The Grand Budapest Hotel- Grand Style, Little Else

Watching a Wes Anderson film is like finding yourself at a confectioner’s store doling out both dark chocolate and mass-manufactured and colorful candy.

As long as it is the former, we get cinema that is admittedly indulgent and a tad too polished but also authentically bittersweet and sophisticated with a certain edge- consider his early films like ‘Rushmore’ and ‘The Royal Tenembaums’- beautifully constructed bittersweet takes at life and its incongruities in the most natural and unhurried ways possible- like good chocolate, the kind of cinema that is best savored with patience and the rewards are extremely delectable.

But of late, the filmmaker- whom once the great, great Martin Scorsese considered as his only successor- is more interested in shelling out the latter- cinema often made lively solely by the quaint detail lavished on it, packed to the brim with stellar actors in eye-grabbing yet ultimately fruitless parts and often set in unreal worlds that promise to be charming but feel too fairy-tale like, too contrived and yet we take it in simply because this mass-manufactured confectionery is too sweet to resist.

Alas, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is exactly the second category of Anderson’s stuff- it feels artificial, looks too gaudy and quaint for its own good and while an argument can be made for imagination and fantasy, of delusional denial for the cinemagoers, it never really stays too long in the memory- even as it features so much that could be cherished- from a cast of actors doing their best to amuse and thrill to the writer-director himself trying too hard to keep things crackling.

It starts with heady promise- with Anderson blurring the lines between timelines effectively- a young girl in a fictional snowy European republic called Zubrowka finds a book and a bust of a famous writer and soon, we are tugged away to the latter all alive in the past in the form of the very versatile Tom Wilkinson who further narrates his adventures of youth (now as Jude Law) in a decadent hotel with a glorious past where he meets the enigmatic Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) who takes him for dinner and narrates the story of his former master Gustave H.

It is these early moments that hold so much promise in a film like this- the film cutting away expertly from the present into the past with much Anderson-style pluck and wit and his trusted cinematographer Robert Yeoman making sure to capture each of the timeline in a different aspect ratio so as to grab the eyes and eventually settling back sometime in the 30s where Moustafa’s tale- as a bellboy at the Grand Budapest Hotel-actually kick-starts.

The initial premise looks irresistibly ripe for humor and misadventure- with the focus terrifically shifted to Gustave himself. Played terrifically by Ralph Fiennes, this concierge is a man of extraordinary charisma and unexpected poignancy and warmth- his primary job being entertaining his guests in the most lavish ways possible- with all kinds of endearments- from extravagant decorations to even covert sexual affairs- and running his hotel in the most professional ways- he even delivers a sermon to his minions before their dinner. Things go for a wonderful toss early on- when one of Gustave’s most treasured guests- and possible beau- Madame D (Tilda Swinton) kicks the bucket shortly after expressing fears of her own death to him and shockingly bequeathing her prized possession- the Macguffin of a painting- to him as well.

At this point, it looks thrillingly that this is another moment ripe enough for Anderson to take us on a comedy of manners of all sorts but what suddenly wrecks things is how he starts cramming the characters in- from Madame D’s scheming heirs (Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe) to a suspicious valet (Mathieu Almaric) to a shifty executor (Jeff Goldblum) and many more- all brought in for what promises to be a hell of a comic ride but only emerges as half-baked and half-hilarious.

The problem as it seems is the fact that Anderson never really sticks to his milieu- the fantasy world that he creates with some much aplomb never really feels alive. There are a few noticeable hints at the real world outside at the time- for one thing, there is even an ongoing dictatorship somewhere in this version of 1930’s Europe and yes, there is even a secret police with its own tough rules and internment camps but somehow all this all-too-convenient dash of credibility feels all too obvious.

The plot itself is extremely pulpy- never really a problem for Anderson who can make predictable fly the coop with his own thrilling take on the same tale- but even with so much going on, from meticulously planned prison escapes replete with comic pratfalls to sinister murders to even a lost painting, curiously none of it really involves. This is a shame- after all, Anderson was the man who made us feel enthralled even by the simple pursuit of a young schoolboy for his teacher in the great ‘Rushmore’- but this has to do with the fact that he is more obsessed with the quirk rather than the soul of his characters and milieu.

While some of the film’s ardent lovers may claim that the film is seeped in bittersweet melancholy of a forgotten era, I would say it rather bluntly that the film rarely feels emotionally relevant or accessible. For most part, it stretches on like a genre parody- trying the same old tropes over and over again like a bad Tarantino film (if there was ever one) and trying to airbrush it with some snatches of wit and plenty of visual cheek to get us really concerned.

