Wes Anderson is well-known for whacky. And his ostensible Stefan Zweig tribute,
The Grand Budapest Hotel, is no different. Gaudy in colour and no less variegated in its humour, the film is a romp from start to finish. But in a world where style certainly seeks to impress above substance, it's a considerable feat that Anderson's film also has great heart. Whether or not it ultimately has anything to do with Zweig is another matter. But for me
The Grand Budapest Hotel needs no literary justification; it is a comic masterpiece in and of itself.
The story concerns the eponymous hotel, placed in the eastern corner of Europe, in a world familiar to those who appreciate the
kaiserlich und königlich past, with its grand Alpine hotels, imperial sugar bakers and titled counts and countesses. The whole story of
The Grand Budapest Hotel is seen through the eyes of an author (Tom Wilkinson), who then appears as his younger self (Jude Law), who takes down a story from a former lobby boy (F. Murray Abraham), also seen in years gone by (Tony Revolori), who learns everything from the hotel's much-admired concièrge, played by the indefatigably humorous Ralph Fiennes.
Seeing the world in which the hotel has thrived begin to change, Fiennes and his lobby boy sidekick are caught in the middle, as they dodge SS and Gestapo-like figures – all played with a delicious note of camp – the avaricious relatives of a dead countess (Tilda Swinton), ostensibly brutal but fundamentally charming jail mates (including Harvey Keitel) and a whole monastery of furtive monks. The whole thing is beautifully steered by Fiennes, who neither drops a beat nor misconceives a mood. His delivery is impeccable, prompting this viewer to have a number of laugh out loud moments in the cinema.
Citing highlights would, doubtless, provoke spoilers for those of you who haven't yet had the luck to stay in
The Grand Budapest Hotel for its all-too-short 110-minute span. But once you do take the trip to the Republic of Zubrowka, you may, like me, wonder what Stefan Zweig, named in the credits, has to do with this pink, candied romp. In terms of narrative, not very much, but I guess the title of his famous autobiography
Die Welt von Gestern (or
The World of Yesterday) says it all. For through the gorgeous cakes and campery of this film, there is a profound melancholy to it.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is set in a world to which we cannot return and from which, in the more unvarnished version of our history, Zweig and many like him was so brutally excluded. Anderson wears that melancholy lightly, but it imbues everything within his colourful grasp.
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