GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a
legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero
Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves
the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for
an enormous family fortune -- all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically
changing Continent.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a British-German co-production filmed entirely on location in Germany, mainly in Görlitz.
One of the principal locations was the defunct Görlitzer
Warenhaus , a huge Jugendstil department store with a giant atrium, one of
the few such department stores in Germany to survive World War II. It served as
the atrium lobby of the hotel. Filming concluded in March 2013 in Germany.
This wacky screwball comedy, loosely based on stories by
Stefan Zweig, has a plot so labyrinthine and frantic it is hardly worth
following, except for the fantastic sets and two very appealing central
characters played by Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori. As the late Roger Ebert
used to say, it's not what it's about, it is how it is about it.
Ralph Fiennes (“Skyfall”) plays M. Gustave, concierge of The
Grand Budapest Hotel, and Tony Revolori (“The Perfect Game”) plays Zero, a
lobby boy in the hotel and devoted trainee under the tutelage of M. Gustave.
Their adventures begin in the aftermath of a murder of a wealthy woman who left
a valuable painting to M. Gustave in her will. M. Gustave is a suspect in the
murder, but of course it is a lot more complicated than that.
Much of the film consists of M. Gustave and Zero being
chased around by a menacing killer, Jopling (played by Willem Dafoe of
“Spider-Man”). Jopling turns out to be very skilled at erasing witnesses and
clues. He is also very good at tracking M. Gustave and Zero, no matter how
carefully they try to cover their tracks. One of the many frantic chase scenes
in the movie has Jopling, M. Gustave and Zero all zooming down ski slopes,
bobsled runs and ski jumps at ridiculous speeds.
Fiennes and Revolori both give wonderful performances as
they carry this film, with able support from Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Jeff
Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel, Adrien
Brody, Bob Balaban and a whole host of talented actors brought together by
Director Wes Anderson. Indeed, few other directors could attract a cast this
talented. Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement”) plays Agatha, the love of Zero's life.
Much of the story is told in flashbacks second or third
hand, with F. Murray Abraham telling the main story to an author, played by
Jude Law. Tom Wilkinson plays an author who was told this story. This author,
apparently, represents the famed author Stefan Zweig. The sets in this film are
amazing thanks to the work of production designer Adam Stockhausen (“Moonrise
Kingdom”) and the rest of design team. It is a dazzling-looking film.
Although the story is a screwball comedy, there is also a
sombre overtone to the story, at least to that part of the story that tells us
of the fate of the main characters. Perhaps this is to be expected since the
story of Stefan Zweig is ultimately a tragic one (both he and his wife commit
suicide in 1942 in despair over the rise of the Nazis and anti-Semitism). Then
again, one could argue that the tragic endings tacked onto the story are no
more convincing than happy endings tacked onto the ends of other films, but
tragic endings will give garner better reviews, perhaps because of the nature
of critics themselves.
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