The Grand Budapest Hotel is an adventure, comedy and drama
film directed and written by Wes Anderson and inspired by the writings of
Stefan Zweig. It was produced by Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales and
Scott Rudin on March 7, 2014 with a running time of 100 minutes. The film has
been very successful and it won four Oscars, one Golden Globe and five BAFTA’s
along with receiving 127 nominations across a variety of award ceremonies and
95 awards in total. Wes Anderson is also known for directing films such as
Moonrise Kingdom, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Limited and The Life
Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Starring
Ralph Fiennes (M. Gustave), Tony Revolori (Zero), F. Murray Abraham (Mr.
Moustafa), William Dafoe (Jopling) and Adrien Brody (Dmitri), The Grand
Budapest Hotel is a stylish, beautifully shot film, showing the past adventures
of Gustave, a concierge at a famous hotel and Zero, the lobby boy, which took
place between the first and second World Wars. It explores the development of
their friendship and how they worked their way through different obstacles
together.
The cinematography and editing definitely stood out for me
the most, with each shot being just as stunning as the next. From smooth pans
to dramatic low angles, a lot of planning clearly took place in order to create
such a perfect flow and movement to the film. The performances were also
incredible, especially from Ralph Fiennes who provided us with many humorous
moments which were truly refreshing. These moments would often consist of small
remarks and gestures and in my opinion, the film would not have been the same
without them because they made it even more entertaining and enjoyable to
watch. However, I did notice a slight mistake during one scene in which a
conversation is taking place between Gustave and Zero. Two camera shots are mainly
used to show this conversation which are a medium shot of Zero and a wide shot
of the two of them. In the medium shots, Zero’s bag strap goes across his chest
and in the wide shots, it hangs over his shoulder.
(Spoiler alert) There were many scenes which I particularly
enjoyed, one of them being the chase sequence that took place in the museum between
Gustave and Jopling because it was very tense and gripping, especially with the
dominant sound of footsteps throughout which meant I was constantly wondering
what was going to happen next. I really liked the goriness at the end of the
scene when Jopling slices Gustave’s fingers off by shutting the door on them
because it was very unexpected and the close up of the fingers helped to make
it even more gruesome. The overall feel to the film was spectacular and the
scenes which took place inside the Budapest Hotel or around it were visually
outstanding with a fantasy and almost ‘too perfect’ feel to them with a strong
use of the colour pink and snowy scenery. It allowed the audience to escape
from reality and immerse themselves in a world full of creativity. Additionally,
I thought it was very clever how the lobby boy was named ‘Zero’ because as the
film develops, we discover that his family died in the war and he started from
nothing to get to where he was in the present time and I believe this represents
how there is always hope for anyone.
Overall, I loved the creative and humorous side to The Grand
Budapest Hotel and I feel the director of photography, Robert Yeoman did an
amazing job. The narrative was mostly intriguing however at times, I found it
slightly hard to follow but despite this, I am still interested to watch other
films by Wes Anderson. My favourite quote was: “There are still faint glimmers
of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as
humanity” because it was repeated near the beginning and end of the film and I
found it effective and meaningful. I would give it a rating of 8 and I would
probably recommend it to other people.
