It is November 1932. Gosford Park is the magnificent country estate to which Sir William McCordle and his wife, Lady Sylvia, gather relations and friends for a weekend shooting party. They have invited an eclectic group. As the guests assemble in the gilded drawing rooms above, their personal maids and valets swell the ranks of the house servants in the teeming kitchens and corridors below-stairs. But all is not as it seems – neither amongst the bejewelled guests lunching and dining at their enormous leisure, nor in the attic bedrooms and stark work stations where the servants labour for the comfort of their employers. Part comedy of manners and part mystery, the film is finally a moving portrait of events that bridge generations, class, sex, tragic personal history – and culminate in a murder. Or is it two murders...?
Less concerned with the murder mystery, the story is more a brilliant and complex observation of the English aristocracy and their servants in social interaction. Both above and below stairs, many subtle and unsubtle rituals are played out among groups of people who clearly dislike each other but are forced through circumstance, need or employment to observe the fundamental social practices required. At a time of great social change, the wealth and power of the old English ruling classes is slowly disintegrating and this entire family is now wholly reliant upon the wealth of one particularly reluctant patron. A bright new social era is rapidly evolving, one in which new money, represented by Hollywood and popular culture, is making its first advances into their world, now undeniably in terminal decline.
A subtle, sophisticated and very amusing film with impeccable acting, directing and design.
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