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Apr 28, 2020 Web Exclusive By Jason Wilson

Wes Anderson’s 2014 film is at once distinctly part of his oeuvre while also representing a stunning step forward in how he tells stories cinematically. It is a spectacle of grandeur and a measured, resonant piece of melancholy that contrasts so well with the bright pastels littering the landscapes and architecture throughout.

All of his films are tinged with sadness – a theme critic Matt Zoller Seitz explores in an accompanying video essay on the new Criterion disc – but The Grand Budapest Hotel’s tone features a throbbing undercurrent of despair the likes that hasn’t appeared in any of his other movies. Yes, Richie Tenenbaum’s attempted suicide in The Royal Tenenbaums and the climactic gut-punch in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are amply sad, but on a more singular level than what permeates through The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Zero – played by both Tony Revolori and F. Murray Abraham – is a refugee from a war-torn country seeking employment at the famous Grand Budapest Hotel under its concierge Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes). Mr. Gustave is known for his sexual trysts with the older patrons of the hotel, chief among them being Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), who is murdered, setting the story in motion. Zero and Gustave become something of an odd couple pair as they get embroiled in the mystery surrounding Madame D.’s untimely death as war and fascism encroaches on the town of Zubrowka in a clear inference to the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

Yes, the action is zany and it’s filled with the deadpan delivery constantly associated with Anderson’s aesthetic, but the craft on display is something even more meticulously controlled than his previous constructions. It’s incredible that his movies don’t feel claustrophobic as a result of how specifically every shot is composed. This world feels wholly real, and it’s a testament to his ability at building well-rounded characters to inhabit his worlds that this is at all possible.

Had Anderson not made The Fantastic Mr. Fox years earlier, maybe this movie doesn’t occur, and they couldn’t appear more different on the surface. But, The Grand Budapest Hotel operates at times like an animated film, particularly with how the Anderson and his crew went about building miniatures to double as exteriors and sets. As a result, there is a stop-motion aspect that gives the movie an air of magic and surrealism that only amplifies the storybook nature of how the plot is delivered. Several featurettes on the disc showcase the process taken to make the miniatures and how certain action sequences were filmed – the ski chase was done using a camera on skateboard wheels being sent down their hill.

Above all else – even the doll’s house aesthetic – Anderson is a lover of stories and those who tell them. Royal Tenenbaum and Steve Zissou are flawed people, but they have an endless supply of anecdotes and experiences to share and do so in an entertaining, loquacious manner. Max Fischer is a horrible student, but he’s an inventive obsessive who wants nothing more than to live large and tell tales. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, the presence and importance of stories – true and otherwise – is at its most prevalent in Anderson’s work. We open with a young lady carrying a book called “The Grand Budapest Hotel” as she approaches a statue of its author. The author as an old man (Tom Wilkinson) is then introduced as the narrator of the ensuing story, portrayed in his younger years by Jude Law who meets the older Zero at the Grand Budapest in its waning days. The movie that follows is essentially the story Zero tells the author. It’s one of sadness, love, war, triumph, and ultimately disappointment – with a variety of aspect ratios coinciding with the change in scenery and time. Zero’s life – and those of the people he knew from Gustave to his love Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) – for lack of a better term, is varied and it’s what provides this particular film with a personal realism within its surreal aesthetic.

Anderson doesn’t get enough credit for this, as his detractors are quick to point at the twee tone or the perceived preference of aesthetic over all without going deeper into the lives of these people. It’s easy to dismiss him as a surface-level filmmaker. The surface look and tone cover for subtly resonant and meaningful explorations of universal human emotion and experience. And while his films can certainly be enjoyed as surface-level entertainment – or cast aside for the same reason – there’s a much richer layer just beneath that makes his work so endlessly rewatchable and captivating on repeat viewings.

The movie is also dedicated to the writings of Stefan Zweig, whose memoir “The World of Yesterday” served as an inspiration for Anderson in the writing and staging of the film. Zweig – discussed in the disc’s special features as well as in an accompanying essay by Richard Brody excerpted from a pair of New Yorker articles – wrote about his experiences in his native Vienna during World War I. Brody describes Zweig as “a vehement antinationalist and pacifist opponent of war” and this informs the film’s political stance as one of fiercely critical of global conflict and abuses of power.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a towering achievement in American filmmaking, and yet it doesn’t seem to have a following that suggests this to be the case. Fiennes delivers one of the most indelible performances in an Anderson film. And the care taken to fully imbue this fictional Eastern European locale with radiant life is unmatched in Anderson’s already carefully constructed filmography.

In time, this should go down as his masterpiece.

(www.criterion.com/films/29601-the-grand-budapest-hotel)