It’s not often that my family manages to get me out for a movie screening. This time I bought into the promise of the classic English detective story. I was hoping to enjoy the atmosphere of good old England and practice a little (after all, everyone is interested in guessing the killer before the brilliant detective in the final scene puts everything on the shelves).Gosford Park wasn’t that kind of movie at all.You can’t say that I was deceived. All the attributes of an English detective are really present – a secluded country house, a motley company, where everyone can find a motive if they wish, and of course a corpse. Oh, yes – there is also an inspector with the same pipe in his mouth.
But it’s all just a bait. In anticipation of a detective story, without noticing it myself, I really became interested in studying the life and customs of another era. Gosford Park shows in some detail what usually remains behind the scenes – the relationship of masters and servants, life is boiling “behind the scenes” of secular receptions – in the kitchens and in the servants’ rooms.In the frame of 1932 – there are already electric irons, from England you can easily call California, women smoke indiscriminately and wear short haircuts, the aristocracy has almost completely transformed into the bourgeoisie and bureaucracy. Progress is evident in all areas, and only English servants live according to the precepts of hoary antiquity.Servants are a special caste, the guardians of the cult. Don’t be fooled by the fact that they wash other people’s socks. In fact, in a pair of “master-servant” it is the servant who is often more important, wiser, more experienced, more weighty. You do not think that a child is the boss of his parents, on the grounds that it is they who prepare breakfast for him, and not vice versa? Very indicative in this regard is the pair of Jeeves and Wooster from the works of Wodehouse.It is pleasant that many servants are fully aware of their high role and their own. One of the heroines of Gosford Park said (about herself) that the most important thing in a servant is the gift of foresight, and she has it. How does it feel to be able to predict the future (a very powerful ability in my opinion) and spend your time serving snobby slackers? In the same way, one might ask, what is it like to be God, the Almighty Creator, and solve the childhood problems of your lost sons every day? To serve your creations is divine mercy.
Maybe I’m a little too smart here. Do not pay attention, these are purely my “cockroaches”. Gosford Park is an interesting and understandable movie. And it was done clearly with a swing for an Oscar. An unusual scenario, a collection of characters worthy of Gogol’s “Dead Souls”, a whole platoon of serious actors (of those whom the townsfolk recognize not by name, but by roles).P.S. Breaking the pattern is when in an English detective story, no one is interested in solving a crime at all – neither the characters nor the audience. Why this fuss if:
- there are more important topics
- and so everything is clear (who killed, etc.)