Archive

Best Picture Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

BY LISA BASNETT

The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Fans of quirky, deft director Wes Anderson will delight in his ever-distinctive style of direction and writing in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson’s film begins in a grand hotel in 1932 and traipses through mountainous personal and geological territory.

Featuring an effete Casanova/concierge played by Ralph Fiennes, newcomer Tony Revolori disarmingly as a hotel lobby boy and Saoirse Ronan as his beguiling love thing, the film is acted as gloriously as it’s staged. A wonderful turn by Adrien Brody (at his greasiest) and Willem Defoe (at his most frightening) provide the film’s truly creepy antagonists.

The lushly detailed visuals are equaled by the simultaneous whimsy and depth of the story. Throughout art heists, train flights and escape plans, the tale tracks M. Gustave (Fiennes) and Zero Moustafa (Revolori, and later F. Murray Abraham) as they fight for decorum and justice in a changing world.

Anderson creates whole universes and this one is as delicious as Agatha’s (Ronan) triumphant pastries. Wes Anderson’s work deserves one’s full attention, and this year, he finally has that from the Academy. The Grand Budapest Hotel (story by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness), has 9 Oscar nominations, including Best Motion Picture.


Featured image by Davidlohr Bueso obtained from Wylio.com. 

License: Creative Commons Attribution License

Movie poster used from The Grand Budapest Hotel on IMDB.

Leave a Reply