Finally its time for the first discussion thread! Let it all out from both sides! I'll try to add more as the day goes on but work is a bit busier today, have fun.
That he used Bill Murray in a small, yet important role seemed perfect to me. Still, my favorite Bill Murray role in one of his films remains Raleigh Sinclair. Also, iammyownrushmore you said, You also write, I enjoy being lost in Wes Anderson's quirky, over-stylized worlds; closets containing Javelina's, fencing clubs, lots of binoculars, jaguar sharks, odd artwork and unusual clothing. He throws you in to this amazing world of detail and color and when we are really lucky, he slowwwwwly takes us out of it: This stylized world was at its most stylized in The Grand Budapest Hotel. In my opinion, this was likely because it's a retelling of a story. Older Zero is telling Jude Laws character his story. Jude Law then writes his book and it is being shown to us through an exaggerated telling. For example, Zero likely told him that his love "Agatha" had a birthmark on her face that looked like Mexico. Well..... in the film it literally looks like Mexico. Zero may have mentioned that he had a purple uniform and Bam! Everyone in the retelling has purple uniforms. So, from an aesthetic standpoint it makes sense to me that it would be even more over the top than usual. As for the story, I loved it. I enjoyed the relationship between M. Gustav and Zero, it's one that happens fast and asks the viewer to care about this relationship pretty quickly, but I loved them together from the first moment they shared a scene. When Zero asks if he should still go light the candles at the church on, I was hooked. I laughed a lot during this film, my biggest laugh likely came at the "take your hands off my lobby-boy" line. Ralph Feinnes was brilliant in this. It may be my favorite performance in any WA film, which is saying something. My one criticism from an acting standpoint would be Adrian Brody. I'm just not a fan and hope WA stops using him in his films. I was also glad that Schwartzman had a diminished role. Anyways, I liked the film a lot. If it was the first WA film I had ever seen I would be psyched about this awesome new director. Because I know his films so well, I think its a very good movie, not his best but I really enjoyed it. Edit: actually, I need to edit something. The reason the style is so over-the-top is not just because we are seeing Jude Laws characters written interpretation of it, we are seeing his book as interpreted by a teenaged girls view of it.Murray typically is a sardonic, flat-affected individual with odd motivations when he is more of the focus, but otherwise he is present in all of Anderson's films, even if just to be there.
-Actually, Murray isn't in one of my favorite Wes Anderson Films, Bottle Rocket. Style above all else.
-I don't disagree that Anderson places style above all else. He consistently creates a Wes Anderson like world in all his films, some more heavy handedly than others. This one is certainly the heaviest. I'd say his film where his style was the most approachable from a realistic standpoint was Rushmore, which is probably why its near the bottom of the list for me regarding his films (though I still love it). 
True, true, I address that more so to it just being his earliest work, and he hadn't developed the "lore" of actors and their archetypes in his films as of yet. Not discounting it in any way, I just wouldn't chalk it up as "proper" Wes Anderson, if that makes sense... but that's just getting pedantic. Absolutely. This film is totally the zenith for him stylistically, his mise en scène is impeccable, everything you've ever seen before, but better. I think the concern surrounding Adrien Brody's role are understandable, but one thing I always take in to account when I am watching a film by someone I trust (and someone as meticulous as WA) is just that, that I trust them. Adrian Brody did a very good job with what he was given (a sophisticated-looking brute hell bent on expressing his basal emotions at every turn) and serves as a stand-in for the depravity hiding under the covers of the uber-civil aesthetics of fascism. I have more to say and want to be more tangential in a later post, but I don't think this is without merit or done wantonly. Also watching him smash an Egon Scheile painting like a child was fucking hilarious. As for Schwartzman, that dude is such a one-trick pony and that fits well for what WA does with him, but he just annoys me every time he's onscreen now.Actually, Murray isn't in one of my favorite Wes Anderson Films, Bottle Rocket.
This stylized world was at its most stylized in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
One of my favorite parts of the movie from a comedic perspective. That entire scene had me laughing pretty hard. I have mixed feelings on his character as a whole, but I will say I thought it was a great move to re-introduce with the Fascist armband in the last act of the film.Also watching him smash a Egon Scheile painting like a child was fucking hilarious.
