Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

I did not say that. I said it was the thing that annoyed me 'the most'. And no, the film does not take place during wwii, but in the period leading up to it. I'm not complaining that it is anachronistic, I'm complaining it is facile because it's too vague.

huh? you said that it annoyed you b/c it was something that happened during WWI, not WWII. i said that it's weird that this would annoy you but (implicitly) the other anachronisms didn't.

I said it was what annoyed me the most. Some of the other anachonisms work, some don't. I get that he is creating a fantasia, meant to evoke the loss of a certain Europeanness, but I just don't think he manages to do so very well. It's too vague. And part of it is how he doesn't really get into the whole social dimensions of it, like, who is defending what and who is attacking what. What values are he defending? Well, sort of aristocratic values, but he makes sure to have the villain be the rich guy. Instead, it's just some sort of cosmic catastrophe that hits Europe, and putting the flu into it really helps with that.

yeah i wouldn't worry about it too much. in some ways i think it is all a red herring anyway--I don't think Anderson has anything to say about Europe in the 20th century. he's just toying with the settings and style and motifs of some films he likes. i know a lot of his biggest fans would disagree with me--certainly plenty of critics found this film deeply resonant as a reflection on WWII or something--but I think they are barking up the wrong tree.

if you just presume the film exists, like "inglourious basterds," in movieville, then I think some of the objections you might have would grow fainter.

or stronger, who knows?

He, I love Inglourious Basterds, and find it to be very insightful about WWII... But that's another debate.

Yeah, most Anderson-films don't have anything to say about their subjects. But Moonrise Kingdom was so great about childhood - the final rendition of Cuckoo slays me every time - and critics were so positive, that I couldn't help but expect more out of this. It just felt empty to me, but also a bit too serious to be as empty as it was.

I thought it really suffered from dabbling in such a vague and badly defined 'europeanness'. Not as bad as the 'indianness' of Darjeeling, but still just so bloody turisty.

the whole thing is deliberately off-kilter from actual history, I think that's part of joke so to speak.

to start with I found the way Zubrowka lurches around Europe from the Alps to the Baltic and everywhere in between kind of offputting, but eventually it all just added to the dreamlike charm

but yeah, it did make me retrospectively uncomfortable abt Darjeeling Ltd, that it was probably at least as made-up as this and as a white person maybe I should feel bad about watching other white people's made-up ideas of India and not even stopping to think how made-up they are

fair but then of what % of all movies about anywhere could the same be fairly said, and not as if Anderson sells documentary

I think that when the three main characters of a film are doing silly made-up versions of the country's religious dances, then it's probably time to pause...

Man, I didn't like Darjeeling.

it was probably Anderson's most beautiful film, cinematographically

Not big on Darjeeling, but it did give us this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ycmVoOay4Vs

Morbs I did like MK but in the end it just whelmed me

Man I don't know shit about Europe except that they must eat a lot of fancy pastries

Darjeeling Limited was so bad and it might have been beautiful cinematographically but I watched it on a 5" airplane screen

The secret to this film and maybe WA films in general is having a strong plot be the motor of the film so he doesn't spend too much time trying to draw out the quirks in his character sketches

If I'm bothered by Wes Anderson's recent movies, it's not due to the trivialization of "exotic" cultures. That's certainly there, whether he's portraying an Indian village, an Eastern European hotel, or a summer camp in Maine. He always treats culture as an arrangement of nostalgic (thus stereotypical) bric-a-brac. This may be a problem in certain contexts, but I'm more troubled - and sometimes intrigued - by the strange emotional vacancy that seems to have defined his work since The Darjeeling Limited.

The Grand Budapest Hotel seems the apex of this trajectory, at least so far. The film's primary themes are fairly heavy, including memory, loss, and civility as a thin, beautiful skin protecting us from the fundamental horrors of human nature. A constant thrum of tragedy sounds beneath the antic and fancifully detailed surface, but overall, the film seems somehow to insist that none of it really matters, that all things are finally equal. People come and go, love blossoms and dies, even the spread of fascism becomes an incidental bit of picaresque detailing. Everything is reduced to design, a dazzling kaleidoscope of secondhand imagery, often more literary than cinematic in its inspiration.

