With his soft pastels, perfectly centered shots, quirky camera technique, and wry yet hilarious dialogue that has become so epitomic of his work, Wes Anderson brings us his best film to date with The Grand Budapest Hotel. He directed, co-produced, and co-wrote this film, his 10th feature. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the story of how Zero Moustafa, originally a lobby boy at the Grand Budapest, came to be the owner of the hotel outright through his adventures with the concierge M. Gustave H.
The film begins in such a convoluted way, only Anderson would have even attempted it. Starting with a girl going to a bust of the premier author of the fictional eastern European country Zubrowka, to a 1985 address given by the author about his premier work also named The Grand Budapest Hotel, and finally to 1968 at the Grand Budapest, where a younger version of the author played by Jude Law is staying. The film gets into the plot when Law’s character meets an older Zero (F. Murrary Abraham), staying at the hotel in his former worker’s quarters despite being the richest man in Zubrowka. Zero invites the author to dinner and explains his story. F. Murrary Abraham’s narration ties the whole film together. His soft, grandfatherly voice makes it seem like an old family story. A sense of attachment and genuine care is created through this narration.
Over this dinner, Zero thinks back to 1932, when he first started working at the Grand Budapest and the concierge, M. Gustave H, played by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes gives an incredible performance in the film. His witty yet endearing sarcasm directed towards nearly everyone in the film is heartwarmingly delivered. Gustave H inspires a want for something that never even existed. Zero called him a man who’s “world had vanished before he entered it,” and this is Gustave H to a tee.
Zero explains his time with Gustave, his boss and eventual friend. Soon after starting his work at the hotel, he noticed that guests didn’t come for the hotel, but for Gustave. The guests adored him, particularly the old, blonde, rich, and vain ones. Gustave went to bed with those who had all those qualities.
One such person was Madame Desgoffe und Taxis, Madame D for short. Played by Tilda Swinton, a perennial Andersonian actor, Madame D is found dead in her palazzo in Lutz after a long stay at the Grand Budapest. Gustave decides it is absolutely necessary that he, and his underling protégé Zero, must go to see her, just in case she left anything in her will for him. It’s this hopefulness mixed with some sort of bitterness about the world that makes Gustave H such a wonderfully complex character to watch.
Upon arriving at the Desgoffe und Taxis palazzo, the pair visits Madame D’s body and makes their way to the room where the will is being read. It is there that M. Gustave finds out that he is the benefactor of a beautiful painting, Von Hoytl’s Boy with Apple. In this scene, among others, Anderson employs one of his most common camera techniques. After cutting around the room, getting everyone’s reactions to Gustave H getting the coveted painting, the camera pans to Gustave H at the back of the room standing with just the right amount of motion blur to make the pan seem like the viewer is moving their head to see what is going on. Also in this scene, like so many others, such precise and symmetrical framing is used by Anderson and cinematographer Robert Yeoman. These techniques are so quintessentially Anderson that a film of his without them is impossible to imagine.
Madame D’s son, Dmitri (Adrien Brody), verbally and physically attacks M. Gustave for being willed such a prized possession; however, him and Zero make it out of Lutz not only alive but with the painting. They return to the perfectly pastel halls of the Grand Budapest and hide the painting, but not before agreeing to sell it on the black market. It is on a train ride back to the Grand Budapest that Fiennes delivers one of the funniest lines in the film. Upon Zero requesting a higher percentage than 1.5% of the profits, Gustave H. retorts, “Ten? Are you joking? That’s more than I’d pay an actual dealer… and you wouldn’t know chiaroscuro from chicken giblets. No 1.5 is correct.” This wry and quirky writing Anderson creates and Ralph Fiennes delivers is so exemplary of the writing style in Grand Budapest that makes its writing one of the higher points of the film as a whole.
The film continues on with a perfectly convoluted story of Gustave getting arrested for killing Madame D, a second will for Madame D, that will being lost, Gustave H subsequently breaking out of prison, a secret society of concierges, a chase scene with skis and a sled, Romantic poetry, a shootout, a second copy to the second will, the acquittal of Gustave H, and finally how Zero came to own the hotel. Despite it seeming to be all over the place, Anderson is able to tell a coherent, heartwarming and poignant story.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, although kitschy or overly quirky to some, is a beautifully produced film with an Oscar winning score, a fantastic color palate of pastels, and a story that is so original in a time where original stories are said to be running dry. This film is not only enjoyable to watch but is also technically exquisite, making the viewing experience all the better.
By Matt Denaro
