This is a review of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
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3 March
This is a review of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
One of the few films that not only understands the difference between an immigrant and a refugee, but will make you laugh, about it – and much else :
Seen at @CamPicturehouse, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is huge fun: great detail, and killer lines delivered perfectly by Ralph Fiennes !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 3, 2014
Maybe one should not be surprised, but Fiennes (Gustave H.) brings such poise to this role that we happily accept all the absurdity, and embrace this ludicrous confection of an edifice (of the striking pinkness of a battenberg), with all its bygone airs and attitudes, themselves a passing metaphor for life. Set in some fictitious mountainous region with insistent balalaikas, but place-names in German, the film frolics through the confusion arising from the death of a regular guest – I sleep with all my friends, says Gustave H. disarmingly (though to his cost) at the assembly of the relatives hearing her last wishes.
The old saying goes Where there’s a will, there are relatives, and many a Bond villain had less of a henchman than the deceased’s (Tilda Swinton’s, as Madame D.) offspring do in Willem Dafoe (Jopling), who casually throws the executor attorney Deputy Kovacs’ (Jeff Goldblum’s) prized possession out of the window (he, like Llewyn Davis, even likes to travel with it). The name of her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) keeps up this tenuous Russian connection, but avoiding much imputation that his real wickedness is any more than heightened avarice, since real misdeeds are always best delegated.
The film is a romp, with, amongst other things, a deliberately over-complicated series of frames*, a series of sight-gags (for example, the old one of knocking on a huge door, and a small door opens), and crisply composed shots of alpine-type absurdities** (such as lifts and gantries that allow one access to a statue of a stag rampant). With many big names taking cameos, and a carefully crafted script, the film soars because of how Fiennes embodies Gustave H. and has comic timing that many on the stand-up circuit would die for :
F. Murray Abraham and Jude Law in their capacities* do the job, but the sheer lightness and deftness of touch of Fiennes is matchless. Of course, they are foils for him, as Tony Revolori is as young Zero (though not without his own visual expressiveness, and the running joke of telling Fiennes to stop flirting with his fiancée), but that in no way detracts from his achievement here, for the film would fall flat without the ebullience, charm and flair of Gustave H. The comparison is inexact, but imagine Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) without the bubbliness of Julie Andrews…
End-notes
* Tom Wilkinson is a revered writer (credited as Author), with a bizarre monument seen visited by a woman with a copy of his Hotel book (no author’s name on it), whose younger self (Jude Law as Young Writer) stays at the hotel and talks to and hears the story of the older Zero Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham), whose younger self (Tony Revolori) is a lobby boy at the hotel, in training under Fiennes.
** Ralph Fiennes, in the Q&A for The Invisible Woman, described himself as ‘obsessive’ – in this world that Wes Anderson has created, the attention to detail is minute.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
