Gosford Park - R\nStarring: Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas\nDirected by: Robert Altman\nShowing: Showplace East 11\nRobert Altman has been a filmmaker for 50-some years now, and a potent force in American cinema for at least 30. The latest from this 76-year-old plays to his strengths while simultaneously expanding his horizons -- one of the few giants from '70s cinema still striving for new ideas.\n"Gosford Park" boasts a huge cast of respected actors -- this time, it's a mostly British ensemble that includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson and Stephen Fry. The action takes place over a weekend at a rural British estate in the 1930s, as an array of snobby British nobles gather for a shooting party. Like many of Altman's films, the opening scenes are a confusing, occasionally frustrating mish-mash as the gigantic cast is introduced -- and like most of Altman's films, he amazingly manages to extract order from the chaos. We slowly learn about each character and their complicated relationships with each other, and through some miracle, it all makes sense.\nWhat "Gosford Park" does so well is show the two sides of upper-class life in England at the time -- the masters and their servants. The film is often hilarious, but at the same time is sensitive to the tensions between the two classes. Each side is a world unto itself, and Altman parallels them nicely. (Even the credits divide the cast into "upstairs" and "downstairs.") The guests' maids and valets all refer to each other by the names of their masters, as if by virtue of their class they have no right to names of their own. This class consciousness could have allowed the movie to quickly slip into a one-sided portrayal of servants oppressed by their privileged masters, but Julian Fellowes' screenplay refuses to make sweeping generalizations. Although the upper classes often seem shallow compared to their counterparts, each character is presented as multi-faceted and human.\nThe plot thickens when one of the hosts is murdered, prompting Stephen Fry's hilarious turn as an incompetent police inspector. There's a plethora of suspects and motives, and by the end it's at least partially sorted out, although Altman leaves enough ambiguity to keep the audience from being absolutely certain. In the end, "whodunit" isn't as important as how the characters' reactions illustrate their personalities and relationships with each other. It's this kind of attention and respect for its characters (and by extension, its audience) that makes "Gosford Park" so satisfying.\n
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