This review by Joseph Thompson was originally published at Green Man Review.
I hate rainy, wintry, Sunday afternoons. I despise the scowling pedestrians. I dread slick sidewalks strewn with rotting leaves interrupted by salty pools of slush and mud. As gray clouds pollute the sky and my mind, I create lists of people I’d like to see play the victim in a true-crime story. Usually, I pop Robert Altman’s Gosford Park into the DVD player as a distraction, but last week I grew bored and fidgety before even selecting play-movie on the opening menu. So like any nerdy English major, I eschewed the idiot box for an afternoon and picked up a book instead. The book? The Shooting Script: Gosford Park, Julian Fellows’ screenplay bookended by an Altman introduction and a Fellows’ afterward published by Newmarket Press in 2002.
As a movie, Gosford Park is essentially an acted out game of Clue with too many players: a swarm of dependents and their servants come to the home of the saturnine Sir William McCordle for a shooting party. Throughout the film’s first forty-five minutes, Altman introduces an array of potential murder weapons. And over the next hour, the characters reveal a myriad of motives. By the time Sir William gets it in the last third of film, the audience loathes him as much as his family. Without wasting a moment mournin, everybody gets to speculate about who killed McCordle in the library with what weapon.
Like any good director, Altman knows his craft and mixes the ingredients well. He pours the story into the location like a hot toddy into a warm ceramic mug. He embraces the clichés of the genre and then twists them like a garnish. And like a good bartender, Altman knows when to shake up a cocktail and when to serve straight. He elicits clever performances from the sprawling casts and blends them into a warming Benedictine and Brandy. He lets big personalities like Maggie Smith steal the laugh lines with choice, venomous barbs. Big names like Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon slip into their roles with all the grace of their character’s station. Lesser known names like Emily Watson and Sophie Thompson bring warmth and nuance to starchy servant roles. It’s an amazing ensemble.
The sprawling, complex web of characters costs the movie intimacy. The camera never gives the viewer a moment to reflect on the previous scene. It pauses to appreciate the Palladian mansion’s impressive architecture. It never lingers in a private moment. But the shooting script does linger, appreciate, and reflect. Following each pithy exchange, the script offers commentary on the character’s thoughts or expression. It highlights small, vital details the same way a good cigar brings out the fine nuances in a post-dinner brandy.
Published by Newmarket Press in 2002, The Shooting Script: Gosford Park is just one title in the Newmarket Shooting Script Series. However, the series title is misleading. Readers picking up one of these volumes and expecting to find a popcorn version of The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound will be disappointed. Despite the active implication of the series’ title, the scripts are not living documents replete with blue pencil edits and the occasional STET. In reality, these are the screenplays updated while filming and given a final polish. In The Shooting Script: Gosford Park, every muttered line is printed as clearly as a shouted argument. It highlights small, easily missed, pivotal moments. A director’s craft is visual; there is little substance in Altman’s introduction. But Fellows contributed a thoughtful, well written afterword placing the movie in the context of pre-World War II England, the social changes already being felt by the characters, and how he, Fellows, finds names. The entire book held my attention for three hours when a movie failed to captivate me for thirty seconds. And by the time I finished reading, the rainy, wintry, Sunday afternoon was over and it was cocktail time.
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