Gossamer-like, lovely and wistful, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) thrums with the dual dispositions of the sublime Golden Age director Ernst Lubitsch and the jam-packed chapter and verse of Stefan Zweig. In this calorie-rich and joyously effete film from writer-director Wes Anderson one will find his most exhaustive and exuberant picture to date.
The Grand Budapest Hotel exists in a baroque bubble of an imagined old Europe where period styles, historical allusions, and joyful generic conventions intersect amidst a seeming compendium of potential films of adventure, emotion, humor, hubris, and tragedy.
Certainly Anderson’s most intricate and all-inclusive film, it’s a highly flavored shaggy-dog confection that may also be his chef d’oeuvre. The following list details why it is that The Grand Budapest Hotel is such a joy to watch and why it will remain the jewel of a prominent director’s already distinctive body of work.
8. The Unconventional Screenplay
Anderson’s screenplay, which sprang from a story by Anderson and Hugo Guinness––both men shared nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for their considerable efforts––was largely influenced by adored Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig.
Divided over three different timelines (1985, 1968, and 1932) and with a gripping and grandiose story within a story within a story conceit, the film has, at its crux, Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) as a concierge for the eponymous resort hotel. Paired with one of his employees, the young Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori)––a character who we also meet in later life played by F. Murray Abraham––the duo must prove Gustave’s innocence after he’s been framed for murder by the jealous and nasty heirs of a family fortune.
With chapter breaks, intertitles, various narrators (some rather unreliable), and at times an almost dizzying parade of eccentric characters, locales, → continue…
From:: Taste Of Cinema