It works only in bits and parts. A terrific scene in a train halted by the secret police of this lalaland- named as ZZ in a too-obvious gag at the well-known SS- is a moment which starts off well- with an appropriately sinister looking interrogator questioning Gustave about Moustafa’s immigrant origins and the moment could have been terrifically tense and darkly comic by merely being talky and terse (just like the opening scene of Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’) but Anderson spoils it by throwing in a moment of frenzied squabbling and struggling and suddenly, the scene turns ashamedly slapstick in tone.

Most crucially, this is a film that feels extremely unreal, as if the people, their actions and the events are taking place on a completely alternate planet. There is little depth to the backdrop as well as to the characters- for most part, they simply essay their comic parts and get along with it. It never feels long but Anderson’s approach is so single-mindedly on the plot and the conspiracy- getting his actors to do things according to the straightforward routine that at a point, you eventually stop caring and merely watch on uninterested as an observer.

Even if the film was really a rejoicing of the past in all its pomp and splendor, the past itself seldom feels fleshed out well enough. This might be a film set in the 30s but even with the light references to the era, it could have been set in the modern time too. Anderson’s fantasy Europe rarely feels like a world that is actually lived in- by that measure, Paul Thomas Anderson’s smoky, sexy and solitary version of California, sticking loyally to Thomas Pynchon’s twisted prose, in ‘Inherent Vice’ is a far more credible world even with the chaos in it.

And yet, it feels sad to lambast ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ as a lost cause  because it is also, at times, so irresistibly sweet. Consider Gustave H for example- the way he runs his hotel with iron fist and velvet glove and his choice of older paramours. Consider Moustafa’s sprightly yet sneaky-eyed bellboy version of youth who draws a moustache with a pencil to look older and grumbles when Gustave flirts with his girl. It’s a lovingly crafted film to look at- just like some great piece of ultra-sweet candy loaded on the exterior with colors not to be found anywhere in the world- the elevators are as red as jam, the snow on the streets is as white as milk ice cream and the hotel itself feels like decorated wedding cake, all shot terrifically by Yeoman and all captured faithfully by Anderson with typical mouth-watering relentlessness. Even the costumes and makeup effectively mask the actors as the weirdos and decadents they are supposed to play- Tilda Swinton’s weather-beaten face looks authentically on the brink of ultimate death while Willem Dafoe carries off broken teeth and snarling eyes with terrific menace. And is that really Jeff Goldblum as the old, runty sized lawyer Deputy Kovacs?

The actors, as said before, all do their best. Fiennes, in a surprisingly warm and poignant performance, is indeed reliably excellent- layering his performance with the right amount of assured indulgence but crucially, it is when his edges show- most notably when dictating a stern plea to his erstwhile minions whilst in prison to run the hotel with care- that he really becomes unforgettable. 18-year old Tony Revolori does a fabulous job as Zero Moustafa, bringing the right amount of innocence and shiftiness to his character, while Saoirse Ronan as the lovely Agatha further cements her solid acting chops as the wild card in between chaos. 

What really rocks the film however is the ensemble of smaller roles all played superbly- of which Dafoe’s malicious, cat-murdering crook, Brody’s snobbish bad-boy, Harvey Keitel’s aging and tattooed fellow-inmate and escape artist and Edward Norton as Henckels, the hard-nosed yet affable ZZ chief, really steal the show.

As I said, there is so much going for this film. It is marvelously shot and crafted like the best of high-grade confectionery- with Anderson and Yeoman toiling hard to create the old, authentically decaying 30s feel with both quirk and detail and while most of it looks like too post-card to be real, it is nevertheless beautiful and jaw-droppingly larger-than-life. Anderson might not have Scorsese’ storytelling powers but he sure does have the auteur’s eye for swooshes and long-takes and the film revels in them all- often to thrilling effect. But all of it largely fizzles out with how much the film wastes the potential to be a crackling satire on the very themes it deals with- nostalgia, loss of freedom and more- and ends up more like a lame Pink Panther comic romp- there is even a ridiculous ski chase somewhere in the film.

To sum up my feelings, I would sign off by describing possibly the wittiest scene in the film. A prison guard routinely checks all the food being smuggled into the cells by slicing them into chunks. Between stabbing at baguette and slicing up sausage, he pauses at a box of pastry made at a popular bakery. He stares for a moment at the irresistible sugar coating on it and simply passes it on, not realizing that beneath the layer, there is no pastry but tools for escape. It is exactly what one feels about the film as well. As much as one marvels at the splendid sugar coating, one can’t help but feel the emptiness beneath it.

My Rating- 2 and a half Stars