Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is pure joy. It’s a comedy movie released last year and has an awesome star cast. Ralph Fiennes leads the group. Then there’s F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody…to name a few! The plot is complicated but presented so effortlessly that you don’t have any trouble shifting between present day, the 1960s and 1930s. How many movies or novels can boast of that?
A brief synopsis:
Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) is concierge at The Grand Budapest Hotel, a popular ski resort in the 1930s at the fictional European Alpine Republic of Zubrowka. A junior lobby boy called Zero Mustafa (Tony Revolori as the boy and F. Murray Abraham as the older Zero) becomes his friend and protégé. Gustave prides himself on providing his guests top class service and that includes sexual favours to rich elderly women visiting there. One of his lovers is Madame D (Tilda Swinton) who dies under mysterious circumstances and bequeaths him a priceless painting Boy with Apple. This enrages her family, particularly her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and Gustave finds himself framed for her murder and arrested. How he escapes from prison and proves his innocence forms the rest of the action.
Wes Anderson’s masterful treatment of the large array of actors and his amazing screenplay blew my mind. It’s a lesson for all writers, the way he gives bit parts such brilliant characteristics that they remain with us long after the movie ends. The locales are gorgeous and the manner in which Anderson combines wit, humour, farce and suspense is worth all the hype surrounding the movie (11 Oscar nominations!).
To give you a small example of one of the many, many wonderful scenes in the movie: Gustave has just escaped from prison and Zero is waiting outside the walls for him. Instead of scooting from there, Gustave proceeds to harangue the lobby boy for not bringing along his favourite cologne, L’air du panache. Moments later he regrets his words and apologizes to Zero for failing to meet the high standards of The Grand Budapest Hotel!
Don’t miss this movie.
