Charming. Delightful. And possibly more than that.
Synopsis: a nested series of framing devices move
us from the present day back to the fall and winter of 1932, in a fictional
country of Zubrowka in what appears to be eastern Europe. The eponymous hotel
sits atop a mountain like a giant pink pastry, reached (via stop motion
animation, it appears) by a tram that itself is built like a series of steps to
accommodate the extreme angle of the mountain.
The interior of the hotel is gorgeous as well:
In 1932, the hotel is run to exacting standards by
M. Gustave H (Ralph Finnes), a man with fanatical devotion to detail and a
willingness to provide sexual comfort to the wealthy elderly ladies who come to
the hotel precisely for M. Gustave.
Prominently featured is Madame D (Tilda Swinton)
with a bouffant swirl of white hair perched like a Dairy Queen ice cream atop
her head.
Her devotion and reliance on M. Gustave is
quickly sketched, and then suddenly, she is dead. Gustave takes newly hired
Lobby Boy Zero (Tony Revolori, one of the few actors not already hugely famous)
to her estate and arrives at the reading of the will. Madame D has left him a
priceless painting, and her grasping son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) accuses Gustave
of murdering her.
Imprisoned and awaiting trial, Gustave continues to
bring his full personality to the job of wheeling a "meal cart" to
the cells, offering the mush as if it were a carte de patisseries. He
endears himself to a group of four men who are plotting their escape. Gustave
manages to obtain "digging tools"--the most delicate and ridiculous
looking tiny items--by having them smuggled inside the pastries made by Zero's
fiancée, Agatha (Saorise Ronan).
One Great Escape later, Gustave and Zero are
pursued by the ruthlessly murderous Jopling (Willem DeFoe) who leaves a trail
of bodies in his wake. Upon their return to the GBH, they see it is being
converted to military use by the the fictive ZZ, the proto-Nazis of this movie.
No surprise, Dmitri is apparently a high ranking member. (And Owen Wilson cameos as the Quisling concierge.)
After Dmitri and Gustave accuse each other of
murdering Madame D, a second will comes to light (to be executed only in the
event of Madame D's murder) which leaves her enormous fortune to Gustave,
including the Grand Budapest Hotel. Gustave has a few years to enjoy his new
wealth...
The story of the hotel, told by "Author"
becomes a classic in the country, and the Author's headstone is a pilgrimage
site, where people hang their hotel keys in homage.
The plot, of course, is in some ways an excuse for
the extravagant visuals, which are themselves meticulously planned. Each of the
three time periods (present day, 1968, and 1932) are shot in a different aspect
ratio as one way of conveying the passage of years. And even a non-visually
adept view like I am began to giggle at Anderson's resolute insistence on
framing everything symmetrically. Forget any "rule of
thirds"--everything was placed as close to the exact center of the frame
as possible.
On the surface, then, it's a comedy murder/caper
film, gorgeously staged and highly stylized. In some ways, The Grand
Budapest Hotel nails the tone that Muppets Most Wanted tried
and failed to achieve. Cartoon villains, stylized violence with some real emotional
power (what happens to Jeff Goldblum's character is surprisingly upsetting),
and a stylized visual vocabulary constructed in large part via forced
perspective--all in service to a story with some heart constructed around an
unlikely protagonist: a green felt frog or a sexually ambiguous concierge.
Except--Nazis? Sure, technically, they are
"Zig Zags," their logo two lightning bolts forming the letters, and
they are brutish, violent, but ultimately easily vanquished. Still--it
seems like the presence of even ersatz Nazis would be a serious tonal misfire.*
Can comedy Nazis even exist?
Which brings me to the humanity at the core of this
highly artificial work. M. Gustave is a clown in a circus created by Wes
Anderson, but he is also a man of fundamental values. He embodies hard work,
attention to detail, treating everyone around him with respect and dignity.
Over and over again (and almost always played for laughs) he treats others
weight deep respect, regardless of their situation. Madame D, while incredibly
elderly and ridiculous looking, is mocked as an object of sexual desire by
everyone except M. Gustave. His performance of fine dining that he brings to
the job of passing out prison gruel creates a bond between him and the giant
inmate. The gracious way M. Gustave offers the mush--"it needs a bit of
salt" he says, seasoning the bowl and then handing it over to the
physically intimidating man--embodies the values of hospitality and
graciousness. It is paid back to him when the giant's cellmate spots the jail
break and tries to raise an alarm. The giant silences the man, and allows
Gustave to escape.
