THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Adapting "Rosemary's Baby" to the Big & Small Screen

Now that the green haze of tannis root has lifted and the public’s memory of NBC’s four-hour Miniseries Event “reimagining” of Rosemary’s Baby (May 11th and 15th, 2014) is as murky and nebulous as Rosemary’s own chocolate mousse-induced dream; the votes are all in (not very good), the results have been tallied (Rosemary en France a ratings disaster), and the line for I-Told-You-Sos starts to the right.

The idea of adapting Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby and its much-reviled 1997 sequel Son of Rosemary into a TV-miniseries has been bouncing around Hollywood for years. In 2005, ABC Television acquired the rights and announced a Rosemary’s Baby miniseries for its Fall 2006 schedule. When that project failed to materialize, the network made a similar announcement (to similar result) in 2008. In each instance, fans of Polanski's film breathed a collective sigh of relief, attributing the abandonment of each project to an 11th-hour attack of common sense on the part of the producers. Or, at the very least, a dawning awareness of the fool’s journey involved in remaking a film widely regarded as a modern classic and one of Hollywood’s few faithfully rendered adaptations of a popular bestseller.

Your Worst Fears Realized
In the "reimagined" Rosemary's Baby, Satanism trailblazer Steven Marcato - seen here exuding more sleaze than menace- looks like a Eurotrash runway model with blue contacts. We're asked to believe he's managed to keep his evil past a secret for decades, in spite of the fact that he looks pretty much exactly like your standard issue, garden-variety, Sunday School image of the Devil. 

Having been taken down this road several times before, when I learned that NBC had actually made good on its lingering threat…I mean, promise…to turn Rosemary’s Baby into a four-hour telefilm, my natural curiosity trumped my innate cynicism. I knew I was going to watch the TV remake, even if only to satisfy my curiosity over what degree of hubris could possibly inspire the kind of delusional, presumptuous, thick-headed arrogance necessary for one to think they should try their hand at Levin’s modern gothic masterpiece. Especially when, in 1968, a young, pre-felony Roman Polanski fairly batted that particular Satanic ball well out of the park.

And that was just my curious side.

My cynical side suggested to me that the producers, in lieu of trying to arrive at a reasonably fresh approach to justify the need to retell a story already quite expertly told, merely went in search of a marketing hook. One such hook was the simple updating of the story. A lazy but valid pandering to those viewer factions devoted to never watching anything older than the age of their cellphones. The other hook was tried and true, "Strike while the iron is hot!" angle. The horror genre was experiencing something of a renaissance on TV. The popularity of the FX Network’s anthology series American Horror Story: Coven temporarily made witches relevant again, and NBC’s own blood-soaked Hannibal has shown there to be a viable market for network-suitable horror. With these two ratings hits on the charts, Rosemary’s Baby: the redux had at last surmounted its most significant remake obstacle: the ascertaining of a distinct ratings demographic to which to pitch its advertising.

Rosemary's Baby - 1968
Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Stanley Blackmer
Directed by Roman Polanski

Rosemary's Baby - 2014
Zoe Saldana, Patrick J. Adams, Carole Bouquet, Jason Isaacs
Directed by Agnieszka Holland

Well, after much ballyhoo and yo-yoing anticipation on my part, Rosemary’s Baby: The Miniseries Event finally premiered. Two evenings, four hours and countless commercials later, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't the unmitigated disaster it could have been (à la, the dreadful theatrical remakes of Carrie and Sparkle), but annoyed that the filmmakers hadn't been able to seize upon anything pertinent enough to the times we live in to either justify a remake or discourage comparisons to Roman Polanski’s incontestably masterful 1968 original. (Two excellent examples of “remakes” successfully distinguishing themselves from their originals are Kate Winslet’s HBO miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce [2011] and Martin Scorsese's brilliantly intense revisit to Cape Fear [1991].)

