The Grand Budapest Hotel 10 Ways Its Wes Andersons Masterpiece

The Grand Budapest Hotel: 10 Ways It’s Wes Anderson’s Masterpiece

Wes Anderson is a director best known for his charming, quirky characters and visual flair, all qualities on display in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

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Wes Anderson is one of the most revered filmmakers working today, with a visual style that’s entirely his own, so naming his masterpiece is tough. Bottle Rocket is a heist comedy filled with hilariously relatable human moments; The Darjeeling Limited is an underrated gem about three brothers’ struggles to communicate; Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom are a pair of great coming-of-age stories with plenty of emotional substance to back up their distinctive style.

But, arguably, the pinnacle of the Anderson oeuvre — at least so far — is 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. A close second would be the director’s masterfully crafted family saga The Royal Tenenbaums.

10 Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori & Saoirse Ronan Lead A Star-Studded Cast With Scene-Stealing Performances

Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori (in his first major film role), and Saoirse Ronan had never worked with Anderson before playing the lead characters in The Grand Budapest Hotel. All three give fantastic performances in their roles, nailing the Andersonian blend of idiosyncratic quirk and human nuance.

Fiennes plays hilariously against type in this movie. He’s known for playing sinister villains like Amon Göth and Voldemort, and the hyper-camp M. Gustave couldn’t be more different than those characters.

9 Its 17-Piece Ensemble Is Full Of Anderson Regulars

With supporting roles in sections of the script’s novelistic, episodic plot — or cameos as other members of the Society of Crossed Keys — The Grand Budapest Hotel incorporates a bunch of familiar faces from Anderson’s company of actors: Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum — the list goes on.

Thanks to The Grand Budapest Hotel’s massive 17-actor ensemble cast, it has more Anderson regulars than any of his other movies. Their deadpan line delivery makes the movie feel quintessentially Andersonian.

8 All The Comedic Moments Land

Most of Wes Anderson’s movies are a melancholic blend of comedy and drama, but The Grand Budapest Hotel is funny enough to play as a straight comedy. All its comedic moments land. The timing is perfect, like when Gustave runs away from the police and their bumbling reaction is a couple of seconds late. The movie occasionally veers into dark comedy, like Jeff Goldblum’s deadpan “Did he just throw my cat out the window?” followed by a semi-cartoonish shot of the flattened cat on the ground below.

The script is full of well-written jokes that the actors knocked out of the park, like when Zero tries to involve Agatha in his crimes and she says, “I’m not a fence, if that’s the term.” There are also plenty of quotable one-liners like, “Take your hands off my lobby boy!”

7 It Tells An Epic Story On An Intimate Scale

The story of The Grand Budapest Hotel, penned by Wes Anderson and frequent collaborator Hugo Guinness, has an epic scope. It involves political upset and espionage and art theft and assassins and death and betrayal.

But the story is told on an intimate scale through several key friendships and loves as Zero recounts the tale to a renowned writer in his old age.

6 The Lively Production Design Makes It Essentially A Live-Action Cartoon

With sequences like a ski chase and a prison break, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s script was written to be shot on a big budget. But Anderson couldn’t secure a big budget, so he had to find creative methods to tell the story on a low budget. Hot off his transition into animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson incorporated elements of animation in lieu of expensive effects shots.

Effectively, the lively production design of The Grand Budapest Hotel makes it play like a live-action cartoon, which gives it a kind of storybook quality. The set design of the titular hotel through the ages, credited to Anderson regular Adam Stockhausen (who previously worked on The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom), is gorgeous.

5 It Puts A Fresh Spin On The Well-Worn Heist Movie

At its core, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a heist movie about the theft of a painting named Boy with Apple. Gustave steals the painting, technically, but it rightfully belongs to him. Madame D. left it to him in her will, but her bitter family disagrees.

The heist is just a small part of the story, ultimately. It’s the thread that unravels a widespread political thriller wrapped in a quirky comedy.

4 Alexandre Desplat’s Score Gives The Movie A Unique Musical Identity

Anderson’s early movies licensed music by popular artists like the Rolling Stones and David Bowie and the Kinks, but The Grand Budapest Hotel has an original score by Alexandre Desplat, who had previously scored Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom.

With catchy themes and particular instruments paired with the story’s themes and ideas, Desplat’s Grand Budapest score gives the movie a unique musical identity.

3 The Changing Aspect Ratios Make It Anderson’s Most Visually Ambitious Film To Date

Anderson and his go-to cinematographer Robert Yeoman made The Grand Budapest Hotel their most visually ambitious work to date with changing aspect ratio.

Each time period depicted in the movie is presented in a different aspect ratio: the 1930s-set scenes appear in 1.37:1 aspect ratio, the 1960s-set scenes appear in 2.39:1, and the scenes set in 1985 onward appear in 1.85:1.

2 Its Sprawling Narrative Is A Gift That Keeps On Giving

With a huge cast of characters whose lives are chronicled across an immense timeline the length of the Star Wars saga (and with just as many fascistic regime changes), The Grand Budapest Hotel has a pretty sprawling narrative.

And that sprawling narrative is a gift that keeps on giving, as it gives audiences the chance to pick up on new details upon every viewing.

1 M. Gustave Is One Of The Most Memorable Characters In Film History

Portrayed brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes, M. Gustave is one of the most unforgettable characters in film history. Fiennes’ mostly comedic performance is marked by exaggerated campiness, but there’s also plenty of the actor’s signature pathos.

The actor was snubbed for an Oscar nomination at the 87th Academy Awards (although the movie itself tied with Birdman for most nominations and wins at the ceremony).

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/grand-budapest-hotel-best-wes-anderson-movie-entire-filmography/

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