Robert Alt­man has con­tin­u­ally vac­il­lated between trea­sure and trash. On the trea­sure side we have his true clas­sics: M*A*S*H, Nashville and The Player. But the trash seems to out­weigh these high-art achieve­ments. Films like Brew­ster McCloud, H.E.A.L.T.H., Pop­eye, Short Cuts, Prêt-à-Porter, and Dr. T & the Women cloud a career that most crit­ics con­sider out­stand­ing. I’m of the opin­ion that Alt­man is a lit­tle high on him­self and that rubs off on his movies, but you don’t read these reviews for opin­ions of peo­ple now, do you?

Gos­ford Park is excel­lent. The trea­sure here is the upper crust of Eng­lish soci­ety and the trash are the peo­ple that serve the treasure’s every whim and fancy. The man of afflu­ence in this film is Sir William McCor­dle (Michael Gam­bon) who is mar­ried to the much younger Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas). The McCordle’s are host­ing a hunt­ing week­end at their Eng­lish coun­try­side estate and all man­ner of the bold and the beau­ti­ful are invited.

The biggest prob­lem is that Sir William is a jerk and not well liked by most of the peo­ple attend­ing the hunt­ing week­end, both priv­i­leged and non-privileged alike. They include such British film and stage lumi­nar­ies as Mag­gie Smith (Con­stance, Count­ess of Tren­tham), Richard E. Grant (George), Clive Owen (Robert Parks), Alan Bates (Jen­nings, the but­ler), Derek Jacobi (Probert), Helen Mir­ren (Mrs. Wil­son) and Emily Wat­son (Elsie). Almost all of the atten­dees have one prob­lem or another with their host and over the course of the week­end some will attempt to show their dis­plea­sure in the gravest way possible.

The Haves in the film reside upstairs away from the Have-Nots and Alt­man does a fine job of jug­gling both the rich and their poor help. It’s all tuxe­dos and caviar above ground-level, while the groundlings that serve them eat at a plain wooden table. The best part of the film is what Alt­man does with the min­gling of the two social classes and how they interact.

The only prob­lem that I had with the film was that the cast was a lit­tle to huge for your aver­age viewer to pay atten­tion to. The major­ity of the time the Haves are referred to by their last names or their title while some­times they refer to each other by first names. A connect-the-dots game could be played with all of the characters.

Other than that one small prob­lem, I liked the film. Altman is a fine crafts­man and it shows brightly here that he truly loves his sub­ject (and like a king, his sub­jects) and gives them rich enough parts to show that all of them, regard­less of social strata, are humans.