The original Rosemary’s Baby is more than just an ingeniously realized thriller; it’s a deceptively subtle commentary on the enduring nature of evil, the vulnerability of innocence, and the uncertain relevance of religion in the modern world. It's a film that concludes on a note of moral and psychological ambiguity, leaving you contemplating issues extending far beyond the parameters of Levin's story. By way of contrast, NBC’s version, with roughly 30 more minutes at its disposal, was so plot-driven and devoid of subtext, I found myself not even thinking about the broader “Is God Dead?” ramifications of what it means for the living son of Satan to be born into the world today (neither does the film), merely wondering about plot points that led nowhere (the whole Roman Castevet/Steven Marcato, eternal youth thing) and scratching my head over how a longer version of Rosemary's Baby managed to have less character development. The miniseries left me with nothing, not even a chalky undertaste.

Minnie & Roman

Roman & Margaux

In the original film, there's a perverse, contemporary wit in having the orchestrators of Satan's plan to overthrow 2000 years of Christian hegemony all look like harmless residents of the nearest nursing home. As much as I adore Carole Bouquet in the remake, the vision of evil this Roman and Minnie (Margaux) represent is as superficial and obvious as one of those Hammer Films from the 60s.

Rosemary’s Baby: The feature film, is a seminal horror classic, integral in moving the horror film from the B-movie bargain basement into the mainstream. Rosemary’s Baby: The miniseries, while respectful, ultimately proved itself an innocuous work of professional competency. By any qualitative standard that makes a movie resonate with me (character development, physiological sensitivity, narrative cohesion, use of cinema vocabulary, subtlety) there really is no comparing the two.

However, what does intrigue me is how these two films–so vastly different in approach, yet adapted from the same book–illuminate the intricacies involved in adapting a novel to film. Forty-six years have transpired between these disparate book-to-screen adaptations of Levin’s 1967 bestseller; and what is reflected in the artistic choices taken by the filmmakers says as much about how significantly movies have changed over the years as it does about our culture.

NOTES ON AN ADAPTATION

First off, let me address the word, “reimagined.”  There is no such thing. Like the Devil, reimagined is a corporate invention. “Reimagined” is “remake” with its negative connotations surgically removed after first passing through the obfuscating, verbal camouflage of legalese and marketing. Rosemary’s Baby on Ice?: now we're talking reimagined. Rosemary's Baby as Kabuki theater performed by The Muppets?: that's reimagined. Merely updating it, moving it to Paris, and throwing superfluous characters and elements from The Omen and 666 Park Avenue into the mix...that's a remake. A desperate, starved-for-ideas remake, but a remake, nonetheless. If you doubt it, imagine what would happen if every year they gave an Oscar or Emmy for Best Remake; the word "reimagined" would go the way of the word "rerun" (which we all know has transmogrified into "encore presentation").

(In the interest of brevity, Rosemary’s Baby and its remake will hereafter be referred to as RB1 and RB2, respectively.)

The Setting

The Manhattan setting of RB1 is a purposeful upending of traditional horror genre conventions. In lieu of a gothic tale of ancient evil set in a dark, abandoned castle somewhere in Europe, RB1 stages its horrors in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowded city, framed against the steel and glass backdrop of New York City, circa: 1966. A Western Age of Enlightenment where reason and logic have replaced fear and superstition. A world where science rules -“I want vitamins in pills, like everybody else.”; our welfare is entrusted to authority figures -“He’s very good. He was ‘Open End.’”; and religious faith has grown irrelevant -“I was brought up a Catholic. Now I don’t know.”
Contemporary culture’s disavowal of all things spiritual -“There are no witches, not really,” coupled with the credence granted surface appearances -“Honey, they’re old people, and they have a bunch of old friends….” is precisely how it is possible for an unimaginable evil to flourish, undetected, right under everyone’s noses. RB1 plays with our notions of safety by showing us how easy it is for evil to hide in plain sight.