As his viewpoint characters have flattened into recording ciphers (compare the aggressively two-dimensional, almost pathologically affectless young protagonists of Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel with the vibrant, full-blooded human specificity of Rushmore's Max Fischer), some essential spark seems to have dimmed. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It allows the comedy to encompass tragic extremes without sinking to grotesquerie or bathos. More than anything, it suggests the way one might read "sophisticated, adult" novels as a precocious adolescent, enthralled by the evocation of a complex world unknown, but unable to fully grasp the deeper resonances in play. Or perhaps it's just elegantly offhand, could call it either way.

contenderizer, do you blog? i'd read it.

i basically agree w/ you, although I wouldn't characterize the characters (ha!) as "ciphers" as much as types--an amalgam of outwardly observed traits.

that's ok by me, and the relative emotional vacancy (which I should say is our POV on it, other people have been moved by GBH) is sort-of OK by me too, insofar as I've come to appreciate his films mostly for their style and wit.

nah, dun blog. thanks tho! agree completely on appreciating his films mostly for their style and wit. i anticipate each new wes anderson picture with more simple happiness than the work of any other major american director, and my eyes are never in the least disappointed. one thing i especially enjoyed about the grand budapest hotel was its verticality. just before watching the film, i'd read an interview with anderson (or part of one) wherein he talked about the pleasure and challenge of working with "the academy ratio", its implicit exhortation to stack rather than space compositions. the jailbreak sequence is a wonderful exercise in sustained vertical movement and invention, something i might not have consciously noticed had not the interview inclined me in that direction.

yeah that whole sequence is A+. you've seen this?: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/03/26/the-grand-budapest-hotel-wes-anderson-takes-the-43-challenge/

i haven't. nice analysis and a great blog, overall (by the looks of it). expect i'll spend quite a bit of time catching up/exploring.

Sitting through this was possibly more brutal than sitting through The Wolf of Wall Street. I hated the trailer and stayed away for many weeks, so maybe I'd already made up my mind--I'd like to think not. Trying to bring in lofty sentiments towards the end about a world that has passed seemed really desperate. If Wes Anderson has a second idea beyond this at this stage of his career, I'm missing it:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/images/uploads/2014/03/wesacentred3569_0.jpg

Abraham straightening the painting was a good self-deprecating joke--I think it was a self-deprecating joke--and I wondered if Keitel was trying to look like Jean Genet. That's all I got out of this.

Hoberman on this and Gray's The Immigrant as "Jew-ish" movies:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/175356/immigrant-grand-budapest-hoberman

i said it first!!

me otm

out on Blu-ray etc today

I have find the shrinking of the home-viewing lead depressing

lol they wouldn't even give it to the theater i work at until this weekend (projecting it next tuesday), so brb gonna drive from big-box store to big-box store destroying inventory. p sure the combination of long waits and torrents is why every limited-run-cinema patron in this alleged college town is 96 years old.

I really liked it more than I thought I would. One of my favorites.

Hoberman on this and Gray's The Immigrant as "Jew-ish" movies:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/175356/immigrant-grand-budapest-hoberman

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 11, 2014 9:22 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for this, i often forget to check hoberman's blog for his new pieces.

shrinking time between release windows -- the wait for this on blu-ray is like a lifetime compared to how quickly the studios turn around movies that didn't do well at the box office. you often see those on video within two months of their theatrical debut. and for niche distributors, the lag is often nonexistent. esp. when you don't live in NY/LA, it's common for my local video store to get a movie before the local art cinema or cinematheque.

I was pretty into this! Way sillier than anything else he's done and the violence and swearing helped counteract the affectedness. Fiennes was great and I laughed a lot.

More than anything, it suggests the way one might read "sophisticated, adult" novels as a precocious adolescent, enthralled by the evocation of a complex world unknown, but unable to fully grasp the deeper resonances in play. Or perhaps it's just elegantly offhand, could call it either way.

"you FUCKERS"

the film is set in a Ruritania/Syldavia/Freedonia, a pastiche of a pastiche of Europe.

... Moldavia

http://www.bridalwave.tv/soap-weddings/dynasty-royal-wedding.jpg

"select cities" theatrical rerelease tomw

if this wins the oscar i'll eat my hat, and love it.

Unused storyboard from GBH:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HQKB2qtahCs/UDJAa0G7WWI/AAAAAAAACa8/Bd0h5r4quYE/s320/003.jpg

i liked this p well, has great timing & the editing is obv superb…it never seems to get old 2 me for heady and verbose characters & scenes to then include base anger and/or profanity coming a bit from left field -ie 'look at these assholes' from darjeeling ltd idk i always lol

they made a movie about brodie

― velko, Thursday, October 17, 2013 11:11 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol @ this btw

if theres anyone i think would be good at silent movies, or at least someone who id like to see make modern silents, just so i didnt have to endure the terrible, self consciously WACKY performances/dialogue, its wes anderson.

was weirdly thinking about GBH recently before all the nominations (it should win for set design, cinematography, costume and makeup), and thinking that ralph fiennes should actually win an award for getting some actual humanity and warmth in there.

hope this doesnt win for best writing btw.

