Grand Budapest Hotel Review
Opens in Canada March 14
by Anne Brodie
Grand Budapest Hotel is fun like a ribald game of snakes and
ladders as characters fortunes swell and disappear. I love Wes Anderson’s light
touch and unique sense of style. Extreme sophistication and childlike wonder
co-exist in beautiful, intriguing, delicious harmony, joys to watch and hear.
Anderson’s writing is informed by things of great arcane weight, classical
education, art and design through the ages, arts and letters of the past,
reverence for his characters as thinkers and complete recognition of our unique
individualism. Anderson dares to be an optimist, a radical attitude in this
cynical era and he is optimistic with a vengeance, against all comers, against
the Nazis, the thugs, the cheaters, betrayers and players. Anderson’s sunny
outlook is incredibly infectious and builds up the viewer. I guess it’s
inspiring.
At the center of the film is Lobby Boy Zero (Tony Revolori) and his protégée
M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes at his zaniest) two employees of the hotel who
navigate the sturm and drang of the era between the wars and the financial ups
and downs of the place. Their adventures take them to far off places but they
almost always return to the relative safety and consistency hotel.
The hotel
and settings are crammed with fascinating characters played with relish by Bill
Murray, Tilda Swinton, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, Adrian Brody, Jude Law, F.
Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Jason Schwartzman, Anderson’s
regulars and worthy newcomers. None cleaves to the conventional Hollywood
wisdom of character, appearance or behavior. They are freaks and
individualists.
Anderson’s cameos are top notch, from friends and collaborators
like Bob Balaban, Mathieu Amalric, Léa Seydoux and Waris Ahluwalia who may say
a line or two, and then disappear. It’s a teasing, delightful game he plays,
inviting us to recognize the faces he holds dear enough to throw into the film,
even as outfield players. And the sheer volume of name actors in the film is
stunning. The shock of recognition buoys things, as we watch the central
characters and consequences play out. The cast meet Andersons’ script
challenges by acting and moving in specific ways that uphold iconic fantasy
elements. Do people really move and sit and look like his characters? No, they
don’t. But in the Anderson fantasy world, much is conveyed about classicism,
time and history through movement and bearing –
In fact, surprise is a strong
element in the film, the surprise of suddenly being thrust inside a pink
wedding cake of a hotel and meeting its distinctive inhabitants, the surprise in
what they say and the twists and turns of life in their world. Nothing is
ordinary in the Grand Budapest Hotel. A word about Wes Anderson’s perennially
brilliant art direction and set design. I was drawn like many to the film
originally not by the cast or by Anderson but by the poster showing the hotel
in the rose gold colors of dawn. This monumental candy palace with its
mysterious lights and romantic mountain environment surely holds secrets and
wonders. And honestly, what other filmmakers go to the trouble Anderson does in
inventing a visually seductive world where things are different? Inside the
castle, as it moves through time there is pink everywhere, cream and yellows,
gilt and crystal. The author reading us the story of the hotel sits in a crazy orange
and yellow setting straight from the sixties. The palatial home of Madam D.
(Tilda Swinton) is hyper Beidermeier / Bavarian classic hybrid and the
prison/hospital and train well, they are eyefuls too. The story is fun like a
game of snakes and ladders as characters fortunes swell and disappear. It’s a
whodunit, a fantasy, a romance, and a costume piece. This is one film that
can’t be explained in any real way. It must be experienced as the glorious
sensual masterpiece that it is.
35mm fantasy Written by Wes Anderson, Hugo
Guinness, Directed by Wes Anderson Opens March 6 USA, March 14 Canada Runtime:
99 minutes MPAA: 14A Country: UK / Germany Language: English / French
No comments:
Post a Comment