Standing in for The Bramford, La Chimere: an exclusive Paris apartment building

If RB1 is a departure from gothic tradition, RB2 is more a reversion to type. It’s set in Paris, a city more than 10,000 years old, crammed with gargoyles and gothic structures. in short, exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find witches. Roman Castevet, cast as perhaps the least disarming person you've ever seen in your life, looks about as trustworthy as a Bond villain, and this Rosemary is required to ignore one blatant red flag after another while a virtual torrent of dead bodies piles up around her. Why? For no logical or character-based reason beyond the story demands it. And therein lies the problem with this remake. Superficial changes to location and character description are no substitute for understanding that Rosemary's Baby has always been more than just a "scary movie." Which is why it has endured. Without making this version be "about" anything other than the mindless tracing of the footsteps of its predecessor; character identification suffers, narrative coherence is lost, and RB2 becomes just another forgettable, plot-driven horror film with nothing to say about anything except, "Boo!"

The Time
RB1 was released at a time when the Catholic Church was in a state of reformation. Pope Paul VI (his 1965 new York visit is referenced in the film) took strides to modernize the church’s image, while simultaneously, Christian theologian Paul van Buren was making headlines with his “God is Dead” theories. Into this atmosphere came a horror film whose premise was viewed by many to be a bastardization of the allegory of the Christ child. A reversal of the New Testament Christian myth complete with a divine father figure, a chosen vessel, and a birth–signifying the dawning of a new era–attended by adoring followers.
In Levin's fantasy, Satan, Rosemary (significantly, a lapsed Catholic) and the birth of the anti-Christ, all signaled the dawning of a new Dark Age for the world. A bleak period all too imaginable given the climate of the times (gun violence, political assassinations, urban riots, the Vietnam War). In the socially-conscious world of the 60s, Rosemary's Baby as a quasi-religious horror parable had an eerie urgency that struck a chord with the public.

No such social urgency occurs in RB2. To an almost hermetic degree, the real life horrors of today fail to intrude upon the cliche horrors on display in RB2. Just going from my own idea of what a contemporary embodiment of Satan on earth would be like, I envision him as one of those conservative, ultra-right wing, billionaires using his vast fortune to convince middle class people that the problems of the world are the fault of the poor. He would use his money to help perpetuate fear, oppress the powerless, accelerate global warming, and subtly promote war, gun violence, and international terrorism. That sounds evil to me. A story proposing Rosemary's pregnancy unleashing this kind of evil into the world, I would find compelling, to say the least.

How is ultimate evil embodied in RB2? The best this movie can come up with is that Satan is like Charlie Sheen crossed with Jack the Ripper. He’s a wealthy whoremonger who hangs around in sex clubs. That’s the entirety of this this movie’s idea of evil, folks. Seriously...one more douche on the planet would hardly be noticed, and as depicted here, Satan comes off like one of those eligible contestants on The Bachelor.
Polanski knew the only way RB1 would work was to ground it firmly in a recognizable reality. RB2 goes ludicrously in the opposite direction and situates itself within a reality known only to television. The world inhabited by the Parisian Castevets is of the elite rich (are we supposed to be impressed, or repulsed?); racism is non-existent (the film is either unaware or purposely ignores the implications of what it means to present a solitary black woman at the center of a horror narrative in which she is ceaselessly exploited by a league of white people); and Catholicism plays no part (can't risk offending anyone, for ratings sake). It's a world so artificially realized that some viewers actually thought this Rosemary’s Baby had a happy ending (!!).

The Characters

Had Roman Polanski been as enamored of Levin’s spawn-of-Satan plotline as those who’ve unofficially cribbed from it over the years (The Stranger Within, The Devil Within Her, It’s Alive, The Devil’s Advocate, The Astronaut’s Wife), Rosemary’s Baby might have turned out as undistinguished a thriller as the above-listed. In choosing to place the emphasis on character, Polanski puts the supernatural, genre-dictated aspects of the plot in service of the motivations, interactions, and relationships of the principals of the story. This approach perhaps produces a horror film too slow and bloodless for today’s ADHD mode of moviemaking, but mercifully spares us the sort of leaps in logic and character inconsistencies which plague RB2’s more action-driven adaptation. 

