1025: ANDERSON, Wes: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

ANDERSON, Wes (United States)
The Grand Budapest Hotel [2014]
Spine #1025
Blu-ray

Wes Anderson brings his dry wit and visual inventiveness to this exquisite caper set amid the old-world splendor of Europe between the world wars. At the opulent Grand Budapest Hotel, the concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his young protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) forge a steadfast bond as they are swept up in a scheme involving the theft of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune — while around them, political upheaval consumes the continent. Meticulously designed, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a breathless picaresque and a poignant paean to friendship and the grandeur of a vanished world, performed with panache by an all-star ensemble that includes F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Mathieu Amalric, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray.

100 minutes
Color
5.1 Surround

1:37:1, 1:85:1, 2:40:1 aspect ratios

Criterion Release 2020

Director/Writers

Story by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness.

Screenplay by Anderson.

Anderson was 45 when he directed The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Other Anderson films in the Collection:

#450: Bottle Rocket (1996)
#65: Rushmore (1998)

#157: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
#300: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
#540: The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
#700: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
#776: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The Film

A cast of 102 (IMDb); nine producers, a DP (Robert Yeoman), Production Designer (Adam Stockhausen), Costume Designer (Milena Canonero), Editor (Barney Pilling), Composer (Alexandre Desplat) — one of each — all incredibly talented …

… a film which despite all the pinks, lavenders and deep purples, is actually more like a finely burnished 1711 Duport Stradivarius cello owned by Mstislav Rostropovich — which Napoleon dented with his boots, the clumsy oaf.

Then there’s Stefan Zweig, born in Vienna 1881, died in Petrópolis, Brazil in 1942 of suicide.

But — above all — there’s Anderson, who had this vision. All his previous work (all in the Collection, see above, except for Isle of Dogs [2018]) leads up to this astonishing, ravishing, hilarious and sometimes stupefying piece of cinema.

Astonishing:

The film uses four different aspect ratios for the different time periods, nestled together like a Matryoshka doll.

Present day: 1:85:1

1985: 1:85:1 (slightly smaller frame)

1968: 2:40:1

1932: 1:37:1

Planimetric staging.

Ravishing:

Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum), lit by candelight:

“In the small hours of the evening of 19 October, an individual well known to the house and staff, a Monsieur Gustave H. did arrive at the Desgoffe und Taxis residence in Lutz and entered by the rear service alley, alerting no one to his presence, and did then proceed by way of back stairs and servants’ passage to deliver himself into the private chambers of Madame D. There is no evidence to indicate whether this visit had been prearranged with her or not. The next morning Madame D. was found dead by strychnine poisoning …”

Hilarious:

MONK (Wolfgang Czeczor)

“Are you Monsieur Gustave of the Grand Budapest Hotel in Nebelsbad?”

GUSTAVE

“Uh-huh.”

MONK

“Get on the next cable car.”

SECOND MONK (Phillipp Sonntag)

“Are you Monsieur Gustave of the Grand Budapest Hotel in Nebelsbad?”

GUSTAVE

“Uh-huh.”

MONK

“Switch with me.”

THIRD MONK (Hans Martin Stier)

“Are you Monsieur Gustave of the Grand Budapest Hotel in Nebelsbad?”

GUSTAVE

“Uh-huh.”

MONK

“Put these on and sing.”

FOURTH MONK (Georg Tryphon)

“Psst. Are you Monsieur Gustave of the —“

GUSTAVE (exasperated)

“Yes, damn it!”

Stupefying:

Bravura filmmaking.

We are in the 1932 Academy ratio — the hotel staff is waiting to eat — 90 degree pan to Mr. Mosher (Larry Pine):

“A letter from Monsieur Gustave. Zero.

ZERO (Tony Revolori)

“You want me to . . .?”

MOSHER

“Read it.”

