The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Grandbudapesthotel

**/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Tony Revolori
written and directed by Wes Anderson

by Walter Chaw I'd be hard-pressed to think of many sequences in the movies better than the two minutes from Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums where Richie gets picked up at the Green Line Bus by his adopted sister Margot following a lengthy absence. It's beautifully composed, emotionally weighted, and punctuated with the best use of Nico in a sentence, ever. There's a rub there–my favourite Wes Anderson films are the ones that use music in this way; I ally him in my mind with artists like Sofia Coppola and, sure, Quentin Tarantino. I think the full potential of film is only really reached when all the elements that go into a movie–the seven arts, as it were–are used in concert. Wes Anderson, as he utilizes fewer and fewer pop songs in his films (his latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is his first without any), is losing emotional complexity as his hermetically-sealed, obsessive-compulsive dreamscapes become increasingly complex. Consider the moment from Django Unchained where our heroes ride into act two to Jim Croce's "I Got a Name." It's iconic, transformative; the scene has a quarter of its power without the agency of that song. Tarantino truly gets it. When Anderson opens The Darjeeling Limited with The Kinks' "This Time Tomorrow," letting the scene play in slow-motion as Adrien Brody's character tries to outrun the ghost of his father, wow. I remember hearing about the introductory tracking shot of the research vessel in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, how Anderson was possibly planning on scoring it with a Radiohead song ("How to Disappear Completely," if memory serves) and how that potential marriage gave me a shiver of anticipation. The farther Anderson falls into his navel, the clearer it is that he no longer gets what he used to get, swallowed whole by the grey beast solipsism.

For The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson creates a doll's house once again: a country entire (after the last one's island) and a war to destabilize it. He harks back to end-of-the-empire fare like The Lady Vanishes, aping that picture's climax and then commenting a time or two on the idea that basic decency, today rare in the human species, was nearing its extinction generations ago, doomed by tradition and manners. It's the manners that Anderson's trying to excuse in his own work now, as if he knows it's all getting out of hand but, hey, isn't it better down here in the basement with the tin men I've painted to re-enact the little Bull Runs on this table? Just like that scale model of a Civil War battle, the outcome of The Grand Budapest Hotel is never in doubt–no matter the meticulousness of its simulacra–nor, as a consequence, do the tribulations of his tin soldiers have much emotional heft and attachment. Which is not to say that Anderson doesn't try to inject father issues into the tale of concierge par excellence M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his tutelage of "Lobby Boy" orphan Zero (Tony Revolori), which leads from one flashback to another and back to a mid-current where Zero, grown into F. Murray Abraham, relates his sweeping tale of ruin to a half-interested author (Jude Law) who grows into Tom Wilkinson writing a book–who grows into a statue of the author played by Wilkinson, to which a young woman pays her respects whilst reading, yes, The Grand Budapest Hotel. It's tempting to call this structure a series of nesting dolls, given the Eastern European suggestions of the settings and title, but doing so is as adorably twee and empty as The Grand Budapest Hotel itself.

In essence, the film is about Zero, who's at the mercy of detailed list-maker and taskmaster M. Gustave, losing his innocence when an aged spinster (Tilda Swinton, terribly wasted) dies, leaving her nasty son (Adrien Brody) and her nasty son's nasty henchman, Jopling (Willem Dafoe), in a rage once it's discovered that M. Gustave offered carnal comfort to dear mother in her last days. Fiennes finds humanity in Anderson's character sketch, as does newcomer Revolori. The rest is all just carefully-posed eccentricity, the very manifestation of hipsterism and all the weariness that implies. It's affectation without authenticity, unseemly Francophlia with only real love for the opportunities for affectation such an affliction provides. I'm fascinated by the division between the audience that adores the Wes Anderson before The Fantastic Mr. Fox (where he first tasted the fruit of absolute, monolithic control over a production) and the audience that adores him after. I find there's little crossover. There's not a ten-minute stretch in The Royal Tenenbaums I can watch without weeping–it's the truest emotional conduit I have to my grief for my father's death and the ruin of our relationship before it. Yet there's not one moment The Grand Budapest Hotel (or Moonrise Kingdom before it) that moves me even in a basic way: not when Anderson dedicates his film to suicidal Austrian playwright Stefan Zweig, not even when he mocks up an Egon Schiele line-drawing to introduce an idea of subversion into his hermetic universe.