I've never seen Zoe Saldana in a film before, yet without actually becoming Rosemary for me (or any human being I've ever known, the script has her behaving so erratically), I think she is very good. She's written and portrayed in such a blank matter (so little is provided in the way of narrative thrust for her character, when things start to go horribly wrong, there's no risk placed on any of her goals because she has none).
Saldana is not given much assist with the epically inexpressive Patrick J. Adams, whose sole, all-purpose expression (noodly wimp) supports a Guy Woodhouse that makes absolutely no psychological sense. He's not ambitious enough to be convincingly evil, and seems too slow-witted to be wily. On the plus side, Adams is so unrelentingly awful, his work has the potential of making folks look more kindly upon the subtleties of John Cassavetes' underappreciated performance.

RB2's saving grace and sole element of inspired casting and character is Carole Bouquet's Margaux Castevet. I absolutely love the changes in the character, how she's written, and how she's played. Mysterious, maternal, malevolent, VERY sexy...it's the only part of RB2 to which I'd give an unqualified thumbs up.

Mrs. Castevet, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?

I've been crazy about Rosemary's Baby since it scared the crap out of me as a child in 1968. It has always seemed to me such an ideal, perfectly realized film...I never seriously thought anyone would really attempt remaking it. Well, they finally did, and after seeing it, I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a slight sense of vindication in my belief that Polanski's film is precisely Levin's novel, ingeniously adapted, and should be left alone. With Hollywood hooked on so many remakes and continually returning to the well of past successes, a great deal of our culture today seems on a fast track course of mediocrity.
Example: Had NBC's Rosemary Baby proved a ratings hit, I'm almost positive it would have spawned a series. But who really ever needed to know what happened after Rosemary's child was born? Isn't it more rewarding to have our individual imaginations fill in whatever grim or happy future we envision for The AntiChrist?  The notion of a TV series is just another indication that TV too often panders to the literal-minded who are made uneasy by ambiguity. Those who require every detail and consequence S-P-E-L-L-E-D  O-U-T.

A genuine, bonafide classic motion picture is a rare thing. When it occurs, maybe we should just let it be and just enjoy it, dated material and all. It has value. Even if only to remind ourselves that excellence, not imitation, is something we should all strive for.

BONUS MATERIAL
Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby, the ill-advised 1976 TV-movie sequel to Rosemary's Baby, is available on YouTube. Has to be seen to be believed. It stars Patty Duke as Rosemary, George Maharis as Guy Woodhouse, Ruth Gordon (shame on you), Ray Milland standing in for passed-away Sidney Blackmer, and Tina Louise...as The Movie Star.

"You're trying to get me to be his mother."

"Aren't you his mother?"

Copyright © Ken Anderson

"GATSBY? WHAT GATSBY?" : Notes on an Adaptation

When it Comes to Bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz-Age Classic to the Big Screen, 70s Mediocrity Has the Advantage Over Modern Techno-Fetishism

After speculating in an earlier post on how Baz Luhrmann’s $127 million adaptation of The Great Gatsby would stack up next to Jack Clayton’s prosaic 1974 version (HERE); I finally got around to seeing the 2013 film (sans 3D) last night.

Well, my overall opinion is that Luhrmann’s is the better film, but then, so is the 8mm home movie I made of my first trip to Universal Studios in 1972. To say Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is better than the Robert Redford/Mia Farrow starrer is not the same as saying it's a good film. It’s merely to note, comparatively speaking, that it is an improvement over the former. It wins by default.

Indeed, when taken as a stand-alone movie adaptation, I think the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby mostly proves that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is unfilmable and should hereafter be left alone. Unless, of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber has plans for turning it into a West End musical sometime soon.

What surprises me is that while Baz Luhrmann’s glittery Gatsby is more spirited, better acted (generally), and by and large a far more dramatic and romantically persuasive movie than Jack Clayton’s over-reverential take, I could pop the seriously flawed 1974 version into my DVD player and watch it in its entirety this very minute, but I really can’t imagine wanting to see the 2013 adaptation ever again.  

