- Location: Blue Mouse Theatre
- Once again, I find myself completely vexed by Wes Anderson. I've now seen four of his films, and I feel like I hate them all despite absolutely adoring certain aspects of each. I mean, for chrissakes, Rushmore features a shot-by-shot remake of a scene from Michael Mann's Heat. If that isn't an effective way to build up credit with me, I don't know what is. And the ten-minute prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums is honestly one of the funniest comic setpieces I've ever seen on film. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou contains Bill Murray cussing out dolphins, Willem Dafoe in shortpants, and Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs. What could be funnier?! But alas, every one of his films thus far has somehow managed to leave a bad taste in my mouth by the end. So too with The Grand Budapest Hotel.
- I wanted to claim that this film was slightly different from his others in construction, but really that is not the case. Instead of a mansion or a submersible, Anderson's latest precious dollhouse is an old Austrian hotel. Well, actually, the country is named the "Republic of Zubrowka" but I'm assuming that since the source material author, Stefan Zweig, was Austrian, that so too is the setting. But I must admit, the hotel looks terrific! As in all of Anderson's films, set design reigns supreme, and you get the clear sense that a story has been concocted for every detail lurking in the marginalia. To his great credit, Anderson revels in those details and lets the camera linger on each (square-on, of course) just long enough to make you feel like you're reading a secret diary.
- In this case, the diary recounts the life of Zero Mustafa, played as a young man by Tony Revolori and as an older man and narrator by F. Murray Abraham. At the moment of his interview by the unnamed author (Jude Law), Mustafa is the owner of the declining Grand Budapest Hotel, but he was once a proud lobby boy and wore the hat to prove it. In those days, Zero worked for the incomparable Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), known for his perfumery and furthermore paradoxically considered to be both gay and a womanizer. But everyone agrees that Monsieur Gustave knew the hotel business. Under his reign, the Grand Budapest Hotel was considered among the finest alpine resorts in the world. But that was back before the death of Madame Desgoffe und Taxis (a heavily makeuped Tilda Swinton), the most famous and wealthy of Monsieur Gustave's geriatric sexual partners.
- Naturally, the family of Madame "D" resented her attachment to Monsieur Gustave, and it isn't long after the lawyer (Jeff Goldblum) reads her will that Madame's scowling son (Adrien Brody) enlists the help of rough-looking assassin (Willem Dafoe) to bump off the hotel manager. Further complications arise involving a stolen piece of artwork known as "Boy With Apple", a defenestrated cat, a prison camp containing a mostly-nude Harvey Keitel, and a firefight with ZZ troops, who are several letters away from being the Nazi SS. It's at this point that I started to feel sorry for Anderson, who somehow stumbled into the thankless job of making a comedy about the Nazis. It's not a particularly funny part of the movie, but at least he manages not to offend absolutely everyone.
- But back to my love-hate relationship with Anderson's films. In this case, the love is directed toward the beautifully constructed hotel settings, with some left over for Fiennes and Revolori, who are mesmerizing as a particular hotel man and his redoubtable lobby boy. I feel somewhat less affection for the haphazard plot, which deploys the rare double-flashback in conjunction with a completely uncustomary set of three different aspect ratios, and Anderson's off-putting tendency to grant cameos to Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray for no reason other than it is expected of him to do so. And on the completely negative side is Anderson's horrendously callous offscreen dismissal of Zero's love Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) and her infant son by the "Prussian grippe." A director who cared about his characters would have refrained from making up a joke disease to kill the most noble of them off, but Anderson remains ever unaware of such considerations. These are Characters with a capital C and to worry about them after the curtains are drawn would be to admit that there's more at stake here than just a cutesy story set in the world's darlingest dollhouse. But honestly, I liked parts of it!
- I probably missed some other actors, too, but I should mention Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, and Tom Wilkinson.
- Based on the stories of Stefan Zweig, who died in 1942 of a drug overdose in Rio de Janeiro.
