On a weekend when Americans servilely do the bidding of their corporate masters by shopping themselves into further penury as 80 percent of them struggle at the poverty line it’s a good time to revisit this contemporary classic. It’s likely some channel will offer it in the middle of the night. Gosford Park is in many ways an homage to an underclass more noble by far than its over-privileged overlords. Its crucial moment is supplied by Emily Watson playing the maid who has the audacity while serving a dinner party to remind the guests what shits they are. She of course must go, but her towering dignity hovers over the place. Americans need to remind themselves of their essential nobility and stop groveling before the predator class. In a certain sense Robert Altmans Gosford Park is an alchemical movie in that it’s about the ennoblement of base metal by fire and pain. It could therefore be a metaphor for our standing in the fire as a people.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:05:41 +0000