Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

I would argue Zero is the complete opposite of Max in almost every conceivable way.

The distancing devices actually created a meaningful synthesis between Anderson's preoccupations and Zweig's melancholy. The trouble for me was in the escape/caper sections; it distracted from their relationship and turned the movie into Spot The Actor (Harvey Keitel in tats! Owen Wilson as a German named Chuck!).

With this film and The Wind Rises, are we seeing a revival of early 20th century German-language literature or something? I look forward to PTA attempting Joseph Roth.

sorry, I missed what the German connection is in TWR (aside from, you know)...

The cameo names didn't really bother me. That's entertainment. (tho it's strange Lea Seydoux is getting billed in the full-page ads; she's onscreen for maybe a half minute)

Thomas Mann (the protagonist meets Hans Castorp in the sanitarium ho-ho).

Kudos to the production design too: The Grand Budapest in '68 looked like photos I've seen of similar pre-Iron Curtain structures in desuetude.

fun drinking game: bring a flask to the theater with you and take a pull every time you hear a fellow moviegoer say "every single shot is set up so well" or "his style is so unique" or "i can't believe that was harvey keitel!" on the way out

The woman saying to her grim unsmiling husband, "It was an arty film; they do things differently" sent me across the street for a gin and tonic.

such a snob aren't you alfie boy

heavens! hoi polloi having opinions!

I wish!

Gin and tonic? That called for an Alaska.

Morbs OTM

Criticisms of Anderson often feel like cinematic rockism: Where's the realism? Where are the deep emotions? Surface v substance. Fun v depth. Dollhouse/chocolate box metaphors mandatory.

Morbs, which 30s movies should I check out to help me appreciate GBH's relation to cinematic history?

All of them.

Criticisms of Anderson often feel like cinematic rockism: Where's the realism? Where are the deep emotions? Surface v substance. Fun v depth. Dollhouse/chocolate box metaphors mandatory.

oh I agree but this film doesn't sustain the charm of its first 40 minutes

i wish he would do a spy movie or a heist movie or hard sci fi or something

― ⚓ (gr8080), Monday, March 12, 2012 2:29 AM (2 years ago)

i guess i need to see this again but about 3/4 of the way through this i was like "oh this is his adventure movie, nevermind"

lol Jacobin Mag hard to take those grad students with shiny chips on their shoulders seriously

i like wes anderson pretty well as you folks likely know, but i think if you're trying to redeem one of his films by saying it's a "critique" you're barking up the wrong tree. that seems really willful to me.

i think i'll see the raid 2 before i see GBH. two kinds of formalism, my allegiance is increasingly w/ the former.

though i know it's a false dichotomy

Also the world needs more cat-killing jokes.

feel better about skipping this now

I enjoyed the overall lack of gravitas, and I don't think the presence of Nazi-like figures automatically requires gravitas -- what about Indiana Jones?

Dr. Jones is accorded more reverence than Churchill in some quarters these days.

God, the way some people clock their mortality in new wrinkles or grey hairs, I do in accidental Morbsisms.

morbidity is the soul of wit

this might be his best since bottle rocket/rushmore i think. fiennes is totally perfect because he does the whole arch thing so well, but can do it with some warmth, its never totally sneery, which is just the kind of actor WA needs i think. this might be the tightest plotting WA has ever done too i think, or at least the least indulgent. i think he might be figuring out how to still be true to his voice without getting too carried away - there seemed to be less in-jokiness, which was nice and made me very grateful. hopefully by his next film, he will figure out how to write characters, not just poses (but i still greatly dislike his sense of humour and the whole 'arent i so smart' tone of everything so maybe hes just not for me - its not that i expect 'depth', theres just something hollow and self-congratulatory/smug about WA, even though i adore how his movies look).

4:3 is the all time greatest aspect ratio though - i wish more films used it. it doesnt allow the eyes to wonder.

it's not ENTIRELY or even MOSTLY a critique, but i think a bit of that is there.

first script he wrote himself

theres just something hollow and self-congratulatory/smug about WA

i can certainly see how his films might come off as rather complacent in some respects--i think he just about always walks right up to the line of condescending to his characters and their fragile self-constructed worlds...however, that's precisely why his OTT formalism is so necessary: it's self-implicating. any other stylistic approach would be smug.

just something hollow and self-congratulatory/smug about WA

but enough about Woody Allen...

it's not ENTIRELY or even MOSTLY a critique, but i think a bit of that is there.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 24, 2014 5:08 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, I'll have to see it I guess. but similar claims made for other of anderson's films tend to ring hollow

(and I'm a fan)

"critique" is too loaded a term for he's doing, perhaps. it definitely implies a "realism" to be set in opposition to the constructed fantasies--something he seems to rather pointedly avoid doing, especially in the last few films.

in fact maybe that's the most interesting thing about his movies. the cracks in the facade are never really obvious intrusions of "the real" (of either historical or emotional sorts) but still within the logic of the constructed fantasy, the way things tend not to hold together even in their own terms.

something like a lack of internal consistency.

"Critique" is any dialogue between source and interpreter. This synthesis of Zweig and Andersonalia is itself a critique of Zweig, thirties Shangri-La-type fantasias, caper films, etc.

I kind of want to see this buy that image of the purple bellhops in the elevator that is bright blood red just makes me think too much of Kubrick and the bathroom in the Shining. I sort of would rather rewatch a bunch of Kubrick films instead.

except the mediocre Shining.

first script he wrote himself

Well this Hugo Guinness person gets a co-story credit.

but enough about Woody Allen...

shouldn't you be off championing Rocky and Patton?

dude, you're as boring as fuck

thank you

bye again, "academic"

i can certainly see how his films might come off as rather complacent in some respects--i think he just about always walks right up to the line of condescending to his characters and their fragile self-constructed worlds...however, that's precisely why his OTT formalism is so necessary: it's self-implicating. any other stylistic approach would be smug.

― ryan, Monday, March 24, 2014 6:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is interesting

Self-implicating is key. I don't think he condescends at all because he sees himself in Max or Gustave. He likes to show how his self-reinventing characters (I can't remember if it's in the movie but I get the impression Gustave wasn't born with that accent or ease among the rich) are both heroic and sometimes self-defeating. I wish he'd done The Great Gatsby because it's perfect for him: the allure of beauty and new identities to keep pain at bay, and the fragility of those strategies. You don't see Gustave's world shattered but you see the aftermath.

Because he won't ever offer interviewers a psychological reading of his work, it's fun teasing one out. There are so many clues as to how he thinks and why he makes the movies he does but you have to assemble them yourself from slivers of autobiography. For example, he's said that the kids' baggage in Moonrise Kingdom was inspired by the way that as a kid he would cling to certain items as "talismans". He's unusually interested in exploring the psychological impulse that drives film directors' world-building and in the way people use art and artefacts to navigate the world.

This is definitely getting at why I love Anderson's films.

you have to assemble them yourself from slivers of autobiography.

I'm not really focused on this, with hardly any filmmakers or artists. Don't most kids have talismanic objects in their lives?

I can't remember that far back. Nothing's coming to mind.

i was pretty into my pacifier

My point isn't that it's unusual but that Anderson specifically named things from his own childhood that inspired the way the kids behaved in Moonrise. It's a minor example but I mentioned it wrt condescension vs self-implication and whether he's just archly pushing figurines around or exploring patterns of behaviour that are important to him. Moonrise is based on a romance he wanted to have when he was that age.

His characters don't really seem any more superficial or contrived than pretty much any character in any movie on a random day at the multiplex.

Average Hollywood movies suck though. They're worse than average television shows nowadays.

whoa

Someone should start a thread on that.