Yes, this is what it seemed like to me. How can anyone accurately imagine a world so far removed from their own? It will of course be exaggerated, dramatized and of course the imagination will turn it into a kind of cartoon. I mean, why else would Agatha be so important to the plot and then disappear so quickly?Edit: actually, I need to edit something. The reason the style is so over-the-top is not just because we are seeing Jude Laws characters written interpretation of it, we are seeing his book as interpreted by a teenaged girls view of it.
EVERYONE - I highly recommend reading BorgoPo's write up about this film in Souciant: http://souciant.com/2014/03/its-a-small-strange-world/ He writes the following, which to me was spot on:When I walked out of the theater after seeing the film, I at first found myself unable to think about it analytically, because it had moved me so. Yet I’d never had the sense during the picture that it was affecting me to that extent; my attention, rather, was directed to the profusion of details Anderson is able to highlight: the way the hotel’s interior in the 1968 sequence so perfectly captures the color schemes of that era; the fabricated artworks that so effectively conjure their real-world inspiration; the excesses of different characters’ attire. If a film about an imaginary country in Eastern Europe can transform a Tucson, Arizona parking lot into a haunted landscape, flooding me with memories good and bad, I figure it must be doing something right.
Underrated actor: Jeff Goldbloom -cat scene was wonderful. What other performances stood out to people?
I really enjoyed Harvey Keital as Ludwig. Sure, they played the classic "crawl through a pipe to escape the prison" card, but I enjoyed his character. It was the archetypical old-timer in prison character. I wonder if roysexton knows about the movie club and/or has written up any reviews of this movie?
oh, you guys are going to be SO unhappy with me - I did review it here: http://reelroyreviews.com/2014/03/29/two-by-two-what-did-i-just-do-to-myself-noah-and-the-grand-budapest-hotel/ but I knew I was the lone contrarian (sp?), so I offered my pal Rebecca a counterpoint here:
Your review is awesome, if nothing else, for introdocuing me to the Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. -Ed Norton as Owen Wilson is amazing.
Not alone! I've also used "cute" and "Keystone cops" in my derision of this piece of shit (see below and in the comment of this review). It's obvious to the point of irony and self-awareness, but not in a way that comes off as thoughtful or introspective. Probably Anderson's worst movie. As for Aronofsky, I didn't catch Noah, because I couldn't stomach the idea of it. But, generally I've loved his recent work, and loathed his early work. Pi and Requiem are so bad that they make me want to puke. The Wrestler and Black Swan are some of my favorite movies of the last decade.
Yeah. I had to laugh because even though I write poems, I do have trouble finishing certain well-known (and very lengthy) modernist poems. I couldn't figure out if that running joke was a (perhaps well-deserved) jibe at modernist poetry or if it was more tied in with the words of the poem and how they interact with the running narrative. I guess I'd have to watch it again.
There is only one poem that is completed and it is just prior to Gustav's death, as read by Agatha on the train. -something about "brothers." -it was a nice moment. Edit: humanodon -in the film, not finishing the poems has to do with interruption and not because they have any trouble remembering. Therefore, when Agatha can finally recite a poem without interruption it satisfies a sort of pent up anxiety in the viewer. You feel a sense of completion and satisfaction and then... Bam! Gustav dies.
I guess I didn't express what I meant clearly; I mean that the running joke is that who ever is reciting is interrupted, but is the joke more than just the interruption? As in, obviously Anderson chose when to interrupt and how the recitation was interrupted.in the film, not finishing the poems has to do with interruption and not because they have any trouble remembering.
Ah... To me it seems that people were all too ready and willing to cut off the poems in order to get on to more important things. The best interruption occurs when Gustav is hanging off of the cliff reciting his death poem and Zero throws Willem Defoe over. It's a hilarious moment.
Right, but it also said that Gustav had that collection of modernist poetry and it did seem to figure into his character. Like that thing about boning old, rich women. Anyway, in Wes Anderson movies I'm never sure what any but the most obvious symbols are vs. opportunities (intentional or otherwise) for the viewer to "read into" a particular scene or the movie as a whole. I like Willem Dafoe as a thug and while his scenes were pretty cartoonish, I kind of felt like more could have been done with his character.