Yeah I didn't care for this really but even I think Fiennes was great

this is a wes anderson movie ok so it could have been an enjoyable movie from setting and plot and cast even but for the relentlessness of everything

the bits with obvious miniatures e.g. cable cars or some of the fake-looking and presumably fake interiors e.g. tilda's gaff looked less cutesily crude than cheap and tossed off

(xp) otm.

Unfortunately at was at my mother's house when I saw this film and so had my mother scowling (comically) at the screen and saying, "What's this supposed to be about?" or similar before eventually dozing off.

the bits with obvious miniatures e.g. cable cars or some of the fake-looking and presumably fake interiors e.g. tilda's gaff looked less cutesily crude than cheap and tossed off

wildly disagree with this

making the artifice adorable

Pablo Fernández Eyre has performed a simple editing trick, and by doing so has revealed a beautiful facet to the filmmaking of Wes Anderson. By mirroring the image on one side of the screen, either horizontally or vertically, Eyre has underscored just how organized Anderson is in his shots, creating beautiful images that conform to a type of symmetry and converge at a negative space in the central point of the screen.

http://www.avclub.com/article/wes-andersonmirror-effects-shows-man-complete-cont-225551

Pretty amazing that you can take an image, mirror it, and it will be symmetrical.

I finally saw this. I thought it was pretty enjoyable, although maybe the first half was better. What really makes me this for me is the attention to detail and how fully imagined the milieu is. Just one example: the moment when the Dafoe character licks the frosting from the prison food tray and says "Mendls". Anderson is a good writer (in his idiosyncratic way), and a great set designer. You feel like he can map the inside of his head and project it onto a screen, an uncommon gift. I think Fiennes is mostly what lifts this above "Moonrise" for me. That was really missing the presence of a charismatic lead. It's partly the fact that Fiennes seems slightly out of place in the miniature-snowglobe Anderson milieu that makes him interesting to watch - like you see him trying to figure out how broadly to play some of the sillier scenes, or maybe even bridling imperceptibly at some of the crude dialogue at points - it's almost like a breath of adult atmosphere seeps through a tiny crack in the snowglobe, but not enough to spoil the fantasy.

I bailed on this the first time, felt almost intolerably twee & annoying.

I rewatched it yesterday, all the way through & i really enjoyed it. And was surprised to find that maybe it's my new favorite of his. I feels like it pulls all of his talents together in a meaningful way. The ending serves the whole story, makes every choice & all of the comedy so much more meaningful. I liked the layers of narration & layers of flashback, but I mostly was swept away by the hotel scenes, and those long lens shots where it feels like you could walk right through the screen into the movie, the same feeling I get whenever I watch the Shining. And when Goldblum is walking down the path towards the museum getting smaller & smaller & the camera just stays put...ugh! love it.
Fiennes was excellent

i also liked this much better on a second viewing

i already want to see it again. Mr Veg loved Rushmore but hasnt liked much since Life Aquatic, i am gonna try to get him to try this

I bailed on this the first time, felt almost intolerably twee & annoying.

I stuck with this but I did feel it was overly twee. Maybe I should give this another go.

at this point calling WA twee is like calling Kubrick cold

talk to the hand

Have seen this twice and I mostly really like it !!

at this point calling WA twee is like calling Kubrick cold

talk to the hand

yeah, and people who criticize because they consider he always does the same thing, he's locked in his own little dolls world, etc.
It's like they love "Rushmore" (or "Bottle Rocket" for some extremists !) and then consider it's cool to say the rest is shit/samey.
the "the first album is their only good album" syndrome.

Only Moonrise and Fantastic are good. Twee films work best with kids and animation. How does that rank on the list of shitty arguments?

as for TGBH, I like the contrast between the nice little world of the hotel and the darkness all around (prison, mountain, train...).
It's pretty violent (the fingers !) and desperate (the casualties of fascism, sickness and then communism/capitalism, as the hotel turns into an almost abandoned ruin no one cares about).
it's also quite impressive the level of aesthetic and visual control he reaches. of course, that's been one of his strength since the beginning but the evolution is remarkable (the experience of MrFox has certainly helped).
I think his best work is still ahead of him.