Movie Review: "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (Wes Anderson, 2014)

IT’S NOT JUST THE HOTEL THAT WENT TO SEED

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Ralph Fiennes and Saoirse Ronan star in Mr. Anderson's latest

 

If you’ve seen the trailer for Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” then you know that its hero is the impeccably purple-suited Gustave H.—concierge of the Grand Budapest itself.  But what you may not realize is that the film begins decades after Gustave’s death, starting with a fantastically hilarious prologue about a pompous young writer (Jude Law) visiting the now-decrepit hotel. 

If only the rest of the film were as diverting.  Yes, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” offers many of Mr. Anderson’s singularly mischievous witticisms (particularly in a scene in which a church choir inexplicably starts singing along to the film’s soundtrack).  Yet it is also replete with gory violence, one-dimensional characters, and, most troublingly, a sense of weightlessness that leaves you wondering—why did this uniquely talented director bother making a film that’s about as satisfying as a well-aged wine laced with arsenic?

            That I cannot answer.  But it becomes clear quite early that the film is doomed to be lesser Anderson, especially once Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) enters the story.  From the beginning, he seems less a character than a set of meticulous mannerisms punctuated by expletives (Mr. Anderson knows there’s no faster way to an indie audience’s heart than dropping a few well-timed F-bombs).  Still, you can instantly see why Gustave is as popular as the Grand Budapest itself.  Dignified and intellectually savvy (he recites poetry spontaneously throughout the movie), he is clearly a man who hotel guests can depend on and, on special occasions, sleep with.

            Alas, Gustave’s exceedingly well-organized life is as flimsy as the establishment that employs him (like many of Mr. Anderson’s sets, the Grand Budapest resembles a lavish doll house); he is, after all, living in the days just before WWII.  But even if he weren’t, he still has to contend with the nasty machinations of the wealthy slime ball Dmitri Von Taxis (Adrien Brody), who not only denies our hero his inheritance, but frames him for murder as well. 

            Needless to say, a madcap chase ensues, wreaking havoc across the storybook Europe where the movie makes its home.  And yet it soon becomes clear that Mr. Anderson has more in mind then some light screwball entertainment.  In fact, as the inheritance plot thickens, violent occurrences begin sprouting everywhere.  An assassin named Jopling (Willem Dafoe) begins stalking through the streets at night; a few severed fingers get dropped in the snow; and finally, we see a police officer pull a woman’s severed head out of a basket.

            Um, yuck.  I’ll admit that Mr. Anderson seems to be playing this carnage for laughs (when Gustave witnesses a bloody knife fight, we’re clearly meant to focus on his bizarrely blasé attitude toward the proceedings, not the violence itself).  Yet I couldn’t help feeling unsettled.  It’s not that the brutality in “Budapest” is any worse than what you’ve seen in other art films; it’s that the jaunty tone Mr. Anderson insists upon makes the proceedings surprisingly upsetting.  And really, there’s nothing worse than being told to laugh when you really just want to vomit—a feeling that only intensifies when we see Nazi-esque flags covering the hotel. 

            In other words, surprise!  “The Grand Budapest Hotel” isn’t just Mr. Anderson’s latest comedic opus—it’s a requiem for pre-WWII Europe (inspired, the credits tell us, by the writings of the Austrian author Stefan Zweig).  And so it is, perhaps, a noble endeavor; after all, whenever a filmmaker creates a cinematic testament to a doomed era, they have an opportunity honor those who lost their lives in it.

            But does that change how I feel about the movie?  To be honest, no.  “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is certainly a work of marvelous invention, as its delightful images of toy funicular trains chugging toward the hotel can attest.  Yet in the end, the film leaves an utterly sour taste in your mouth, an uneasiness best summed up by a character’s sober declaration that “[Gustave’s] world had vanished long ago.”

What, I wonder, does Mr. Anderson mean by that line?  Is he talking about Europe?  Or maybe, the film industry itself?  Either way, it doesn’t matter, because in the end, those words say less about Gustave and more about Mr. Anderson.  Because the truth is that this director may be like his protagonist—a man clinging to something that he can’t quite grasp, something that makes you long for who he was before.