Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Set in a fictional Eastern European nation (Then why reference Budapest?), author Tom Wilkinson recalls how as a younger man (played by Jude Law) he stayed at the title hotel, which was well past its used-by date. It is here that he met the owner (played by F. Murray Abraham) who in turn tells him the story of how he as a young immigrant came to first work at the hotel (and now played by Tony Revolori) under the tutelage of the hotel’s head concierge, Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). The death of a wealthy eccentric (Tilda Swinton) propels what counts for a plot in this film. Edward Norton turns up as a fascist military man, Harvey Keitel is a tattooed prisoner, Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brody play weirdo antagonists of Gustav’s, Jeff Goldblum is a family lawyer, and lots of other familiar faces turn up (Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Lea Seydoux, etc.)

 

The world is divided into two types; Morlocks and Eloi. Wait, no wrong story. The world is divided into those who get Wes Anderson films…and the rest of us. It seems the latter is a much smaller group, but that’s OK, we’re right (Relax, it’s called humour). I sorta didn’t mind “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou”, but the creepy “Rushmore” (and star Jason Schwartzman) made my skin crawl, “The Royal Tenenbaums” I just sorta shrugged my shoulders at and hated all of the characters. Now comes this 2014 film inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig. I’ve never heard of the bloke and yet again I was kept at a complete distance by Anderson and his ‘unique’ vision. It’s not often that a critic will use the phrase ‘I didn’t get it’, but I’m afraid that was the case for me here. If I’m missing something amazing here folks, fair enough. All I can say is that Anderson and I aren’t on the same wavelength and I got pretty much nothing out of this film. If it was supposed to be funny, I didn’t understand why (Was it screwball? Farce? Black comedy? Satire? Deadpan? I have no idea). If it was supposed to be interesting, it bored me to tears. I. Just. Didn’t. Get. It.

 

I thought the production/set design was absolutely wonderful, colourful but ugly enough to evoke a hotel past its used-by date. It was also nice to see F. Murray Abraham, surely one of the best talents to be a truly awful discerner of suitable film projects, and his performance was perfectly fine, albeit brief (Don’t even get me started on the fact that he’s a completely different ethnicity/skin colour to debutant Tony Revolori playing him as a young man, though). But Anderson’s insistence on being cute with using different aspect ratios to delineate between different eras a) Was completely unnecessary, and b) Is completely useless on TV/DVD. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s preferential to see a film first in the cinemas, but films are made to be re-watched over and over, and that means the small (er) screen. It’s simply a fact. The technique’s cleverness is rendered not only ineffective on smaller screens, but in my opinion, really annoying and stupid. Having everything framed front and centre gets old real fast, Wes. How about a wide shot or two? No? Sigh. It forces us to look at ugly, garish, and grotesque close-ups that I didn’t appreciate at all. Aside from that one issue, it’s certainly a good-looking movie without a single poor performance in it…it’s just completely useless to me because I simply didn’t click with Anderson’s deader-than-deadpan jive. If it was meant to be funny, I couldn’t work out the jokes/humour, and found a lot of it like watching paint dry. Nice paint, though.

 

There’s something really smug about Anderson’s films in my view. It’s like everyone involved had a whale of a time, and fuck you if you’re not hip to their scene (Apparently the film is full of movie references, so you’d think that’d be my way into the film. I didn’t spot a single reference, and if you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you know I’m a cinematic savant. Or is it a cinematic idiot? No, that doesn’t sound right). I didn’t get into the story or the characters because, although not badly performed, I felt the whole thing was an arch, deadpan put-on with little reward, and I was never drawn into the story at all. For what I had heard was meant to be a light entertainment, I actually (like all of Anderson’s films) found it rather heavy, as in heavy-handed. Lots of familiar faces amongst the cast provided the only source of (fleeting) entertainment for me. Ealing Studios would’ve known how to do this basic story justice, you could easily imagine Sir Alec Guinness in the Ralph Fiennes part. Maybe even multiple parts. It certainly wouldn’t be so arch, mannered, and off-putting. I’m not going to score it as a ‘bad’ film as such, just a really mediocre one bordering on bad. I have to be honest, because I just didn’t get anything much out of it. Believe me, I wish I ‘got’ this, I want to be like all of you, I really do. But…no. It’s not for me, and if you think it’s a masterpiece, that’s cool. You got it, I didn’t. Moving on…

 

Rating: C