ZERO (clears his throat)

“My dear and trusted colleagues —“

Anderson cuts to a composed shot with Gustave in prison uniform center-frame, with ten or so other prisoners lined up in deep focus on the left and ten or so guards — in blue uniforms — on the right. Gustave continues where Zero left off …

“I miss you deeply as I write from the confines of my regrettable and preposterous incarceration. Until I walk amongst you again as a free man, the Grand Budapest remains in your hands, as does its impeccable reputation. Keep it spotless and glorify it. Take extra special care of every little-bitty bit of it as if I were watching over you like a hawk with a horse whip in its talons, because I am. Should I discover a lapse of any variety during my absence, I promise swift and merciless justice will descend upon you. A great and noble house has been placed under your protection. Tell Zero if you see any funny business.

Cut back to Zero.

“Your devoted Monsieur Gustave.” (turns to Mosher) …

“Then there’s a poem, but we might want to start on the soup since it’s 46 stanzas.

(Mosher gives the signal; Zero continues to read)

“A moist, black ash dampens the filth of a dung-dark rat’s nest

and mingles with the thick scent of wood rot

while the lark song of a guttersnipe —“

While this is decidedly and obviously a Wes Anderson film, and nobody else could have made it, the charm does not wear off. It is his finest work to date, with much more on its way.

Superb.

Film Rating (0-60):

58

The Extras

The Booklet

Thirty-six page booklet featuring excerpts from two 2014 pieces by critic Richard Brody, an 1880 essay on European hotel portiers by Mark Twain, a double-sided poster, and a ten-page wraparound entitled Romantic Poetry, Vol. 1.

Brody:

“Working with independent producers on relatively low budgets, Wes Anderson, never a shrinking violet when it comes to making movies on his own terms, has become a liberated filmmaker. His 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom (Spine #776), a sweet story of adolescent first love set against a background of pain and loss, is set in 1965 in a fictitious New England island community that undergoes vast geographical — and moral — changes by way of a quasi-biblical, quasi-apocalyptic catastrophe. Now, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, he leapfrogs back from the present day to 1985, 1968, and ultimately, 1932, to tell a story of work and art, friendship and love that is about the rise of Nazism and the German occupation of much of Europe — in particular, one small, no-longer-extant Central European country, Zubrowka, where the hotel of the title is located.”

Twain:

“I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. The waiter expects a quarter at breakfast — and gets it. You have a different waiter a luncheon, and so he gets a quarter. Your waiter at dinner is another stranger — consequently he gets a quarter. The boy who carries your satchel to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him. Now you may ring for ice water; and ten minutes later for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar; and by and by for a newspaper — and what is the result? Why, a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled around until you have paid him something. Suppose you boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel’s business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there; and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old and inform before you see him again. You may struggle nobly for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine sort of person, but in the meantime you will have been so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will haul down your colors, and to to impoverishing yourself with fees.”

The poster is a gorgeous ten-panel wraparound — blue on one side; pink on the other, with the baths on the lower half (and drawings of the characters of F. Murray Abraham and Jude Law on the blue side, with an insert of Goldblum, Tilda Swinton and Mathieu Amalric; Ralph Fiennes on the pink) and the terrace level on the upper half — no characters on the pink side, but with drawings of the characters of Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Fiennes, Revolori, Edward Norton and Harvey Keitel). What a cast!

Romantic Poetry, Vol. 1 is a ten-panel wraparound with all the text and tiny props that you’ll probably try to freeze-frame at some point. Example, the article with the headline LOCAL GIRL’S HEAD FOUND IN LAUNDRY BASKET:

“The head, liberated from its body, was discovered among socks and linens next to the communal well on the edge of the slum-market behind the unfortunate’s ramshackle residence … the lower seven-eighths of her body were cremated after a brief autopsy revealed the cause of death; which, not surprisingly, was decapitation.”

Commentary

Featuring Anderson, filmmaker Roman Coppola, critic Kent Jones and actor Goldblum.