 Gatsby & Daisy - 1974

Why? Because for all the tin-eared, uber-devotional faithfulness of Francis Ford Coppola’s screenplay; the leaden portentousness of Jack Clayton’s direction; and the hermetic, airlessness of most of the performances; 1974s The Great Gatsby is at least populated with real human beings occupying a recognizably real world. And until I saw Baz Luhrmann’s version, I never really grasped the degree to which that little detail matters in a film that's not about Transformers or superheroes.

When I see live theater, there’s this unique energy and danger that comes from everything happening right before you in real time. It adds to the overall excitement of the experience and allows for the considerable suspension of disbelief required to allow entire worlds to exist within a proscenium arch. Movies operate on a different level. They create a hyper-reality once-removed. Any emotional distance created by the fact that I’m watching flickering images staged in the recent or distant past is mitigated by the intimacy of close-ups and how I find myself drawn in by the selective, directed gaze of the camera lens.

Daisy & Gatsby - 2013

Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby makes extensive use of computer-generated imagery, both realistic and stylized. Imagery whose sometimes flagrant artificiality gives one the impression of watching Jazz Age avatars populating the landscape of an art-deco video game. The camera swoops, dives, and darts about the action like a paper airplane hurled by a grade-schooler with lousy aim, and the 2D effect of the film’s 3D technology makes the actors appear to stand apart and separate from their surroundings...almost floating in front of the scenery - like those vinyl Colorforms cutouts I had as a kid. In short, the entire enterprise becomes a high-tech cartoon. And in cartoons there can be no human jeopardy. 

The fragility of humans, both physical and emotional, is the crux of all drama. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald emphasizes human vulnerability by contrasting and juxtaposing his weak characters against the illusory shelter afforded their materialism. No matter how big the house, powerful the car, or ornate the swimming pool – they all prove insufficient citadels against pain, death, and tragedy. But for this to hit home, the material world has to be made real for us, and the characters have to feel as if they are flesh and blood.

Jordan & Nick - 1974

The 1974 Gatsby buried its characters beneath millions of dollars’ worth of production values, but at least the quirky casting of 70s stalwarts Karen Black and Bruce Dern helped to imbue the film with brief flourishes of unmistakable humanity. Luhrmann’s Gatsby wants to dazzle us with spectacle, but at the cost of grounding anything in a recognizable reality. The actors, digitized to a glossy sheen that renders flesh the same waxy burnish of department store mannequins, are impossible to care for because they have been rendered as animatronic Gatsby dolls. They posture and pose, look terrific in their period duds, and all carry on as if they're in a college production of Private Lives; but they never feel like they have any life beyond what we're being shown. How could they? They exist on a computer graphics grid.

I’m afraid 1974’s The Great Gatsby (a film I harbored no great fondness for beyond a nagging nostalgia and the sight of Robert Redford’s thighs in a bathing suit) has become yet another mediocre film from my past that’s starting to look more like a classic in the wake of a middling remake (a la: The Poseidon Adventure, Fame, Rollerball, and Planet of the Apes).

Nick & Jordan - 2013

Of course, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby was a big hit at the boxoffice,  proving most emphatically that 3D, CGI, and anachronistic music scores by Jay Z are here to stay, and what the public wants.

To which I can only respond, in the words of one Miss Jean Brodie:

"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”

A Few Random Observations:

1. In spite of forever looking like he's playing dress-up, Leonardo DiCaprio does a marvelous job as Gatsby. Infinitely more complex and sympathetic than Robert Redford’s Arrow Collar model interpretation, he's the major galvanizing force in the film for me.

2. I’m convinced it’s impossible to make a party on film look like any fun.

I'm absolutely crazy about Carey Mulligan, who makes a fabulous-looking Daisy Buchanan. But as her role is written, I'm not sure she fares much better than Mia Farrow

3. In an effort to try to capture the dizzying madness of the Jazz Age, by all appearances Luhrmann tied the camera to a rope and started swinging it over his head. Honestly, it's like a hummingbird was his cinematographer and cartoonist Tex Avery his editor.

4. Actress Elizabeth Debicki makes me think what a wonderful Jordan Baker Anjelica Houston would have made in the 1974 film.

