The Baltimore Sun January 11, 2002 Friday
copyright 2002 The Baltimore Sun Company All Rights Reserved

Clive Owens' ruggedly handsome and mysterious Mr. Parks is called Mr. Stockbridge because he works for Lord Stockbridge (Charles Dance). It's a nugget of historical research that operates like a found bit of satire, summing up the underlings' subservient place. But it's also Altman's way of saying, "Look - you'll never keep everyone straight at one viewing."

So enjoy the contours and the details. See how an evening gown eroticizes Lady Sylvia's bare back. Imagine how sharply a man's collar cuts into his neck when he publicly announces that he's ruined.

The camera operates like a character in a way I haven't seen before. Altman has suggested that it takes on the servants' point of view because every scene is punctuated by a servant's exit or entrance.

But the point of view floats between the servants and the blue-bloods - much as Ivor Novello does - and accentuates the movie-ness of the movie. The hoity- toity characters resemble the glamorous figures from such swank films of the period as Dinner at Eight, and the hoi polloi recall the grittier stars of those Depression years. Clive Owen has a Gable-like confidence, and Emily Watson is the opposite of a grande dame: a great dame.

The Columbus Dispatch January 11, 2002 Friday, Home Final Edition
Copyright 2002 The Columbus Dispatch

From Gambon's sour disdain to Macdonald's trembling earnestness, from Clive Owen's smoldering confidence to Northam's matinee-idol charm, from Scott Thomas' lustful ennui to Smith's mumbled cattiness, the actors provide a graduate course concerned with breathing dimensions into fabled stereotypes.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel January 10, 2002 Thursday
Copyright 2002 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The director, in the parlor, with an excellent cast;
Making masterpieces not a mystery to Altman

BYLINE: DUANE DUDEK Journal Sentinel film critic

Clive Owen never read much Agatha Christie and isn't fond of mysteries.

But, he joked, he was destined to act in "Gosford Park" because of a childhood spent with the Parker Brothers.

"Yeah, that would be a great quote, wouldn't it?" said Owen, who starred in the acclaimed film noir "Croupier" and in the British TV series "Second Sight." "I always loved 'Clue.'"

Actually, Owen was just doing us in, with bad jokes, in the New York city hotel room. Initially, he was as Clue-less about his role in the new British social comedy of manners "Gosford Park" as the rest of the stellar cast, which includes Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Helen Mirren, Alan Bates, Emily Watson and Jeremy Northam.

But no one would seem as out his element more than the quintessential American director, Robert Altman.

When actor turned producer Bob Balaban -- who plays an American producer in the film -- originally approached Altman about making a movie three years ago, the 76-year-old director said he told him: "I've never done a whodunit like 'Ten Little Indians.' That threw us into a period and a genre, and we started from there."

Having "this go from being a conversation over lunch in California to three years later . . . seeing everybody breathing and living in a world that we thought of, well, it must be what it's like to have a child," Balaban said. "Even if people despise the movie and it never plays one theater, I never had a better time in my life than doing this thing."

A trademark style

The film's fate, however, is far brighter than Balaban's worst fear.

"Gosford Park," which already is playing in some cities and which opens locally Friday, will appeal both to audiences fond of the "Masterpiece Theater" narrative tradition and to fans of Altman's habit of shattering tradition.

If Altman didn't invent rule-breaking styles of storytelling, he certainly perfected them, in such films as "Nashville" and "The Player." In "Gosford Park," he applies his trademark style of multiple ensemble and overlapping dialogue.

The film, which takes place during a weekend pheasant hunt at a sprawling country estate, juxtaposes and intermingles the lives of a group of an ineffective, helpless elite upstairs with those of the working-class servants who make their lives possible slaving downstairs.

This all leads to a murder. But to call the film a thriller misses the point by a mile.

"Gosford Park" may be a mystery by necessity, but it is a social critique by design.

"I didn't want this to be a whodunit," growled Altman, who, following what he explained as having too much to drink the night before, felt sick enough to excuse himself early during interviews promoting the film. "I wanted this to be a 'why-didn't-they-do-it-earlier,' or a 'who-cares-whodunit.' I wanted it to be a 'thank-God-somebody-dunit.' "

"Gosford Park" is set in, and is an unflattering look at, the waning days of a system of servitude that World War II put to an end a few years later but whose after-effects linger.