A total delight. These guys are all big cinephiles; here is a list of all the films they mention (not including Wes Anderson films!):

1. Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) [dir. Max Ophüls]
2. The Burning Secret (1933) [dir. Robert Siodmak]
3. Burning Secret (1988) [dir. Andrew Birkin]
4. Hotel Imperial (1939) [dir. Robert Florey]
5. The Mortal Storm (1940) [dir. Frank Borzage]
6. Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) [dir. Louis Malle] {Spine #599}
7. Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013) [dir. Arnaud Desplechin]
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [dir. Stanley Kubrick]
9. Trouble in Paradise (1932) [dir. Ernst Lubitsch] {Spine #170}
10. Design for Living (1933) [dir. Lubitsch] {Spine #592}
11. The Shop Around the Corner (1940) [dir. Lubitsch]
12. To Be Or Not To Be (1942) [dir. Lubitsch] {Spine #670}
13. The Marriage Circle (1924) [dir. Lubitsch]
14. The Doll (1919) [dir. Lubitsch]
15. The Love Parade (1929) [dir. Lubitsch] {Eclipse Series #8]
16. Monte Carlo (1930) [dir. Lubitsch] {Eclipse Series #8]
17. The Merry Widow (1934) [dir. Lubitsch]
18. Torn Curtain (1966) [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]
19. The Silence (1963) [dir. Ingmar Bergman] {Spine #0000A/#211}
20. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) [dir. Paul Mazursky]
21. Blume in Love (1973) [dir. Mazursky]
22. An Unmarried Woman (1978) [dir. Mazursky] {Spine #1032}
23. I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) [dir. Hy Averback]
24. Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) [dir. Mazursky]
25. The Tenant (1976) [dir. Roman Polanski]
26. A Patch of Blue (1965) [dir. Guy Green]
27. Barry Lyndon (1975) [dir. Kubrick] {Spine #897}
28. The Right Stuff (1983) [dir. Philip Kaufman]
29. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) [dir. Kaufman]
30. Quills (2000) [dir. Kaufman]
31. Brooklyn (2015) [dir. John Crowley]
32. The White Dawn (1974) [dir. Kaufman]
33. Raging Bull (1980) [dir. Martin Scorsese]
34. The Godfather (1972) [dir. Francis Ford Coppola]
35. Taxi Driver (1976) [dir. Scorsese]
36. The Last Detail (1973) [dir. Hal Ashby]
37. Jaws (1975) [dir. Steven Spielberg]
38. Visions of Light (1992) [dir. Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels]
39. The Last Waltz (1978) [dir. Scorsese]
40. Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) [dir. Michael Chapman]
41. All the Right Moves (1983) [dir. Chapman]
42. Fingers (1978) [dir. James Toback]
43. Hurlyburly (1998) [dir. Anthony Drazan (the guys incorrectly identify the director as Mike Nichols)]
44. The Big Chill (1983) [dir. Lawrence Kasdan]
45. Diane (2018) [dir. Kent Jones]
46. The Red Shoes (1948) [dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger] {Spine #44}
47. Lady Bird (2017) [dir. Greta Gerwig]
48. Manchester by the Sea (2016) [dir. Kenneth Lonergan]
49. Honey Boy (2019) [dir. Alma Har’el]
50. Beyond Therapy (1987) [dir. Robert Altman]
51. The Player (1992) [dir. Altman]
52. Nashville (1975) [dir. Altman]
53. California Split (1974) [dir. Altman]
54. Remember My Name (1978) [dir. Alan Rudolph]
55. The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002) [dir. Rudolph]
56. The Moderns (1988) [dir. Rudolph]
57. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) [dir. Coppola]
58. Reckless (1984) [dir. James Foley]
59. There Will Be Blood (2007) [dir. Paul Thomas Anderson]
60. The Master (2012) [dir. Anderson]
61. Candy Mountain (1987) [dir. Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer]
62. The Forbidden Room (2015) [dir. Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson]
63. The Sentinel (1992) [dir. Desplechin]
64. La vie des morts (1991) [dir. Desplechin]
65. My Sex Life … Or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) [dir. Desplechin]
66. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) [dir. Peter R. Hunt]
67. Belle de Jour (1967) [dir. Luis Buñuel]
68. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) [dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder]
69. Capricorn One (1977) [dir. Peter Hyams]
70. Room 237 (2012) [dir. Rodney Ascher]
71. De Palma (2015) [dir. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow]
72. The Last Picture Show (1971) [dir. Peter Bogdonavich]
73. Paper Moon (1973) [dir. Bogdonavich]
74. The Bad News Bears (1976) [dir. Michael Ritchie]
75. The American Friend (1977) [dir. Wim Wenders]
76. Alice in the Cities (1974) [dir. Wenders]
77. Inferno (1964) [dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot]
78. Torment (1994) [dir. Claude Chabrol]

