The Grand Budapest Hotel

Year: 2014 (USA)
Genre: Comedy/Screwball Comedy
Directed: Wes Anderson
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Tony Revolori
Production: Scott Rudin Productions

I feel like director Wes Anderson’s career has been leading up to this film. It’s safe to say that those familiar with the literate, quirky auteur and his celebrated style will find much to enjoy regarding the goings-on in an Eastern European luxury hotel. Those who come in from the cold will likewise find a rare wistful quality and a very common air of post-modernism layered in unfamiliar settings.

Those who know me know I have not been a fan of Anderson’s work in the past. Wasting the potential of large, well known casts and keeping everything fussily symmetrical and pastel, I once compared him and his style unfavorably to that of a 1970’s pornographer. I always sensed there was a distance between the elaborate set-dressing and stilted dialogue he always seems to employ and the emotional core of what a good story should be.

He created a world without walls apparently

It was only after I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) did I realize his potential; not so much as a filmmaker, at least not yet, but as a creator of worlds. Steve Zissou was, again disappointing in its narrative but managed to be something altogether different from the turgid dryness of Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) successfully took advantage of an all encompassing vision which made me much more aware of Anderson’s true potential. It helped that his stories were more whimsical and entered squarely in the realm of crowd-pleasers instead of receptacles of arcane literary trivia. He also hinted at emotional artistic expression ever so slightly; especially in Moonrise Kingdom.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a happy marriage of Wes Anderson in all his forms; a whimsical visual artist, a pedantic Eurocentrist and finally an emotional storyteller. Ralph Fiennes stars as a philandering but thorough hotel concierge M. Gustave who takes young Zero (Tony Revolori) under his wing as the Grand Budapest’s new bellboy. Gustave and Zero are forced into a series of misadventures when one of his elderly bedfellows dies bequeathing him a priceless painting.

Thematically, Anderson seems to be playing around with ones sense of nostalgia or at least the nostalgia of those who remember the works of Sacha Guitry. The story beseeches its audience into an unearthly place and time inside an unknown European country prior to an unknown war. The film begins with a little girl opening a book narrated by “The Author” (Tom Wilkinson); her surroundings are snowy and stark as she stares at a yet unrecognizable statue. The Author recalls a time in his youth when he visited the Grand Budapest in the 1968 and met the elderly Zero (F. Murray Abraham) who had become a man of renown since his time as a bellboy. In these early scenes, the hotel has fallen into disrepair yet while there’s evidence of muck and rust, the grandeur of the hotel shines through. He then tells the story of his predecessor who is never without his tyrian purple tuxedo and bowtie. By the time we get to the story within the story, within the story, the hotel resembles a wedding cake and even the bland colors of Zero’s six by ten room pop out at you.

very suspicious fakeness

Sometimes looking through rose colors glasses may skew one’s perceptions of the past. The artifice of the film is always signature Anderson with a suspicious fakeness especially in times of heightened tension. Yet despite the fakeness and moments of dry wit and levity, there’s more than meets the eye. There is a surprising bit of bitterness with the sweet confections cooked up by Anderson and his stellar cast which includes Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, and Willem Dafoe. Like in Cabaret (1972), there’s foreboding hints of fascism lurking in the shadows; ever present yet not actively driving the plot. Could it be a statement on today’s modern political landscape? Could scenes involving Zero and the authorities who jostle him be a statement on immigration? Could the stark clientele haunting the 1968 hotel, and the hotel itself represent the failed promises of Communism? Perhaps not but there’s no denying such sad realities.

The language in the film also serves and important purpose in highlighting the film’s bittersweet sensibilities. Like in Anderson’s previous works, the dialogue is very formal and composed juxtaposed with the farcical elements on full display. There are piercing moments of obscenities which provide a cheap laugh or two yet I feel they serve another purpose. The film reminds the audience, specifically the true filmophiles that while it may resemble Night Train to Munich (1940) and The Great Dictator (1940), The Grand Budapest Hotel is very much a product of 2014.

Leave no doubt in your mind, The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson’s best film to date and certainly a film worthy of consideration. It reaches the apex of what the director’s sensibilities could be which is to say entertaining, artfully done and literate. It’s much more than a dotty wee skid mark and a pretty face, like Moonrise Kingdom (2012) before it, the film transcends and becomes emotionally satisfying, signifying that Anderson is finally willing to open up and evolve as an artist.

Final Grade: A