Two moments from the film define Anderson for me now: the first is when M. Gustave is called a "faggot" and ripostes upon a subsequent taunt that there's a logical gap between assignation of that term and his having fucked someone's mother. (An observation answered with, "Well, you're bisexual.") It's not funny, because it's trying hard to be cute and then also pithy and then also political and self-aware, and it's impossible for so many things to simultaneously occupy the same space. The other moment is the reveal of Harvey Keitel, shirtless, in one of the endless parade of cameos–and how poor Harvey can't seem to stop himself from twitching and flexing self-consciously in denial of his age, perhaps, or at least his obvious discomfort with it. Here's one of our most physical, most intimate of actors asked to be a prop, and the strain shows. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a clockwork contraption built with obsessive detail and care that has no function. Without L. Frank Baum's built-in irony and affirmation, it's Dorothy's Tin Man (as well as her Straw Man, when it pontificates about the fallen man), and its effect is something like one of those Cirque du Soleil travelling tent shows. It's a wonder, a marvel, a sensual delight; and when it's over, you don't feel it's worth spending the ten bucks for the memento of a program. The cure for its emptiness is Anderson's own early work, of course, but I'm reminded of something a frail Pauline Kael told a young Anderson about his Rushmore: "I don't know what you have here." Six films later, I think the three of us (Kael, me, Anderson) are in total alignment at last.

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21 Comments

  1. Chris

    That’s an interesting perspective into Wes Anderson’s use of music, because I always thought he would make a good video director (an underrated pursuit).
    Although I agree that there’s some alchemical magic in the marriage of pictures to music, it surely can’t be the only thing he had going for him. So, what’s changed?

  2. Chris

    That’s an interesting perspective into Wes Anderson’s use of music, because I always thought he would make a good video director (an underrated pursuit).
    Although I agree that there’s some alchemical magic in the marriage of pictures to music, it surely can’t be the only thing he had going for him. So, what’s changed?

  3. Chris

    That’s an interesting perspective into Wes Anderson’s use of music, because I always thought he would make a good video director (an underrated pursuit).
    Although I agree that there’s some alchemical magic in the marriage of pictures to music, it surely can’t be the only thing he had going for him. So, what’s changed?

  4. Howard Skillington

    So: otherwise well-executed scenes lose their power for you without pop songs? Sounds like your problem to me. As a classical music fan I find it annoying to have a director beat me over the head with a pop song to dictate what I should think and feel about the scene. Perhaps you’ll grow out of it.

  5. Howard Skillington

    So: otherwise well-executed scenes lose their power for you without pop songs? Sounds like your problem to me. As a classical music fan I find it annoying to have a director beat me over the head with a pop song to dictate what I should think and feel about the scene. Perhaps you’ll grow out of it.

  6. Howard Skillington

    So: otherwise well-executed scenes lose their power for you without pop songs? Sounds like your problem to me. As a classical music fan I find it annoying to have a director beat me over the head with a pop song to dictate what I should think and feel about the scene. Perhaps you’ll grow out of it.

  7. Howard I don’t think understands.
    Like Walter said any given scene has less potency because there is less resonant art happening.
    The energy created by music and visuals is it’s own paradigm that can achieve emotions and convey things that only that type of combo can trigger.
    And the depth is a lot more personal when experiencing such a smooth marriage of the mediums. There’s levels to it. A regular scene is level one, maybe two if it’s special, but with everything symbiotically connected the sum becomes greater than it’s parts and sends you to a special place of smoothness.
    I don’t think that’s the reason Wes Anderson died, just one of them.
    Also his style was a one trick pony which has since become irrelevant with the evolution of cinema and entertainment in general.

  8. Howard I don’t think understands.
    Like Walter said any given scene has less potency because there is less resonant art happening.
    The energy created by music and visuals is it’s own paradigm that can achieve emotions and convey things that only that type of combo can trigger.
    And the depth is a lot more personal when experiencing such a smooth marriage of the mediums. There’s levels to it. A regular scene is level one, maybe two if it’s special, but with everything symbiotically connected the sum becomes greater than it’s parts and sends you to a special place of smoothness.
    I don’t think that’s the reason Wes Anderson died, just one of them.
    Also his style was a one trick pony which has since become irrelevant with the evolution of cinema and entertainment in general.

