The Grand Budapest Hotel

Last year I declared Moonrise Kingdom – that sweet and surreal tale of young love and naiveté – Wes Anderson’s most Wes Andersony film. Where that offering saw Anderson revisit adolescence and burgeoning self-awareness, The Grand Budapest Hotel sees the acclaimed director embrace maturity, experience and nostalgia. His dazzling, charming and wondrously artful tale is hilarious and humane in equal measure, and sees the director conquer scale, style and story.

Spanning three time periods, Grand Budapest’s most important story takes place in 1932, and centres on veteran concierge Gustav Verdoux (Ralph Fiennes) and his bell-boy side-kick Zero (Tony Revelori.) Following the suspicious death of one of Gustav’s regular lovers/guests, an estate is bequeathed, a painting stolen, a will caveat misplaced, and a madcap adventure initiated.

Though Anderson’s cast is extraordinary, many of his regulars such as Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson are reduced to cameos. This rightfully allows for Fiennes’ comic genius to shine (yes we have just mentioned Ralph Fiennes and ‘comic genius’ in the same sentence).

Combining a refined superficiality with mordantly witty dialogue and a surprisingly overt sexuality, his snobbishness is laced with pathos. He loves his elderly guests, old-worldly manners, the grandeur of his lavish hotel. He is a genteel soul whose “world had vanished long before he had entered it”.

The film acts as a scale model of experience, half-remembered, yet honest about its fragmented, idealised representation. Through his deliberately ornate set design, paper puppets, framing camera work and models, Anderson addresses what he regards as the “miniature” nature of memory and the world it builds – yet his story also spans continents and decades. It’s a splendid, glittering tale about embracing the past and finding beauty in the old. It’s a truly memorable film about not forgetting.