The Rules of the Game.

96. Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001)

Gosford Park is perhaps the late Robert Altman's last bona fide masterpiece. Like many of Altman's films it features an ensemble cast with subplots intertwined and overlapping dialogue. It's a complex and detailed period piece set in the early 1930s. On the surface the film is a rousing murder mystery wrapped in the pasts of the variety of individuals in the film. This murder mystery is used as a device to present the class structure of Great Britain in the early 1900s. The subplots of each individual and how these people are connected shows the broad gap between the wealthy and their servants.

Altman is in top form working his intricate plot off without a hitch. Not only is the film able to sustain it itself, it thrives. Reminiscent of Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939), of which can be seen to have a significant impact on Altman's career as a whole, Gosford Park is able to build its own microcosmic world within that large estate house. With the final breath of social hierarchy drawing near Altman develops his film into it's own organism, like a living cell, with characters and dialogue, plots and themes traversing through and around each other.

In Gosfard Park authenticity is key. Though the murder mystery elements are there to draw the audience into the picture the precise production is there to keep them involved. With such pinpoint representation Altman is able to recreate the time period in complete faithfulness. Displaying not only some of its hypocrisy and superficiality but also it's allure, charm, grace, and glamor. It's a time in which it's easy to loss yourself and for two hours and twenty minutes Robert Altman's film makes that possible.

Top ten of 2001:

Robert Altman's Gosford Park comes in at number 9 on my list of 10 films from 2001 so I'll just post a few words about the tenth film.

10. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)

My number ten film is Richard Linklater's surrealist philosophically jumbled animation piece Waking Life. The movie is a lot to take in on one sitting and even if you can't prescribe to each of the musings within every section it's a movie that not only requests you to think, it requires you to do so. With each encounter phasing into another we see our main character travel through what looks like a dream, discussing the nature of how and why we dream and essentially how we live and derive meaning from our lives, the world, and those around us.

10 Films of 2001:

9. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
10. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)