The Grand Budapest Hotel

All the great directors are evolving with time, but this theory is not always proven, sometimes they play with their viewers more than necessary. It’s not the case here, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the best movie to date, made by Wes Anderson, a director already featured in my blog, with his moving puppets animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Mister Anderson has also written the movie, a metaphor of old times in some invented place in Europe, with a few unrelated names on it.

[source: all pictures are from imdb.com]

He said that he was inspired by Stefan Zweig, but it seems that the inspiration came most from Zweig’s persona, as an homage, or better, a gesture of admiration. Anderson claims to have borrowed aspects from Beware of Pity and The Post-Office Girl. It might be true, because he was inspired by the falsity and decadence of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire described in the books. “The Author”, played by Tom Wilkinson (at maturity) and by Jude Law as a young writer in searching for subjects are representations of Zweig. The difference is that the real author left Austria in 1934 very depressed because of the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. More than that, after living for a short period in England and United States, he moved again in Brazil, where eventually he also committed suicide.

The movie is about the life of a hotel concierge played magisterially by Ralph Fiennes, related by his protégé, “Zero Moustapha”, played with great talent by Tony Revolori as a young bellhop and by F. Murray Abraham when transmitting the story to The Author (Jude Law), in the once famous Grand Hotel Budapest’s enormous dinning room.

The story is very colorful, sensitive, adventurous and of course, unbelievable. The movie has its own pace which never ceases to make you wonder. Wes Anderson gave his whole attention to every detail. I can’t name it a comedy, even if every scene proves an unmistakable deep sense of humor. A movie isn’t necessary just a comedy (as imdb is leaving us to believe), just because of having Bill Murray and Owen Wilson acting in it.

I really wanted to fill this post with pictures more than with words, because The Grand Budapest Hotel is such an artistic movie, after all. Technically, it is a British-German co-production, filmed almost entirely in Germany, between January and March 2013.

The distribution is quite smashing. Have a look (in credits order, not at all in importance order): Ralph Fiennes as “M. Gustave”, F. Murray Abraham as “Mr. Moustafa”, Mathieu Amalric as “Serge X.”, Adrien Brody as “Dmitri”, Willem Dafoe as “Jopling”, Jeff Goldblum as “Deputy Kovacs”, Harvey Keitel as “Ludwig”, Jude Law as “Young Writer”, Bill Murray as “M. Ivan”, Edward Norton as “Henckels”, Saoirse Ronan as “Agatha”,Jason Schwartzman as “M. Jean”, Léa Seydoux as “Clotilde”, Tilda Swinton as “Madame D.”, Tom Wilkinson as “The Author”, Owen Wilson as “M. Chuck”, Tony Revolori as “Zero”.

It is a fantasy inspired from a decadent mentality in the first quarter of the last century. A proud member on imdb’s Top 250 of all times list with an 8.2 out of 10 rating, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a highly recommended 2014 release, of 100 minutes long.

 

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