  9. Howard I don’t think understands.
    Like Walter said any given scene has less potency because there is less resonant art happening.
    The energy created by music and visuals is it’s own paradigm that can achieve emotions and convey things that only that type of combo can trigger.
    And the depth is a lot more personal when experiencing such a smooth marriage of the mediums. There’s levels to it. A regular scene is level one, maybe two if it’s special, but with everything symbiotically connected the sum becomes greater than it’s parts and sends you to a special place of smoothness.
    I don’t think that’s the reason Wes Anderson died, just one of them.
    Also his style was a one trick pony which has since become irrelevant with the evolution of cinema and entertainment in general.

  10. Howard Skillington

    I think I understand very well, Friendly. Operas were the blockbuster entertainments of the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk – “total art work” – to advocate operas that made optimal use of all the major art forms, including dance, to maximize the audience’s experience. Should filmmakers add dance routines to improve their movies?
    A fine original score enhances a film because it is at all times at the service of the visual medium, supporting the action as it is conceived by the director and executed by the cast and technical crew. The lyrics of a pop song may happen to convey the idea of a film scene, but it can never be a part of a seamless whole, written as it was without the film in mind. A fine original score supports our emotional responses to a great scene, and each person’s response will be a unique product of their personal emotional makeup and life’s experience. A pop song – any song – is like gratuitous subtitles, dictating to the entire audience precisely what the scene “means” at this moment. Do you really want that? Perhaps you need it. I surely don’t.

  11. Howard Skillington

    I think I understand very well, Friendly. Operas were the blockbuster entertainments of the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk – “total art work” – to advocate operas that made optimal use of all the major art forms, including dance, to maximize the audience’s experience. Should filmmakers add dance routines to improve their movies?
    A fine original score enhances a film because it is at all times at the service of the visual medium, supporting the action as it is conceived by the director and executed by the cast and technical crew. The lyrics of a pop song may happen to convey the idea of a film scene, but it can never be a part of a seamless whole, written as it was without the film in mind. A fine original score supports our emotional responses to a great scene, and each person’s response will be a unique product of their personal emotional makeup and life’s experience. A pop song – any song – is like gratuitous subtitles, dictating to the entire audience precisely what the scene “means” at this moment. Do you really want that? Perhaps you need it. I surely don’t.

  12. Howard Skillington

    I think I understand very well, Friendly. Operas were the blockbuster entertainments of the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk – “total art work” – to advocate operas that made optimal use of all the major art forms, including dance, to maximize the audience’s experience. Should filmmakers add dance routines to improve their movies?
    A fine original score enhances a film because it is at all times at the service of the visual medium, supporting the action as it is conceived by the director and executed by the cast and technical crew. The lyrics of a pop song may happen to convey the idea of a film scene, but it can never be a part of a seamless whole, written as it was without the film in mind. A fine original score supports our emotional responses to a great scene, and each person’s response will be a unique product of their personal emotional makeup and life’s experience. A pop song – any song – is like gratuitous subtitles, dictating to the entire audience precisely what the scene “means” at this moment. Do you really want that? Perhaps you need it. I surely don’t.

  13. Will

    I may need to go back and review his previous work, but I did not think that his punchlines relied so often on profanity. At least, in The Grand Budapest, that seemed to be too often the case.

  14. Will

    I may need to go back and review his previous work, but I did not think that his punchlines relied so often on profanity. At least, in The Grand Budapest, that seemed to be too often the case.

  15. Will

    I may need to go back and review his previous work, but I did not think that his punchlines relied so often on profanity. At least, in The Grand Budapest, that seemed to be too often the case.

