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{"id":3444,"date":"2024-06-11T20:31:48","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T00:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/?p=3444"},"modified":"2024-06-11T20:31:48","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T00:31:48","slug":"altmans-agatha-christie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2024\/06\/altmans-agatha-christie\/","title":{"rendered":"Altman’s Agatha Christie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>

Altman in the (digital) flesh
Source: Wikimedia<\/a>
License<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Robert Altman loves an ensemble cast. He does not, however, typically set his films at lavish aristocratic estates in the English countryside. Certainly, Altman didn\u2019t earn his stripes making whodunits. And yet, Gosford Park <\/em>(2001) is all these things. More than anything, it\u2019s a phenomenal watch, a testament to what made Altman so special.<\/p>\n

What makes me love Altman is his willingness to let his actors and films be. His characters scurry in and out of rooms, overhear conversations, get halfway through a statement and become silent\u2014his films always feel inhabited, teeming. In Gosford Park<\/em>, I felt this most acutely in his movement between the house proper where various important people\u2014notables even\u2014gather to feast, stew, and gossip. Below, the servants live, work, and eat, arranged in their own hierarchy according to the importance of their employers. Filled with constant ruckus, the downstairs feels alive; its sterile cousin upstairs left suffocating, if occasionally bursting out in song or screeching.<\/p>\n

But conflict reigns in both parts of the house. Altman shows us just how unhappy, how troubled the atmosphere is. At the heart of the story (and I will not ruin it here) lies the rot brought about by power, by the unjust authority wielded by those upstairs, the sins and acts of violence it not only allows but subtly encourages.<\/p>\n

I have been very vague in this review. Typically, I don\u2019t mind \u201cruining\u201d the plots of films in these miniature reviews, especially old ones. But Gosford Park <\/em>remains\u00a0a mystery; it deserves to be seen in a spirit of discovery, out of a desire to know what will happen and who did it\u2014even if that\u2019s not really the point (Altman, of course, is a master of transmuting genre into something more than itself). Go watch it; see Altman in all his glory.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Altman loves an ensemble cast. He does not, however, typically set his films at lavish aristocratic estates in the English countryside. Certainly, Altman didn\u2019t earn his stripes making whodunits. And yet, Gosford Park (2001) is all these things. More than anything, it\u2019s a phenomenal watch, a testament to what made Altman so special. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2640,"featured_media":3447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1731],"tags":[4461,1939,4458,1811,4455,4464],"class_list":["post-3444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-agatha-christie","tag-class","tag-gosford-park","tag-mystery","tag-robert-altman","tag-whodunit"],"yoast_head":"\nAltman's Agatha Christie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What makes me love Altman is his willingness to let his actors and films be.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2024\/06\/altmans-agatha-christie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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