acts as though she's bearing Christ's own crucifix. She exclaims, `There's nothing more exhausting, Is there?'
So the real mystery of the movie is why the system moved along as smoothly as it did in the face of all the glaring inconsistencies and injustices. Altman doesn't hit you over the head with an answer, but does suggest some clues; for example, in many ways, servants and masters are very similar. We see the social stratification amongst the servants themselves, and their love, like their masters, of humiliating others. We see the upper classes feeding off the human warmth of the lower, the lower classes feeding off the social prestige of the upper. The upper and the lower classes use each other. It's a false empowerment, but an empowerment just the same.
Just the same, the mystery goes unanswered when the movie is over, forcing you, the viewer, to puzzle it out for yourself.
Both the servants and the nobility hate each other. A valet describes Lady McCordle as a `snobbish cow, completely `useless.' Another valet ridicules his master as thinking that he's `God almighty,' to which a maid replies, `They all do.' The upstairs nobility are all hopelessly incompetent; for example, when the butler demands the whereabouts of a guest from his valet, the valet replies: `I washed him and I dressed him and if he can't find his way to the drawing room, it's not my fault.' The upper classes are viewed as `pathetic.' The nobility, on the other hand, though they use their servants as sex toys and as their personal conduits of gossip, treat their servants as if they were burdens to be borne. Lady Trentham is typical: in the process of `breaking in' a new maid,' she acts as though she's bearing Christ's own crucifix. She exclaims, `There's nothing more exhausting, Is there?'
So the real mystery of the movie is why the system moved along as smoothly as it did in the face of all the glaring inconsistencies and injustices. Altman doesn't hit you over the head with an answer, but does suggest some clues; for example, in many ways, servants and masters are very similar. We see the social stratification amongst the servants themselves, and their love, like their masters, of humiliating others. We see the upper classes feeding off the human warmth of the lower, the lower classes feeding off the social prestige of the upper. The upper and the lower classes use each other. It's a false empowerment, but an empowerment just the same.
Just the same, the mystery goes unanswered when the movie is over, forcing you, the viewer, to puzzle it out for yourself.