5. Like the kind of digital manipulation that Vanity Fair shutterbug Annie Leibovitz passes off as photography these days, the images in The Great Gatsby, beautiful as they are, never once look organic. None of the actors appear to be in the same room together. Hell, none of the ROOMS seem to be in the same room.

6. Blending the music of Gershwin (the exquisite Rhapsody in Blue) with the compositions of contemporary pop stars only draws attention to how awful the music of contemporary pop stars is.

Isla Fisher's superficial performance as Myrtle Wilson (she plays her like Miss Hannigan in a touring company of Annie - or, more accurately, as Annie all grown up) achieved the impossible: It made me long for Karen Black's over-emotive histrionics in the 1974 film

7. There’s no denying that Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is a beautiful-looking film, but when Baz Luhrmann tries for Ken Russell operatic bombast, his images, lacking in either context or passion, at best come off as the work of a very clever Los Angles event/party planner.

8. I thought so in 1974 and I think so now; Bruce Dern's Tom Buchanan is a brilliant piece of character work. Joel Edgerton comes off as a tad too callow and weightless.

9. I very much like the framing device employed in the new film that has Nick Carraway recounting his summer with Gatsby from inside the sanitarium he's committed himself to after becoming an alcoholic. It's an inspired touch that adds a bit of depth to a character so often on the periphery of the action.

When it comes to movies, I willingly confess to being as obsessed with the past as Gatsby. But I honestly would have welcomed an adaptation of The Great Gatsby that I didn't have to watch ironically.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

GOSFORD PARK 2001

Adapting Robert Altman’s trademark, multi-character, freeform narrative style to the formalized structure of a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery is such an inspired concept, I’m rather surprised it took until nearly the end of Altman’s 50-plus years in film for someone to think of it. But after tackling musicals (Popeye), westerns (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), farce (Beyond Therapy), romantic comedy (A Perfect Couple), film noir (The Long Goodbye), the psychological thriller (Images), and satire (The Player); a good, old-fashioned whodunit was just about the only genre left for one of the more resilient and versatile filmmakers to come out of the New Hollywood.

Robert Altman has been one of my favorite directors since first discovering him in the early 1970s. But following the rather (for me) dismal back-to-back entries of Cookie’s Fortune (1999) and Dr. T and the Women (2000), I really thought Altman had gone the way of that other '70s favorite, Peter Bogdanovich; i.e., dried-up creatively, his best work behind him. I was wrong. Like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman proved himself to be one of those directors capable of delivering surprisingly fresh and innovative work well into their seventies. Indeed, at the ripe old age of 75, Altman’s Gosford Park revealed the director in his finest form since 3 Women (1977), delivering not only one of his most solid and fully realized films, but his biggest boxoffice hit since M.A.S.H. (1970).

Maggie Smith as Lady Constance Trentham

Clive Owen as Robert Parks

Kristen Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia McCordle

Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello

With Gosford Park, the collaborative efforts of Robert Altman, producer Bob Balaban, and screenwriter Julian Fellowes combined to create a marvelously layered re-creation of a traditional English-style crime mystery with a decidedly Altman-esque twist. The twist being that the mystery—a murder taking place during a weekend shooting party at an English country estate in 1932— is not seen from the point of view of the aristocratic set of relatives and guests, but rather, from the perspective of the servant class, below stairs. It’s a simple yet ingenious device allowing for the filmmakers to cleverly intermingle the crosscutting stories of some 35 characters while making shrewd observations on everything from the class system, changing times, sexual mores, social conventions, personal relationships, and cultural differences.

