I was irritatingly late to the party where Wes Anderson’s eighth feature film The Grand Budapest Hotel is concerned, but it was most definitely worth the wait. I remember watching his last offering Moonrise Kingdom with excited zeal and childlike enthusiasm. “This is fucking brilliant” I thought “he can’t surpass this” well, I proved myself wrong, he did surpass it. The Grand Budapest Hotel moves gracefully from scene to scene like a golden tinged carousel, that invokes a fine and reflective craftsmanship.
The Wes Anderson formula was in full and coherent flow, a perfect narrative matched by equally perfect dialogue, acting, costumes, direction and cinematography.
Too often I hear people say “Oh Wes Anderson is just obsessed with nostalgia!” they’re completely and utterly wrong of course. Anderson does indeed have a great affection for the past, but in no way, shape or form does he turn his films into predictable nostalgia-by-numbers. They are madcap worlds of his own making, worlds of fantasy, irascible humour and delectable reverie. For Anderson, nostalgia is incorporated into his larger cinematic method of aesthetics and story telling.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, set in 1932, concentrates on the exploits of the eccentric Monsieur Gustave H (played by Ralph Fiennes) the hotel’s conciege, who shags rich old women, recites poetry, gives mamouth long sermon’s to his staff at dinner time and insists on calling everyone darling. Despite his many flaws and narcissism, Monsieur Gustav is a good soul, who sees humanity as a feculent mass of cruelty and dispondancy, so wants to inject a bit of kindness and love into the world.
He develops a bond with his new bell boy Zero Moustafa (played by Tony Revolori) an orphaned refugee, keen to please Monsieur Gustav, who he eventually looks upon as a father figure. Zero is clever and thinks on his feet, particularly when faced with the ensuing madness of Monsieur Gustav’s predicament.
It’s a cleverly structured film, the story of Monsieur Gustav and co is preceded by a subdued beginning. A young girl, clutching a copy of The Grand Budapest Hotel, with a cover that looks like a dusky pink chocolate box, walks up to a memorial sculpture of a man known as ‘The Author’. She begins reading this “true story” told to the author (played by Jude Law) on his visit to the Grand Budapest in 1968, by an old and solemn Zero Moustafa (played by F. Murray Abraham).
The hotel in 1968 looks tired and sorrowful, it’s once grand reception rooms have fallen from grace, submerged in a hideous palette of imposing communist shades, with dim lighting that feels like the hotel is slowly dying.
The film is laid out into three chapters, and as the first chapter begins we see the Grand Budapest in its former glory, a pleasure palace for the wealthy elite of this magical little Alpine state called Zubrowka. Drenched in a sumptuous concoction of divine colours, Monsieur Gustav runs the hotel with the greatest love and attention, along with pleasuring his harem of octogenarian guests.
It’s his liason with the 84-year-old Madam D (played by Tilda Swinton) the matriach of Zubrowka’s most powerful family, that kick-starts a series of darkly comic events. After Madam D is found dead in her boudoir, and the family solicitor Vilmos Kovacs (played by Jeff Goldblum) reveals that the late Madam D left a priceless painting to Monsieur Gustav in her will, her villainous son and heir Dmitri (played by Adrian Brody) is determined to destroy him.
It’s not too long before the police arrest Monsieur Gustav for the Madam D, and he needs Zero’s help to clear his name.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson’s most mathematically perfect film, well known for his use of the “one point perspective”, he takes this concept to entirely new levels, dare I say it, superceded the “one point perspective” pioneer Stanley Kubrick. Each chapter is a treat, finely fashioned with perfectly timed comedy, action and illustrious dialogue, which is complimented by Robert Yeoman’s cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack.
The hilarity is melded with a poignant melancholy, for example Monsieur M proves himself a particularly thoughtful individual when he says to Zero – “You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”
Anderson makes no apologies for being mathematically and aesthetically focussed, he makes no apologies that, as a director, he engages a formula which is incredibly diverse, and finally, he makes no apologies that his films are eccentric romps, that purposefully celebrate cinema’s past and present glory. The Grand Budapest Hotel is all that, and then some.