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truepennyWatched Gosford Park last night with Mirrorthaw and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heres_luck, and have some things to say (of course I do) about the movie in relationship to the genre of the country house murder mystery.
Spoilers. Spoilers as big as your head.
First, a point of genre clarification. I would argue that in many ways Gosford Park isn't a murder mystery at all. The detectives are a red herring (itself a tidy piece of ironical commentary on the genre), and the point isn't in figuring out whodunit. If anyone ever bothered to think, it would be perfectly obvious that Mrs. Wilson poisons Sir William; the movie shows us as much, stopping just short of a close-up of her actually putting poison in the whiskey. (And I wonder if a close and careful viewing of that scene might not show that anyway--anyone noticed?) If any other indicators were needed, the fact that the poison itself is never specified is a sure sign that this is not a Golden Age mystery, where obsession with means tends to win out over motive.
The whodunit part of the thing is centered on the other red herring: the stabbing of Sir William after he's already dead. And in fact that entire sequence is composed of elaborate red herrings, as all the people who have obvious motives for bumping off the tyrannical old lech are pointedly out of the room: Freddie Nesbit, Commander Meredith, George the first footman, Elsie of course--and Parks. And Altman takes fanatical care to show us unidentifiable parts of the murderer (although those pinstripes narrow it down to George or Parks anyway, I believe). Similarly, attention is drawn in the dialogue and action to the missing knife; it's only in those persistent, careful, silent shots of the poison bottles clumped on the windowsills that the real crime is pointed toward.
In a true classic Golden Age mystery, the murderer would be Weisman, because he has no apparent motive, and because his voice is heard on the telephone throughout--a patent attempt to manufacture an alibi. But this isn't a classic Golden Age mystery; it's a critique.
The critique is embodied in the true murderer, would-be murderer, and motive for the crime, but also in the movie's interest, first to last, in the Downstairs characters in preference to the Upstairs." (I find it ironically amusing that the IMDb's format replicates the class snobbery that the movie is critiquing. Only the Upstairs crew appear on the movie's front page; to find the Downstairs cast, you have to click through to the full cast and crew page.) This is counter to every Golden Age mystery I've ever read, in which servants may appear, and they may be criminals, but they will never be characters. (Gaudy Night is an honorable exception, and I'll have to talk about that when I get to it, because the situation in GN is remarkably complicated on its own merits.) The detectives, Thompson and Dexter, represent that attitude, with Thompson's blithely idiotic assumption that none of the servants could possibly "know" Sir William, and Dexter making that joke, "perhaps the butler did it," only in order to taunt Jennings. Even Dexter, himself clearly working-class and comfortable in the kitchens, doesn't see the servants.
But the movie does. The movie's sympathies are clearly with the servants, with Ivor Novello, as neither fish nor fowl (I love the scenes of him singing, where the Upstairs couldn't care less, but the Downstairs have all snuck within range, and it's perfectly obvious that Novello is playing FOR Jennings, not for anyone else.), and with poor Mabel Nesbit. (I passionately wanted Freddie Nesbit to be the murderer, and to be caught, so that Mabel could get free of him.) To a lesser extent, we sympathize with Isobel (another victim of Freddie, and victimized again by Rupert and Jeremy's money-obsessed snobbery, although Jeremy at least, by the end of the movie, seems to realize what an idiot he's being), but it is also clear that Elsie and Isobel have a close and fond relationship of their own. Isobel may be the only Upstairs character in the movie to see any of the servants as human beings. (And if someone can propose a counter-example, please do.)
The movie is troped by the first characters we're introduced to: Mary Maceachran and Constance, Lady Trentham. Mary is a Plucky Young Heroine of the old school; Constance is selfish, snobbish, and shallow. She's an entertaining old horror, but we do not like her. Throughout the movie, we are introduced more carefully to the servants than to their employers (even at the end, I couldn't keep all the Upstairs women straight), and it is shown that the servants have passions and ideas fermenting behind their perfect façades, while the Upstairs characters are selfish, cruel, philandering, and money-obsessed. Again, the only person who springs into three dimensions is Mabel Nesbit, and that's precisely because of her middle-class origins and the ways in which she does not fit.
Another way to put it is that the servants see their employers, and each other, but their employers never see them, except for that one strange moment where Commander Meredith (eating jam like a sulky child) seems to realize that Dorothy is a human being. But it's a tiny moment, and it's the only moment of true connection we see. (Possibly, one could argue that Sir William saw Elsie fully--he at least seemed to encourage her to break free--but we don't see that in the film. We see her passionate defense of him, and we see him do not a bloody thing in return to defend her.) Sylvia and Constance's conversation about Mrs. Wilson at the end reveals that they see her exactly as she wishes to be seen, as a "perfect servant."