Helen Mirren as Mrs. Wilson

Alan Bates as Jennings

Emily Watson as Elsie

Kelly Macdonald as Mary Maceachran

In detailing a strained weekend in the country in which virtually all in attendance have something to hide or something they’re after, Altman’s legendary virtuosity behind the camera serves the misleadingly conventional setup exceptionally well. In fact, not since Nashville has Altman’s celebrated “bag of tricks” (overlapping dialogue, peripheral activity, cross-cutting storylines, ensemble cast of characters harboring secrets) seemed so organic to the material. Ostensibly hemmed in by the rigid constraints of the religiously adhered-to rules of the British social class structure, Altman actually comes off as more liberated than ever. There’s something in Julian Fellowes’ (Downton Abbey) surprisingly witty, culturally-perceptive script that presses most of Robert Altman’s best qualities to the forefront (I can’t think of a single director capable of getting us to keep track of, let alone care about, so many characters), while suppressing a great many of his weaknesses (the English locale spares us Altman’s fondness for the easy laugh of hayseed southern accents).

Michael Gambon as William McCordle

Eileen Atkins as Mrs. Croft

Bob Balaban as Morris Weissman

I saw Gosford Park when it opened in 2001, and, clocking in at a little over two hours, it's a film I was nevertheless sorry to see come to an end (a problem happily remedied by the DVD which contains loads of deleted scenes!). In a world where I find myself feeling grateful if the film I'm watching at least chooses to rely on smart clichés instead of stupid ones; Gosford Park is an endangered species: a film that feels like it's shedding the rote and predictable with the introduction of each new character. Somehow, while still adhering to the genre conventions of an Agatha Christie crime drama (or, as is referenced in the film itself, a Charlie Chan thriller) Gosford Park manages to confound expectations. The comedy is sharp, the drama is well-played and frequently moving, the characters are dimensional, the mystery element engrossing, and its subthemes on class distinctions are poignant and eye-opening.
Of course, the biggest surprise of all is that after all these years, Altman is in the best form of his career.

A particular favorite of mine is Camilla Rutherford as Isabel McCordle.  She and Mabel Nesbitt are characters with story arcs I'd describe as classically Altman-esque.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Perhaps the right word here is “grateful.” What I’m grateful for about Gosford Park is the depth of its intricacy. It's an entertaining film that breezes along, providing both character-based humor and genuinely affecting dramatic moments, yet Gosford Park has a great deal more on its mind than just providing a solid mystery and a houseful of suspects. It's a very smart, observant look at the kinds of surface behaviors and rituals that people engage in order to mask who and what they really are. And all this is layered atop a social satire and comedy of manners contrasting self-imposed hierarchies of status against those that are socially imposed. It's a film just brilliant in its complexity, chiefly because all of these layers play out subtly beneath an outrageously entertaining mystery that is fun to watch in and of itself.
From every conceivable angle, Gosford Park is a marvel of logistics. So many stories to tell, so many characters, so much information to impart...and yet, the film feels light and effortless. That Altman is able to deliver to us so many interesting characters in so brief a time is a skill he has demonstrated several times before; his being able to do so while simultaneously enlightening us as to the myriad duties and rituals that go into the running of an English manor house is something else again.

Gosford Park is a great film for repeat viewings. It's staggering the amount of subtle details one misses when first just trying to figure out "whodunit." The interwoven lives of all the characters become much clearer.

For me, it's such a delight to see a film that asks something of you. That requires your attention, mental involvement, and active participation in following along and picking up on all the pieces provided. It’s great not to have everything spelled out for you, or to have a camera continually directing your gaze towards where you should be looking and why. Gosford Park assumes an alertness from its audience and rewards you with a story that pays off as terribly sharp mystery, crisp comedy, taut character drama, and biting social commentary.

Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson

PERFORMANCES
The nearly all-British cast assembled for Gosford Park is an eye-popper (Knights! Dames! The inexplicable presence of Ryan Phillippe!), a fact made all the more impressive by having some of the most distinguished actors democratically blended and divided between the upstairs and downstairs characters. Dame Maggie Smith steals scenes and looks quite at home as the snobbish dowager Countess (a role that is essentially a dry-run for the one she would assume 9 years later in Downton Abbey); but it's great fun seeing Sir Alan Bates as the butler of the household, silently occupying scenes like an overqualified extra; or Dame Helen Mirren, makeup-less and relegated to below stairs quarters. And as Gosford Park is a murder mystery, such egalitarian casting works much to the film's benefit, as it is impossible to play the "billing" game here - attempting to guess the victims and guilty parties based on star rank.

