The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): Cinema Pastry and the Decline of Civilization

Writer/Director Wes Anderson has done it again, maybe even better this time around. For fans of the Anderson oeuvre (and I am one), there’s lots of what you’d expect in his latest opus, The Grand Budapest Hotel: intricately constructed scenes, a vivid and playful color palette, slightly off-kilter characters, humor – subtle and broad, verbal and visual - and an ironic, yet affectionate narrative attitude.  In some ways, this may be his best, and perhaps his most ambitious movie.

The story is framed as a story within a story within a story. An old author (Tom Wilkinson) recalls himself years earlier (played by Jude Law), during a late 1960s stay in a run down, formerly elegant, now nearly vacant mountain hotel in the Central European (fictional) country of Zubrowka, and his meeting with the reclusive hotel owner, Mr Mustaffa (F. Murray Abraham). Over dinner, Mr Moustaffa proceeds to tell him (and narrates to us) the story of how he came to own this place many years before. Mustaffa’s tale takes us back to the early 1930’s when the Grand Budapest Hotel was truly grand, and ruled with an iron fist by the great and renowned concierge, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes).

M. Gustave runs a tight ship, but he is not a tyrant. Rather he is the opposite, a civilized and cultured

man, a perfectionist who wants nothing more than to keep things running smoothly, to provide superlative food, accommodation and service, to avoid giving offense, and, in short, to ensure that his guests are happy and satisfied. In every way. This includes sleeping with the old dowagers who return to the Grand Budapest Hotel year after year. “I sleep with all my friends,” he acknowledges matter-of-factly.

That would include Madame D (Tilda Swinton), whose death not long after her stay at Gustave’s hostelry, leads to an appreciative bequest of a valuable painting to Gustave, which in turn sets in motion an evil plot by her dastardly nephew, Dimitri (Adrien Brody) and his cold-blooded henchman, Jopling (Willem Dafoe) to get it back and to get even. The ensuing plot has more action than previous Anderson movies, including some entertaining chase scenes, and these allow him to throw in some slapstick vignettes amidst the kitsch and observational humor.

Early on, we also meet young Zero Mustaffa (Tony Revolori), a “Lobby Boy” at the hotel, whom M. Gustave takes under his wing as a protégé, and who comes to share Gustave’s adventures (and eventually to share his story with us). Initially, it is through Zero that we are exposed to the dark underside of mid-1930s Europe: xenophobia, a rigid class system, the rise of militarism and fascism – all of which stays largely in the background, but resonates throughout the story, and on up through time to the seedy Grand Budapest Hotel of the sixties (which may or may not be behind the iron curtain), from whence the story has been narrated.

The photography is classic Anderson, which is to say artful.  People are seen perfectly framed through doorways, windows or hallways. Characters are invariably centered on the screen, often in portrait-like poses.   The colors are amazing. The exterior of the hotel itself, in its heyday anyway, is a baroque pink wedding cake of a building, set in the Alps. The uniforms of the staff are a rich dark magenta; the walls are red or pale green or mustard or whatever else fits the mood and contrasts artfully with the actors’ outfits. The bad guys (Adrian Brody and Willem Dafoe) wear black. The lighting is designed to make faces glow. This is an imaginary world, Anderson seems to be saying, mirroring the real world in some ways, but more beautiful and decorative.

Anderson seems to view his protagonists fondly and with a kind empathy – not mockingly or critically. They may be eccentric, they may have weaknesses and foibles, but they are human, not really so different from us. The tone throughout is slightly standoffish, removed – so that we are aware, always, that we are observing these people, never fully aligned with them. There is, as in most Anderson pictures, an archness in the telling of this tale, so that it resembles a comically told fable, rather than a history.  We are also aware that the world is crumbling under their feet, and that the modern age, our age, will not be so formal, nor so polite, nor so civilized as it was in the glory days. The rumblings of fascism and terror are not far off.

As M. Gustave, Ralph Fiennes is a revelation.  We’re used to seeing him as a killer or a thug (Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List [1993], Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise [2005 – 11], Harry, the crime boss, in In Brugge [2008]) or as a tortured lover (Count Laszlo in The English Patient [1996], the bereaved Quayle in The Constant Gardener [2005]). As M. Gustave, however, although he ostensibly plays it straight, his take is humorously light and cheeky. Newcomer Revolori is another delight as Zero, the Lobby Boy. He brings just the right touches of innocence, understanding and humanity to a difficult role.

Brody and especially Dafoe, are cartoonishly villainous. Swinton is delightfully posh and seemingly ancient as Madame D. and, as M. Gustave notes, she looks great in her coffin. F. Murray Abraham does a nice job as the elder, wiser Mr. Mustaffa, and so does Jude Law as the young Author. Saoirse Ronan plays Zero’s fiancé, Agatha, earnestly and capably. Her role is tied to one of the great flourishes in this film: she plays a baker in a delightful Parisian style Pattisserie, called Mendl’s, which produces renowned mouth watering pastries in little pink boxes, tied shut with a little blue ribbon and bow. The most famous pastry, called a ‘Courtesan au Chocolat’, is so scrumptious and beautiful that even the prison inspectors can’t bring themselves to properly inspect them.  That the bakery is called Mendl’s, rather than, say, Pierre’s, adds another layer of foreshadowing.

The rest of the cast is studded with recognizable actors (many of whom are Anderson regulars) in

small to minuscule parts, among them Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, and Harvey Keitel. It’s fun (or perhaps distracting) to find them.

I mentioned at the outset that The Grand Budapest Hotel may be Anderson’s most ambitious movie. While he has honed his craft over the years to the point that there is now a clearly recognizable Anderson style,  most of his movies of the past decade, particularly Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) deal with a common theme – family relationships, or more particularly, disintegrating or dysfunctional family relationships.  In his latest film, however, the target or theme is larger, although less immediate and more abstract: the loss of civility and the crumbling of civilization in the twentieth century.  

I’m not making this up.  This movie is explicitly stated to be “inspired by the works of Stefan Zweig.” Zweig was an Austrian novelist and writer of distinction, quite popular at home and internationally in the 1920’s and 1930’s. He was a believer in culture and rationalism, and an advocate of European unity, internationalism, and pacifism. A non-practicing Jew, he fled Austria in 1934, living first in England, then the US, and eventually Brazil.  By the end of his life, he despaired about what he saw as the collapse of civilized Europe and the rise of intolerance, authoritarianism and the Nazi regime. He, along with his wife, committed suicide in 1942, leaving a note stating, "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth"

“The Author”, Tom Wilkinson’s character, who allegedly penned the story that eventually unfolds in The Grand Budapest Hotel, is made up to resemble Zweig, and a bust of “The Author” with which the movie opens does the same. Anderson has said that many of the characteristics of M. Gustave were modeled on Zweig, and some of the plot lines in the movie were taken from his novels.  And yet, the movie is humorous; it has a light touch, and it’s the furthest thing from a heavy-handed drama.  Rather, while it has the hallmark Anderson style, it is more: a modern fairy tale about an imagined and somewhat imaginary world that is no more, and maybe never was.  And with that comes a sober undertone of regret. It’s easy to miss in such a seemingly light and funny movie, but it is there.

In Wide Release.