The Grand Hotel Budapest. (15)
Directed by Wes Anderson.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody and Jeff Goldblum. 99 mins.
At the start of proceedings, the viewer is delivered to the Grand Budapest Hotel, by way of a relay race back through history. (It’s more of relay stroll in truth, though a great distance is covered in a short time.) Starting in the present the baton is handed back down the ages: cemetery busts hand over to their inspirations; famous authors hand over to their younger selves who get chatting to someone who hands over to a younger version of themselves, until we reach the film’s setting.
You can never have too many framing devices in my book and each layer acts as a filter, sifting away another layer of grit and realism until the viewer is cleansed enough to enter Mr Anderson’s fantastical Grand Budapest Hotel, an establishment that was very grand indeed though not located in Budapest but in a fantasy of old Eastern Europe between the wars, an opulent slice of Vienna stuck half way up a mountain near a ski resort and accessible by funicular from a nearby town that bares close relation to Prague.
It’s a dark and menacing world yet put together like some pristine doll house; a pop up fairy tale book in the style of German Expressionism. At the centre is Ralph Fiennes, in hilarious form as M. Gustave, the concierge who runs the hotel in its heyday, ensuring everything is pristine and indulging himself with most of the hotel’s elderly wealthy female clientele. These include a 90 year old Tilda Swinton who dies shortly after their latest assignation, plunging him and his faithful lobby boy Zero Moustafa (Revolori) into a desperate struggle to avoid the deadly clutches of her psychotic family after he is bequeathed a valuable painting in the will.
Anderson, the Scorsese of Twee, has delivered not just a visual delight, but also a joyous comedy, the funniest he has yet made. The film’s recurring (perhaps unvarying) joke is the jolt of register with which seeming cultured people slip in coarse profanity. Indeed most of the film is based on the dissonance between the French fancy delicacy of the visuals and the darkness of events.
The Hotel caters only for the best of clientele with Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, F.Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson turning up at various points, often for roles so brief they barely count as cameos. It’s like the art-house version of Around the World in Eighties Days with Fiennes and Revolori as Phileas Fogg and Passepartout.
GBH is a sumptuous entertaining but undoubtedly a frippery; long term Anderson fans may mourn the lack of substance compared to his earlier films but I didn’t miss their whiney trust fund melancholy. It’s good to see a Wes Anderson film where the characters are prepared to fight for their riches.
Directed by Wes Anderson.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody and Jeff Goldblum. 99 mins.
At the start of proceedings, the viewer is delivered to the Grand Budapest Hotel, by way of a relay race back through history. (It’s more of relay stroll in truth, though a great distance is covered in a short time.) Starting in the present the baton is handed back down the ages: cemetery busts hand over to their inspirations; famous authors hand over to their younger selves who get chatting to someone who hands over to a younger version of themselves, until we reach the film’s setting.
You can never have too many framing devices in my book and each layer acts as a filter, sifting away another layer of grit and realism until the viewer is cleansed enough to enter Mr Anderson’s fantastical Grand Budapest Hotel, an establishment that was very grand indeed though not located in Budapest but in a fantasy of old Eastern Europe between the wars, an opulent slice of Vienna stuck half way up a mountain near a ski resort and accessible by funicular from a nearby town that bares close relation to Prague.
It’s a dark and menacing world yet put together like some pristine doll house; a pop up fairy tale book in the style of German Expressionism. At the centre is Ralph Fiennes, in hilarious form as M. Gustave, the concierge who runs the hotel in its heyday, ensuring everything is pristine and indulging himself with most of the hotel’s elderly wealthy female clientele. These include a 90 year old Tilda Swinton who dies shortly after their latest assignation, plunging him and his faithful lobby boy Zero Moustafa (Revolori) into a desperate struggle to avoid the deadly clutches of her psychotic family after he is bequeathed a valuable painting in the will.
Anderson, the Scorsese of Twee, has delivered not just a visual delight, but also a joyous comedy, the funniest he has yet made. The film’s recurring (perhaps unvarying) joke is the jolt of register with which seeming cultured people slip in coarse profanity. Indeed most of the film is based on the dissonance between the French fancy delicacy of the visuals and the darkness of events.
The Hotel caters only for the best of clientele with Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, F.Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Mathieu Amalric, Lea Seydoux, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson turning up at various points, often for roles so brief they barely count as cameos. It’s like the art-house version of Around the World in Eighties Days with Fiennes and Revolori as Phileas Fogg and Passepartout.
GBH is a sumptuous entertaining but undoubtedly a frippery; long term Anderson fans may mourn the lack of substance compared to his earlier films but I didn’t miss their whiney trust fund melancholy. It’s good to see a Wes Anderson film where the characters are prepared to fight for their riches.
