Writer-director Wes Anderson's Academy Award-winning follow-up toMoonrise Kingdom, starring Ralph Fiennes as Mr. Gustave, the unflappable and perfectly composed concierge of the eponymous hotel. Shot in Germany, the all-star cast also includes Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel and Jeff Goldblum.
Alpine Europe's remarkable Grand Budapest Hotel saw its glory days in the 1930s. It's in this period that new lobby boy Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori) learns the tricks of the trade from Mr Gustave, falls in love with a baker's assistant (Ronan) and finds himself mixed up in quite an adventure. When Gustave inherits a priceless painting from a wealthy female guest of the hotel, one of many he served as a companion to, her son (Brody) stops at nothing to regain it - let alone murder. As the shadow of war falls across the country, Gustave and Zero embark on a madcap dash for survival.
Anderson has given hints to the tone and story, citing little-known Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, filmmaker Billy Wilder, and the warm comedies of Ernst Lubitsch as inspirations. Says Anderson: "It's kind of European, inspired partly by Hollywood Europe, and also by some European writers around that time... that Europe which is not made in Europe at all [but instead] on the Hollywood back lot, even though we’re actually going to Europe to do it. It’s got some of that kind of thing in it."
Best Costume Design, Make-Up/Hair, Original Score and Production Design, Academy Awards 2015; Best Original Screenplay, Production Design, Music and Make Up/Hair at the 2015 BAFTA Awards; Best Film (Comedy/Musical) at the 2015 Golden Globes; Winner of the Silver Berlin Bear, Grand Jury Prize at Berlin Film Festival 2014
2014Rating: M, Violence, offensive language, sexual references & nudity100 minsUSA
Set to be Wes Anderson’s highest-earning film, The Grand Budapest Hotel follows on the heels of the also successful Moonrise Kingdom in matching his now-familiar odd-bod aesthetic with a mainstream audience. But where Moonrise was awash with wistful nostalgia in its take on adolescence, romance and scouting, Anderson’s latest mines its period setting in service of a broadly comical tale which enjoys frequent diversions into both black and off-colour humour even as a body count amasses and the Second World War threatens to intrude on the borders of the titular hotel’s fictitious homeland.
Like the eye-catching cakes Agatha makes, Anderson’s eighth feature has a heft beneath its icing, heart behind its artifice. Check in, and you won’t want to leave.
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