Visiting The Grand Budapest Hotel

• Design/Special Effects
• With Jeremy Dawson (producer) and Stockhausen, both Anderson veterans.
• Music
• Randall Poster (music supervisor); great footage of the balalaika orchestra.
• Miniatures
• Great extra; no voice-over, just shot after shot of all the miniatures. Amazing.

The Making of The Grand Budapest Hotel

A 21-minute documentary about the making of the film.

Selected-scene

Storyboard animatics.

Amazing to see how closely these animated storyboards hew to the final cut of the film!

Video essays

Wes Anderson Takes the 4:3 Challenge by film scholar David Bordwell (2020).

The Grand Budapest Hotel by critic Matt Zoller Seitz (2015).

Featurettes

• Part 1: The Story
• Told by the cast: Norton, Anderson, Owen Wilson (M. Chuck), Fiennes, Dawson, Revolori, Goldblum, Swinton, Norton, Ronan, Schwartzman, and Abraham.
• Part 2: The Society of the Crossed Keys
• Bob Balaban (M. Martin), Bill Murray (M. Ivan) [with one of the best moustaches in a cast of many moustaches], and other cast members discuss concierges.
• Part 3: Creating the Hotel
• Görlitz. The set within a set …
• Part 4: Creating a World
• Anderson: “Whatever sort of world I make in a movie, I want it to come to life. I want the world to be an invention that fits together just so …”
• Wes Anderson
• Balaban: “This movie — like all Wes Anderson movies — is fabulous, and has great characters in it …”
• Goldblum: “It’s shining light and tribute to these people who are, like Wes Anderson, uniquely civilized, courteous, generous, sweet, sophisticated, and refined.”
• Anderson: “I want them to be these larger-than-life people in real life. I’m hoping to make sort of the documentary version of these very theatrical characters.”
• Law: “It’s obvious from his library of work already that he has a very particular vision, and I think it’s refreshing for everyone to work with someone who knows exactly what they want.”
• The Cast
• Everyone wants to work with Wes.
• Bill Murray Tour Görlitz
• Bill’s quest for spicy mustard.
• Kuntsmuseum Zubrowka Lecture
• The Author (Tom Wilkinson) delivers an imaginary lecture.
• The Society of the Crossed Keys
• Bill Murray is exiting a limo and entering a building. A reporter confronts him:
• “Bill? Is it true it exists?”
• “What? What do you want?”
• “What is The Society of the Crossed Keys?”
• “Huh?”
• “What is The Society of the Crossed Keys?”
• “How do you know anything about it? (flustered) … who told you? There’s no reason you should know anything about what you’re asking me.”
• “Bill! … but Bill!”
• “Sorry, I don’t think you’re legit.”
• The Occulta Claves Decussatae Societatis
• Courtesans au Chocolat
• Oh yeah. The actual recipe. If you’ve never tried to make a choux pastry, all we can say is Good luck!
• Though correct proportions may vary depending on one’s elevation and humidity, we recommend:

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

58 + 39 =

97

By Director
By Spine #