Geraldine Sommerville as Louisa Stockbridge (younger sister of Lady Sylvia)
Altman films have a reputation for being well-cast, and Gosford Park is no exception. As was the case with A Wedding, Altman makes it easier for us to tell who's-who by casting actors who look as if they could plausibly be related

The performances in Gosford Park are so uniformly excellent that it's both pointless and futile to try to single out a particular actor. I confess to finding Ryan Phillippe to be the weakest link, although even in this instance his blank screen persona works well within the film's context. Nor am I too fond of Stephen Fry's Inspector Thom...(above stairs, no one lets him complete his introduction), which feels like another of Altman's risky forays into needlessly broad farce (think Opal in Nashville). Certainly, individual characters and their storylines stand out more than others, but if you're like me, you'll wind up having a different "favorite" each time you view the film.

Claudie Blakley as Mabel Nesbitt, serenaded by Ivor Novello

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There's no escaping the feeling when watching Gosford Park, that one is watching the most elegant, life-sized game of CLUE ever! The insular, bygone world depicted is meticulously recreated in the seamless blending of locations and sets, outrageously gorgeous clothing, and an attention to period detail in makeup and hairstyles that fittingly recall the very sort of films from Britain's past that Gosford Park pays homage to.

Derk Jacobi as Probert, Sir William's valet

All this lavish period-detail fetishism would be off-putting were it not used in service of dramatizing the huge difference in the lives of the "haves" and "have-nots" of Gosford Park. And this is precisely why Robert Altman has always remained one of my all-time favorites; for while the average director would be content to have us ooh and ahh over the jewels, gowns, and luxury of the life depicted, Altman matches every loving close-up and perfectly framed shot of upstairs opulence with a similar shot in the tight and privacy-free servant's quarters. He never preaches or tells us what we should feel about it all, but unlike, say, the inappropriately worshipful depiction of wealth in 1974s The Great Gatsby, Gosford Park captures it all, but with a conscience.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Gosford Park ranks among my top five favorite Robert Altman films. I’m also an avid Downton Abbey fan...a fact that really intrigues me. Not only about myself but about America. American audiences aren’t known for taking British culture to its bosom, but Julian Fellowes’ tales of servants and the social classes seem to have struck a chord with us.

Speaking for myself, I suspect there is something about the distancing effect and “otherness” of British society class struggles that allows me to be entertained by them in ways unthinkable were these tales told about contemporary wealthy American households with maids, nannies and the like. Here in the U.S. we still have yet to come to terms with our own race-based class systems.
Our films and audiences have no trouble humanizing the downtrodden and their plight if they are white; but so much guilt is attached to our ugly slavery/Jim Crow history that Hollywood tends to mostly greenlight movies in which black characters in servitude exist to reassure white audiences or provide them with white "hero" characters who rescue the oppressed from the very racist social structures they created.
No, as far as America is concerned it can take a Downton Abbey to its bosom because it is infinitely easier for this country to culturally process stories that feature white characters both above and below stairs. A lot of uncomfortable subtext is avoided. In my own experience, I can attest to there definitely being a distancing issue here that makes Downton and Gosford suitably escapist.

Gosford Park boasts a beautiful musical score
There's an absolutely charming sequence where we're shown the servants hiding in the shadows to listen to the music coming from the drawing room. Ironically, the aristocracy is bored by it, while the lower classes, prohibited from being seen listening to it, are transported by it. 

Were there to ever be a film about slavery in America (or even the recent past of the Jim Crow era or the 1960s) in which slaves or victims of systemic racism are depicted not as they usually are (as a social issue), but as fleshed-out, fully-realized characters with the same level of dimensional humanity as the servants of Gosford Park or Downton Abbey – varied, unique individuals granted their resentments and temperaments, people with their own hopes, personalities, and emotional agonies derived from their life circumstances – I'm pretty sure my heart would never stop breaking.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2013