6) The Grand Budapest Hotel
Of all the treats that filmmaker Wes Anderson has concocted, The Grand Budapest Hotel is easily the most overstuffed – and is all the better for it. The madcap, magnificently acted, slyly constructed comedy is about the friendship between a decadent hotel owner, Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his loyal lobby boy with a pencil mustache, Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori). The plot thickens when one of Gustave’s lovers bequeaths a painting to him, setting a series of suspicions, crimes and misdemeanors into motion.
Leading the charge is Fiennes, with the exalted voice and deft comic timing more accustomed to Chaplin than the English actor. He anchors the production, one both playful (check out the zippy chase scene through the snowy Alps) and precise – many of the shots are symmetrical, as per the director’s style. The film is also stuffed to the brim with quick jokes, dazzling production design and genre jumping (prison break drama, slapstick comedy, revenge thriller). With so much going on, it is not surprising that Anderson’s latest improves on later viewings.
In one of the film’s signature lines, Gustave tells Zero that, “there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” However, in his latest, the idiosyncratic and imaginative The Grand Budapest Hotel, the light outweighs the dark, and the fantasy resonates more than the fascism.
