"Gosford Park"
shown at Ebisu Garden Cinema (until 1/24)

At the end of last year I went to see Robert Altman’s "Gosford Park." As Oh Shomei pointed out in his article on our Cinema Picks page, it’s a brilliant movie full of rogues. The film is set in the England of the early 1930s, where several aristocrats and their subordinates gather at a country house. Due to the numerous characters and the complicated relations among them one first doesn't comprehend what’s going on, but by the middle of the film every viewer will have got the intricate story. Then, suddenly, a murder provides another riddle to solve. After "A Wedding" and "Pret-a-Porter," the maestro has come up with another pleasant work.

The film’s perfect production and more hints than necessary don't exactly make it a good mystery piece. Halfway through the movie everybody can guess the culprit and his motive. But a skilled master has finished such things long time ago, and this time it’s not about the hunt of a criminal. In the same way the director made fun of the American petty bourgeois iin "A Wedding" and the Paris fashion snobs in "Pret-a-Porter," this time it’s the English upper class that’s completely turned into ridicule. In order to mark their vulgarity the subordinates are portrayed with perfectly servant-like manners, and also the choice of words, grammar and intonation emphasizes the gap between the classes.

"Honkaku Shosetsu" (Shinchosha)

What came to my mind when watching the movie was Mizumura Minae’s book "Honkaku Shosetsu" that was published last year. The author of a ’sequel' to "Zoku-Meian," Natsume Soseki’s final written work, and "Shishosetsu from left to right," a novel featuring both Japanese and lateral English writing, Mizumura’s style is considered rather experimental. "Honkaku Shosetsu," though, is based on Emily Bronte’s "Wuthering Heights," and this one is not an "I" novel and not spiced up with tricky experimentalism, but what the author creates here is kind of a ’standard' novel scenery.

Like in "Wuthering Heights," what holds the story together is the set-up of backgrounds and origins of the appearing characters. Portrayed here is a bunch of old women who once belonged to the good old Japanese high society, and who would fit comfortably into Chekhov’s "Cherry Orchard." Then there is a 'housemaid' serving them in their cottage in the Karuizawa resort area. Further appearing is a young Japanese descendant of a Chinese minority race who escaped to the USA after being treated coldly by the ladies. Just like in Altman’s film, the contrast between the classes is inseparably connected to the story’s course.

Japan happens to be called a typical example of 'the end of history,' and the disappearance of the hierarchical society here is in fact progressing much faster than in European countries. The popularization of Karuizawa is exactly what proves this. Again, this is what has robbed modern literature, represented by the likes of Hori Tatsuo, of the soil it needs to prosper and the ground to stand upon. However, what I'd rather like to point out is that in pursuit of backgrounds (or actual motifs) for their stories gifted fiction authors in both East and West — Altman and Mizumura — have explored the romantics of the class society that have been/are being lost.

In an age where everything is rolled even, can it be that fiction doesn't have the power it used to have? Is relying on nostalgia the only way to keep it alive? It is possible, though, that Altman doesn't have any nostalgic feelings at all. In the eyes of the British noblemen in "Gosford Park" the American film producer who appears there is speaking an impossibly frivolous English, which they frown upon. Altman is acknowledged for caricaturing himself, and in the same manner how "Pret-a-Porter" shows off the advantages of film over the fashion world, it seems that in his most recent work he displays how the parts of the masses and the ’spectacle society' dominate that of the class society. And that’s again all Robert Altman.