I knew only little about Gosford Park before, only that it had won an Oscar and that one of my favourite actors (Stephen Fry) was in it.
Outwardly it is a murder story, but the plot isn’t important at all. What really is interesting are the characters.
There is the newly rich Sir William, who is rightfully hated by everyone. He has invited a couple of people to a hunting party. All these ’’upstairs’’ characters are lonely losers in their own special ways.
There are the ’’downstairs’’ characters: the servants of the house and the valets and maids brought by the guests. Since they don’t know each other, they call each other by their masters’ or mistresses’ names, thus the valet of, say, Lord Stockbridge becomes ’’Mr. Stockbridge’’ downstairs.
This way it is not very difficult to understand what the movie is about: the downstairs persons are no real persons, they don’t have a life of their own, they don’t even have names. It is then no wonder that the ’’upstairs’’ inspector (a wonderfully confused Stephen Fry) cannot find a clue to the case, not only does he ignore every idea uttered by the ’’downstairs’’ constable, he also doesn’t even interview all servants, because ’’we are not interested in servants, we are interested in people with a real connection to the dead man.’’
It is left to one of the guests’ maid to discover the truth, but since she belongs downstairs she doesn’t say anything and she is never asked.
The movie is a very clever portrait of the English society of the 30s with all its snobbishness and falsehoods.