Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

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.

i'll take yr word for it, i don't watch either

fascinating

lock board

I'm not just going to sit around and allow average Hollywood movies to be traduced in this manner. It's a dream factory that brings joy to countless millions, Treeship.

not countless, they count them all the time.

but enough about Woody Allen...

shouldn't you be off championing Rocky and Patton?

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 24, 2014 11:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my comment was just a bad pun on their common initials, WA, and they both have reputations for being self-indulgent filmmakers. but you used it as yet another occasion to toss a literal-minded and witless barb. i have no idea why "academic" is in quote marks in your response, what that's supposed to mean, or why i should care. but you're incorrigible. goodbye indeed.

btw i should be less dismissive of films, both ones i've seen and ones i haven't, here and elsewhere. for my lapses I apologize to everybody. seriously. it's an easy habit to indulge and i need to work harder at avoiding it. god bless.

ok, sorry -- i let my assumptions carry me away now & then.

im not at all fussed whether moonrise was autobiographical or not, my problem with WA is that his films are just plain shallow. it would be okay if the sheer vivacity or joi de vivre/charm/panache etc of them was really high (why has WA not made a musical? i cant think of a better director to make one), but its not, because it gets polluted by his inability to not be smug/knowing/smirking - i find it too distancing (i keep thinking of him as being a posh tarantino, both want you to see what theyre doing, except QT wants everyone to love it and be in on the joke, WA invites you to be in on the joke and condescend those who dont get it). i seriously LOVE looking at his movies but more or less hate everything else about them. and he really should stop the mammoth-all-star-lineup approach to casting now, as it just got silly in this new one, as if he forgot how many surplus actors he had at his disposal until the final reel). he doesnt have to be mr. depth of the human soul, but he clearly cares about how people dress and walk and how their environments appear more than anything else. i dont see the point in people trying to convince themselves this is not the case so they can like his movies better.

how people dress and walk and how their environments appear = the depth of the human soul

his (mis)use of all-star casts has reached Woody Allen levels of noxiousness.

what, exactly, is smug and knowing? idgi

really? when is the last time Dafoe or Goldblum had parts this good?

when was the last time Dafoe had a part this ephemeral? Could've been any Dial-a-Thug.

WA invites you to be in on the joke and condescend those who dont get it

I think this is a huge reach, and if anything I think you have Anderson and Tarantino switched in the comparison.

^^^^^^^^

i mostly disagree. tarantino's films feel very generous to me, he's nothing if not an audience pleaser (I mean this in the best possible way) and his films are mostly very emotional albeit not in the conventional ways. Anderson still seems tied, in a lot of ways, to the Indie distancing devices and, sometimes, unreadability. even though he's very very popular right now, I feel like tarantino is definitely more of a "mass" filmmaker.

i'm a big fan of both btw.

No, this movie doesn't condescend to its audience.

To answer your question, Morbs: Spider-Man or the one in which he played Nosferatu.

xpost - not when they all walk and talk in such an overwhelmingly mannered way! most of his characters seem to be afflicted with the same mannerisms, diction, similar vocal inflections, etc (and yes i know QT gets this criticism too, so maybe thats another parallel). odd how such a twee director is so polarising.

goldblum and dafoe were both really enjoyable, yes. but the feeling i often get watching WA is that yes, the casts are all having tons of fun ('hes so great with actors! no wonder they keep returning and working for scale!' etc), but its like youre meant to buy into the idea of all these famous actors having a ball, and im sure they are, its just never *quite* as much fun when youre watching on the other side of the screen (for me at least).