Gosford Park also scorns the cheap PC-platitudinizing offered, in theory, by the subplot involving Denton. Denton could be a privileged young man who has his eyes opened to the realities of the world, but he isn't. He's an unrepentant cad who never understands any of the betrayals he wreaks in the course of the film. His attempt to rape Mary shows that he, just as much as Rupert and Sir William, sees the servant-women only as receptacles, available for his lust whenever he feels like slaking it. And his relentless prying into their private lives (Parks in particular) shows even more that he sees the servants merely as "material," not as human beings. (I'd figured out Denton's MacGuffin by the time he started pestering Parks; it was obvious that he was collecting ideas for a role.) Weisman is the same way, but Weisman sees the Upstairs characters as material just as much as the Downstairs, and there's a kind of wide-eyed naivete about his approach that robs it of much of its offensiveness. And he is a small, harmless, bemused man with a filthy mouth, unlike the predatory Denton.
Come to think of it, that's a third moment of identification between Upstairs and Downstairs: Sylvia's thorough appreciation of George's revenge. "You can't play on both teams at once, sir," as the maid says to Denton (and, oh dear, I don't know which one she was--bad, snobbish Truepenny!), and while it is true that Upstairs and Downstairs are in a sense opposing teams, it's also true that the two teams come together to present a mostly united front against the invasive outside force of the Law. Mary lies for Constance, and there are a great many things about one team that the other team could tell the detectives (clearly NO ONE mentions Elsie), and they don't. The exception is the valet (is it Mr. Probert, or am I remembering wrong?) who betrays Commander Meredith, but one wonders if that may not be revenge for Meredith's making a scene at the al fresco luncheon.
The emptiness and sterility of the Upstairs characters' inner lives is troped neatly by Commander Meredith's big scheme to bring shoes to the Sudanese soldiers--a scheme which also betrays the fundamental inability of the upper-class to get a grip on the lives and problems of those less privileged than themselves--while the real pain and love and beauty of the film are in Dorothy's confession of love for Mr. Jennings, and Mrs. Wilson crying in Mrs. Crofts's arms.
Everything that happens in Gosford Park happens Downstairs. Upstairs, the characters are marking time, waiting for Godot; none of the problems they bring with them are resolved or addressed, except monetarily, and if there's one thing the movie makes clear, it's that money is a symptom, not itself the disease.
heres_luck, and have some things to say (of course I do) about the movie in relationship to the genre of the country house murder mystery.Spoilers. Spoilers as big as your head.
First, a point of genre clarification. I would argue that in many ways Gosford Park isn't a murder mystery at all. The detectives are a red herring (itself a tidy piece of ironical commentary on the genre), and the point isn't in figuring out whodunit. If anyone ever bothered to think, it would be perfectly obvious that Mrs. Wilson poisons Sir William; the movie shows us as much, stopping just short of a close-up of her actually putting poison in the whiskey. (And I wonder if a close and careful viewing of that scene might not show that anyway--anyone noticed?) If any other indicators were needed, the fact that the poison itself is never specified is a sure sign that this is not a Golden Age mystery, where obsession with means tends to win out over motive.
The whodunit part of the thing is centered on the other red herring: the stabbing of Sir William after he's already dead. And in fact that entire sequence is composed of elaborate red herrings, as all the people who have obvious motives for bumping off the tyrannical old lech are pointedly out of the room: Freddie Nesbit, Commander Meredith, George the first footman, Elsie of course--and Parks. And Altman takes fanatical care to show us unidentifiable parts of the murderer (although those pinstripes narrow it down to George or Parks anyway, I believe). Similarly, attention is drawn in the dialogue and action to the missing knife; it's only in those persistent, careful, silent shots of the poison bottles clumped on the windowsills that the real crime is pointed toward.
In a true classic Golden Age mystery, the murderer would be Weisman, because he has no apparent motive, and because his voice is heard on the telephone throughout--a patent attempt to manufacture an alibi. But this isn't a classic Golden Age mystery; it's a critique.
The critique is embodied in the true murderer, would-be murderer, and motive for the crime, but also in the movie's interest, first to last, in the Downstairs characters in preference to the Upstairs." (I find it ironically amusing that the IMDb's format replicates the class snobbery that the movie is critiquing. Only the Upstairs crew appear on the movie's front page; to find the Downstairs cast, you have to click through to the full cast and crew page.) This is counter to every Golden Age mystery I've ever read, in which servants may appear, and they may be criminals, but they will never be characters. (Gaudy Night is an honorable exception, and I'll have to talk about that when I get to it, because the situation in GN is remarkably complicated on its own merits.) The detectives, Thompson and Dexter, represent that attitude, with Thompson's blithely idiotic assumption that none of the servants could possibly "know" Sir William, and Dexter making that joke, "perhaps the butler did it," only in order to taunt Jennings. Even Dexter, himself clearly working-class and comfortable in the kitchens, doesn't see the servants.