Similarly, the mix of high and low is what allows
him to enter into the escape plan. He appears at the visitors' station with his
face beaten up. He reports that "Pinky" got the worst of the fight,
"and actually now we are quite dear friends." Later, he shares his
Mendl's pastry with Pinky and the cell mates, using "the throat
slitter"--a fairly disturbing switchblade--to divide the dessert. He
brings the imperative of running a hotel--welcoming everyone who crosses the
threshold--to prison life, and the respect he grants is repaid to him.
And in a world descending into brutality--the
ZZ--it is these small graces that make living possible. Literally, when the
favors M. Gustave does are repaid, but also to save the world from becoming
merely horrific. It is the small pastries, the proper manicure, the spritz of
the signature cologne "L'Air de Panache" that provide the means for
continuing in the face of destruction. These gestures stand for the larger
virtues--loyalty, honesty, humanity. These are not small things.
The trailer does give a taste of what the whole
movie is like. I recommend it!
____________
*Speaking of tonal misfires:
In what may be a signature gobsmacking move, Vogue.com offers
a slide show of characters from the film,
followed with sourcing for a similar look. For M. Gustave, they chose his
prison wear--as if that is a look one would want to emulate--and the total cost
of the purchasable version is in the vicinity of $2000. Because of course! Who
doesn't want to drop two grand to look like a Middle European convict? (Or,
more disturbingly, like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas--a concentration
camp inmate?)
Rochas striped silk trousers,
$1,073
The Elder Statesman monster seed
cap, $500
The Row Amautio top, $990
Escadrille striped seersucker
espadrilles, $125
And, to be pedantic--M. Gustave doesn't wear
espadrilles. He very obviously wears wooden sabots. Do your research!
_________
Some boring context and disclaimers.
I have seen several Wes Anderson movies, and I see
some common threads, but I can't say I have any systematic understanding of his
work. Grand Budapest Hotel has what appears to be some stop
motion animation that feels like it grew out of Fantastic Mr. Fox,
but I saw that movie so very many years ago, and at the time watched it as a
movie to see with my kids rather than as a "Wes Anderson film" so I
have certainly missed lots about what was going on there.
Similarly, The Royal Tennanbaums was
my introduction to his work; I saw that even longer ago. The Life
Aquatic with Steve Zissou I have only seen parts of, and thought of as
a Bill Murray movie. Probably the closest I have come to watching a Wes
Anderson movie as a Wes Anderson movie was seeing Moonrise
Kingdom when it first came out. This is how I approached GBH.
My thoughts here are also
influenced by the conversation lead by Dana Stevens on the Slate Spoiler
Special podcast, which started scratching at the larger meaning behind the
movie. Stevens was disappointed by this film, because she felt that Anderson failed to connect with the emotional content of the subject he was playing with. My understanding of her point is that he failed to acknowledge the import of the killings and brutality. To her mind, the movie failed. I don't agree, although I think I understand why she felt the way she did. I think Anderson is actually saying something, but the message (such as
it is) is embedded in the exquisite production design. Looking for
meaning and emotional power is to kind of miss the point of this movie.
There is a tendency for critics
to address the object under review as if the critical assessment is objective,
and the missed connections and the flaws exist in the movie (or book, or
whatever). The participants in the Spoiler Special make statements like
"the movie failed to connect with the emotion." My experience was
very different--I felt that the emotion was there, but was deliberately
underplayed. Which leads me to believe that the movie and the watcher attempt
to meet somewhere in the middle, between the director's intention and the
watcher's expectations and readiness. When the two fail to connect, it is a
missed communication--what the director was trying to say and what the audience
understood of the message may not line up. It is not the "fault" of
either party, it is the random nature of human attempts at connection.
So while I may fall into some habits of "the movie did this"
or "the director did that," what I am trying to do is to communicate
what my experience of the movie was. I may well have gotten it
wrong. I may well be so entirely idiosyncratic that I am not a fair measure of
whether anyone else will enjoy what I saw. I can say that I believe that Wes
Anderson is both seriously playful, and playfully serious, and that there is
more than mere surface decoration to this movie. The surface beauty of the film
might well have been enough for me--but there is more than that to be had.