  16. Jonathan C.

    Two things:
    I don’t think Walter is saying that the only way that Anderson has gone astray is his not using pop music.
    and – A good example of how to use pop songs in films in a way that’s non-expository, but poignant, I think of Kubrick. Singin’ in the Rain for A Clockwork Orange for example, or Bicycle Built for 2 for 2001 or We’ll Meet Again for the end of Strangelove. Full Metal Jacket, too, is better for its use of non-original score.
    Speaking of Singin’ in the Rain – none of that music was composed specifically for the movie I don’t think – all of it was pop. Original score is as often narrative exposition as not – John Williams, James Horner – they tell you how to feel in ways more offensive to your intelligence than, I think, Needle in the Hay does in Royal Tenenbaums or that PJ Harvey cover that Juliette Lewis sings in Strange Days. How about this scene? Better with an original score?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2KlkBUgXA
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhyMCA6jwWU
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRmVMVP7NQ
    this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IowunN9Y5yE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmW3xVYQcPE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCWXCPgS8n0
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A
    Or the whole of The Graduate and Harold & Maude and The Big Chill and American Graffiti and Dirty Dancing and Top Gun?
    Not to say there aren’t wonderful original scores – Cliff Martinez and Alexandre Desplat (of GDH fame) do strong, sometimes extraordinary work. Williams for Star Wars and Superman and Indiana Jones. Sergio Leone + Morricone = bliss. Argento + Goblin. But saying that one exists at the exclusion of the other is silly and limiting – and that the way that you approach the conversation is needlessly personal and abrasive.

  17. Jonathan C.

    Two things:
    I don’t think Walter is saying that the only way that Anderson has gone astray is his not using pop music.
    and – A good example of how to use pop songs in films in a way that’s non-expository, but poignant, I think of Kubrick. Singin’ in the Rain for A Clockwork Orange for example, or Bicycle Built for 2 for 2001 or We’ll Meet Again for the end of Strangelove. Full Metal Jacket, too, is better for its use of non-original score.
    Speaking of Singin’ in the Rain – none of that music was composed specifically for the movie I don’t think – all of it was pop. Original score is as often narrative exposition as not – John Williams, James Horner – they tell you how to feel in ways more offensive to your intelligence than, I think, Needle in the Hay does in Royal Tenenbaums or that PJ Harvey cover that Juliette Lewis sings in Strange Days. How about this scene? Better with an original score?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2KlkBUgXA
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhyMCA6jwWU
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRmVMVP7NQ
    this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IowunN9Y5yE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmW3xVYQcPE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCWXCPgS8n0
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A
    Or the whole of The Graduate and Harold & Maude and The Big Chill and American Graffiti and Dirty Dancing and Top Gun?
    Not to say there aren’t wonderful original scores – Cliff Martinez and Alexandre Desplat (of GDH fame) do strong, sometimes extraordinary work. Williams for Star Wars and Superman and Indiana Jones. Sergio Leone + Morricone = bliss. Argento + Goblin. But saying that one exists at the exclusion of the other is silly and limiting – and that the way that you approach the conversation is needlessly personal and abrasive.

  18. Jonathan C.

    Two things:
    I don’t think Walter is saying that the only way that Anderson has gone astray is his not using pop music.
    and – A good example of how to use pop songs in films in a way that’s non-expository, but poignant, I think of Kubrick. Singin’ in the Rain for A Clockwork Orange for example, or Bicycle Built for 2 for 2001 or We’ll Meet Again for the end of Strangelove. Full Metal Jacket, too, is better for its use of non-original score.
    Speaking of Singin’ in the Rain – none of that music was composed specifically for the movie I don’t think – all of it was pop. Original score is as often narrative exposition as not – John Williams, James Horner – they tell you how to feel in ways more offensive to your intelligence than, I think, Needle in the Hay does in Royal Tenenbaums or that PJ Harvey cover that Juliette Lewis sings in Strange Days. How about this scene? Better with an original score?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2KlkBUgXA
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhyMCA6jwWU
    Or this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRmVMVP7NQ
    this one?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IowunN9Y5yE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmW3xVYQcPE
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCWXCPgS8n0
    this?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A
    Or the whole of The Graduate and Harold & Maude and The Big Chill and American Graffiti and Dirty Dancing and Top Gun?
    Not to say there aren’t wonderful original scores – Cliff Martinez and Alexandre Desplat (of GDH fame) do strong, sometimes extraordinary work. Williams for Star Wars and Superman and Indiana Jones. Sergio Leone + Morricone = bliss. Argento + Goblin. But saying that one exists at the exclusion of the other is silly and limiting – and that the way that you approach the conversation is needlessly personal and abrasive.

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