But the movie does. The movie's sympathies are clearly with the servants, with Ivor Novello, as neither fish nor fowl (I love the scenes of him singing, where the Upstairs couldn't care less, but the Downstairs have all snuck within range, and it's perfectly obvious that Novello is playing FOR Jennings, not for anyone else.), and with poor Mabel Nesbit. (I passionately wanted Freddie Nesbit to be the murderer, and to be caught, so that Mabel could get free of him.) To a lesser extent, we sympathize with Isobel (another victim of Freddie, and victimized again by Rupert and Jeremy's money-obsessed snobbery, although Jeremy at least, by the end of the movie, seems to realize what an idiot he's being), but it is also clear that Elsie and Isobel have a close and fond relationship of their own. Isobel may be the only Upstairs character in the movie to see any of the servants as human beings. (And if someone can propose a counter-example, please do.)
The movie is troped by the first characters we're introduced to: Mary Maceachran and Constance, Lady Trentham. Mary is a Plucky Young Heroine of the old school; Constance is selfish, snobbish, and shallow. She's an entertaining old horror, but we do not like her. Throughout the movie, we are introduced more carefully to the servants than to their employers (even at the end, I couldn't keep all the Upstairs women straight), and it is shown that the servants have passions and ideas fermenting behind their perfect façades, while the Upstairs characters are selfish, cruel, philandering, and money-obsessed. Again, the only person who springs into three dimensions is Mabel Nesbit, and that's precisely because of her middle-class origins and the ways in which she does not fit.
Another way to put it is that the servants see their employers, and each other, but their employers never see them, except for that one strange moment where Commander Meredith (eating jam like a sulky child) seems to realize that Dorothy is a human being. But it's a tiny moment, and it's the only moment of true connection we see. (Possibly, one could argue that Sir William saw Elsie fully--he at least seemed to encourage her to break free--but we don't see that in the film. We see her passionate defense of him, and we see him do not a bloody thing in return to defend her.) Sylvia and Constance's conversation about Mrs. Wilson at the end reveals that they see her exactly as she wishes to be seen, as a "perfect servant."
Gosford Park also scorns the cheap PC-platitudinizing offered, in theory, by the subplot involving Denton. Denton could be a privileged young man who has his eyes opened to the realities of the world, but he isn't. He's an unrepentant cad who never understands any of the betrayals he wreaks in the course of the film. His attempt to rape Mary shows that he, just as much as Rupert and Sir William, sees the servant-women only as receptacles, available for his lust whenever he feels like slaking it. And his relentless prying into their private lives (Parks in particular) shows even more that he sees the servants merely as "material," not as human beings. (I'd figured out Denton's MacGuffin by the time he started pestering Parks; it was obvious that he was collecting ideas for a role.) Weisman is the same way, but Weisman sees the Upstairs characters as material just as much as the Downstairs, and there's a kind of wide-eyed naivete about his approach that robs it of much of its offensiveness. And he is a small, harmless, bemused man with a filthy mouth, unlike the predatory Denton.
Come to think of it, that's a third moment of identification between Upstairs and Downstairs: Sylvia's thorough appreciation of George's revenge. "You can't play on both teams at once, sir," as the maid says to Denton (and, oh dear, I don't know which one she was--bad, snobbish Truepenny!), and while it is true that Upstairs and Downstairs are in a sense opposing teams, it's also true that the two teams come together to present a mostly united front against the invasive outside force of the Law. Mary lies for Constance, and there are a great many things about one team that the other team could tell the detectives (clearly NO ONE mentions Elsie), and they don't. The exception is the valet (is it Mr. Probert, or am I remembering wrong?) who betrays Commander Meredith, but one wonders if that may not be revenge for Meredith's making a scene at the al fresco luncheon.
The emptiness and sterility of the Upstairs characters' inner lives is troped neatly by Commander Meredith's big scheme to bring shoes to the Sudanese soldiers--a scheme which also betrays the fundamental inability of the upper-class to get a grip on the lives and problems of those less privileged than themselves--while the real pain and love and beauty of the film are in Dorothy's confession of love for Mr. Jennings, and Mrs. Wilson crying in Mrs. Crofts's arms.
Everything that happens in Gosford Park happens Downstairs. Upstairs, the characters are marking time, waiting for Godot; none of the problems they bring with them are resolved or addressed, except monetarily, and if there's one thing the movie makes clear, it's that money is a symptom, not itself the disease.
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Date: 2003-07-01 10:57 am (UTC)And it's certainly not their fault. It's just amusing.
Gosford Park seems to view the privileged upper classes as a tremendously destructive force, in that sort of Fall of Rome way where they're bringing everyone else down along with them.
It was interesting that the only child character in the movie was Isobel, herself already old enough--as graphically demonstrated--to be counted a woman, and there are no mentions of children. The upper class isn't propagating itself, another sign of its decripitude. The servants are much more concerned with children (as the entire plot proves), witness Bertha saying, "I'd never give up my baby." They may transmit their vitality to the next generation; clearly the three sisters around whom the upstairs half of the movie revolves will not.