Even today, the British retain this strong sense of class, said Owen, who plays the mysterious and suspicious valet to a bullying and slightly villainous Charles Dance.

"Class is still very prevalent," said Owen. "We're all wrapped up in it. Maybe it takes someone from the outside, like Altman, to put it into some kind of perspective for us."

Watson, who plays a housemaid having an affair with the lord of the manor, concurred.

She said an English version of this same kind of movie "would be very respectful and very heritage-bound, while (Altman) just goes in there and turns it all on its head."

Northam, who portrays the real-life British film star Ivor Novello, claims "an ambivalence to (period films) when I sense that they might be glossed over in some way. Certain settings have sort of been colonized by certain styles or approaches to filmmaking."

But the ones Northam has appeared in, including "The Winslow Boy," "The Golden Bowl," "An Ideal Husband" and "Gosford Park," invent worlds that help audiences better understand their own.

They let us "look back and see duty or responsibility or convention more clearly than we can in our own time," Northam said.

'Ensemble communism'

Grander themes aside, Northam and other cast members echoed the same refrain: They all jumped at the chance to work with Altman. And despite his reputation as a curmudgeon, each described him as collaborative, sensitive and unflappable.

"Everybody says he has mellowed," said Watson.

Kelly Macdonald, who plays a downstairs maid -- Altman called her character "our tour guide, the Charlie Chan of the piece" -- said the director is "entertained by life."

"I don't know what he was or who he was before," said Northam. "But I marvel at anyone who still has the appetite for daily routine and for making a film on a limited budget on the tail end of a cold English winter. And then deal with all these egos and make everyone feel at home and never snap or be bad-tempered.

"And then to have a good time, no matter how tiring it is."

Despite a cast of British acting royalty, "no actor was treated any better than any other actor," said Balaban. "The billing was pretty much the same, the pay was pretty much the same.

"You could call it ensemble communism," he said.

Altman said the idea is to "give the actors a sense of confidence so that they give 125 percent. They trust me that I won't let them look bad. And I get that trust by me trusting them."

"I don't do much once the film is cast," Altman added. "It's really all about the actors. People say, 'You're just being modest.' But I'm not modest at all. These films couldn't happen without me, but once I put living people in the part, I step back and they create."

Separate sets, sharing buzz

Altman directed from an S-shaped reclining chair, "because his feet and knees are very bad," said Northam.

Upstairs scenes were filmed in a palatial estate; downstairs scenes were filmed in a studio. The two separate casts rarely met, reinforcing the sense of caste.

The sets were intended to suggest a beehive, said Balaban, "because the houses were really like that. All the (downstairs) corridors were cold, dark and frantic, and (upstairs) there's a golden velvet box inside of which these queen bees, and king bees, I guess, are languorously sitting around, and everybody is buzzing frantically in support of them.

"And yet unlike a beehive," he added, the activities of the people who live upstairs "aren't useful to anybody at all."

With two cameras constantly moving around the ensemble, and all the actors wearing radio microphones, no one was ever sure what or whom Altman was focusing on during filming.

"In the smaller scenes, you got an idea you might be in a close-up," said Watson. "But in the bigger scenes, you keep bloody acting and hopefully they'll get it."

The shifting focus turned actors used to starring roles into glorified extras.

"If you weren't in a scene, you were sort of folding towels in the back of a shot," said Watson. "I spent several very pleasant days doing linen rotation with Helen Mirren."

The script might mention only that "you're in the room and suddenly the camera is lingering on you quite a long time," said Owen. "It's never, ever, 'Let's just shoot the dialogue.' "

American actor Ryan Phillippe, who plays a manservant of dubious background, said Altman's style of filmmaking "feels like you're working in a different medium. It's a hybrid of theater and film.

"You're so unaware of the technicalities. There are no boom mikes. The camera is off roving somewhere. It feels hyper-realistic in a sense. Obviously, you're in these halls in a setting that no longer exists, but there's no audience, and you're not aware of the camera. In certain scenes with 20 cast members, you would see nothing but the scene taking place."

Altman's unique style, said Balaban, "is just one of 75 different ways he makes being in a movie a pleasure, which is why actors love being in his movies. Which is why, frequently, you see people working in his movies who never work in other movies that much.

"You're so relaxed, and you believe the minute you're out there he's in love with you. Which is generally true," Balaban continued. "Because if you're in his movie, it's because he's been dreaming of having you in his movie."

And there's no mystery to that.

The above thanks to CTighe