There isn’t much middle ground when it comes to how one feels about writer-director Wes Anderson. His meticulously fussy visual style, offbeat humor and unflagging quirkiness have won both ardent fans and equally ardent detractors; one viewer’s delight is another’s eye-rolling preciousness.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, quintessential Anderson, will not woo the unconverted. As with all his films, every detail – and some might contend that Anderson pictures are nothing but detail – bears his imprimatur. It enchants his admirers and annoys others. But since I’m squarely in the former camp, let me just summarize that The Grand Budapest Hotel sits alongside The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom as his best work.
Set in the mythical Eastern European country of Zubrowka, the narrative unfolds as a sort of matryoshka doll (albeit not quite as complex as that of Asteroid City). We begin in the present day but soon flash back to 1985 as a writer (the late Tom Wilkinson) recounts a tale he heard in his younger days. That takes us to 1968, when the titular hotel has become a nearly empty Soviet-bloc relic. A younger version of the writer (Jude Law) meets the hotel’s wealthy proprietor, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), who, unsurprisingly, has a story to tell.
Zero’s flashback, in turn, introduces us to Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), the hotel’s concierge during its heyday in the 1930s. Gustave is a true bon vivant, an extravagantly perfumed dandy whose sophistication and professionalism are offset by the occasionally shouted obscenity and the bedding of rich old ladies who frequent the Grand Budapest. Among his octogenarian lovers is Madame D. (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton). She dies under mysterious circumstances, and the ensuing brouhaha over the inheritance pits Gustave against Madame D.’s family, a pack of money-hungry jackals led by the dead woman’s son (Adrien Brody).
The family doesn’t appreciate it when Madame D.’s. final will bequeaths Gustave a priceless painting. It isn’t long before the family has framed the concierge as her murderer, forcing him and his faithful lobby boy, the young Zero (Tony Revolori), to flee across the country. The setup, ideal for screwball comedy, lets Anderson choreograph some of his funniest bits to date. There are several terrific set pieces, especially a prison escape and an alpine ski chase via the gloriously ramshackle magic of stop-motion animation.
But the humor is underscored by a threat of violence. Willem Dafoe is a hit man who does not care for cats. The farce plays out against a backdrop of Europe bracing for war. Gustave muses on “this barbaric slaughterhouse once known as humanity,” while Zubrowka is occupied by a force that looks and sounds an awful lot like Nazi Germany. Old Europe, as embodied by M. Gustave, is on the verge of witnessing the vanishing of culture and refinement. It isn’t for nothing that Anderson’s script was inspired by the works of Stefan Zweig, a Jewish Austrian writer who committed suicide in the midst of Hitler’s reign of terror.
The Grand Budapest Hotel boasts all the trappings we have come to expect from Anderson, from elaborate camerawork and impeccable production values to scads of movie-geek references. But the filmmaker is matched here by Fiennes, who is amazing as Gustave. The star-studded ensemble also includes Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Saoirse Ronan, but it is Fiennes who captures Gustave’s mix of grandiloquence and vulgarity. He is never less than brilliant.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 