Hell yeah, here we go let's find that damn hammer beneath the sweet faberge exterior what. I mean, I'm all for critiquing state violence and imperialism etc. but I'm missing the tie-in. oh right, carry on thenAnd there are no doubt those who will find this assessment confirmed in Grand Budapest Hotel, which not only delivers the exquisitely detailed mise-en-scène for which Anderson is famous, but even invites us to compare it to the confectioner’s art.
the possibility that Anderson has been concealing pickaxes in his cinematic confections from the get-go, we must also ask what kind of freedom they promise us. After all, the atrocities the United States has committed in the name of that word are many and continue to mount.
souciant.com
I like to look at parts of this film independently from one another. First, there's the appearance. The film is beautifully shot and has absolutely gorgeous sets. I've seen it twice and both times I got a strange feeling like I was watching a play. Every little visual bit is so distinct, the sets so dynamic as to be worth discussion on their own. I felt like I was watching a very well organized and produced stage play, because of the artistry of the appearance. The OVER attention to detail, the absurd complexity of the baked goods, to cite a specific example. I'm not so sure Owen Wilson and company were necessary for the film. Yes, I understand the 'Bill Murray is in every Wes Anderson movie' trope, but it still felt a little ham-handed. I have to question if certain names were used for star power alone, when there might have been better fits for the characters that weren't just BIG NAMES. The best example of this for me was Willem Dafoe. Every time I saw him on screen I had a 'Oh, there's Willem Dafoe' moment. Even Murray wasn't that distracting. But, in keeping with the feeling of a stage show I was referencing earlier, it made things feel even more like an abstraction of a movie. 'These are actors, they play roles to convince the audience they are someone else in order to tell a story.' I'll say this, I'm not a huge Wes Anderson fan. I really liked The Life Aquatic, and the Royal Tenenbaums left me cold. I really liked GBH though.
I didn't mind. It was nice to see Anderson working with other actors. Anderson seems to set his movies up as stories within a story, or a story relayed third-hand by one narrator or another. Murray's character was interesting to me because he was the emissary of a somewhat shadowy group within the story of the story being told by Jude Law's/Tom Wilkinson's character. I guess for me, that fits in with the whole, "this story is being told to you by someone who heard it from someone else" in that in those second or third-hand narratives, more detail may be desired by the listener, but is ultimately unavailable because the person retelling the story does not know themselves. It just reminds me that it's so hard to know what is true and what may as well be fiction when we hear stories in this fashion.
Good point. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a retelling of events where the author is recounting his experience with Zero, which is within the book that the person at the beginning (and end) of the movie is reading. It's at the least a third-hand narrative, which could explain a couple of things I noticed: the first being that older zero and younger zero look almost nothing alike, and the second being that the hotel lobby in the story is much much larger and grander than that of the lobby when he's recounting his story to the author. It could be that a lot of other things in this movie aren't exactly as they seem either. I wanted to expand on this just a bit to say that the above could be a play towards how we view events past, and the effects of putting on "rose-tinted" glasses when discussing the past. It could also question the reliability of the narrative as a whole.
Yeah. It's becoming more and more apparent scientifically that memory is unreliable (a surprise to no one). I've noticed that in certain groups of friends, certain events (legendary only to us) have taken on their own kind of mythology as time has gone on. I'm not saying this is an original observation or anything, just that I'm starting to understand how much narrative and memory alter history, even personal histories and that it's something that everyone does to one degree or another.
I think Wes Anderson is able to do an interesting thing with his actors, he renders them as simultaneously bludgeoning agents of particular worldviews, but also allows them to be completely unique forces of their own. Murray typically is a sardonic, flat-affected individual with odd motivations when he is more of the focus, but otherwise he is present in all of Anderson's films, even if just to be there. I think this indicates more of the bottom line of Anderson's films: Style above all else. Murray needs to be in it because 1) this is a Wes Anderson film and 2) Bill Murray is amongst the things required for an Anderson film to retain the over-arching aesthetics he demands from his work
I appreciated the focus never settling for too long on either Jason Schwartzman or Bill Murray, and I think Ralph Fiennes made the entire movie for me. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I love Fiennes' acting or his dialog more, I guess one complemented the other.
I watched it but am also silent. I kinda just like watching the movie.
How did you guys feel about the narrative style towards the beginning of the film, with a narrator describing all the events and leaving spaces for the dialogue? It seemed to me like it was trying a bit too hard to be just like the viewer was reading the book with the girl from the opening.
I was not a fan of the opening couple of scenes. From the chanting/musical intro to the way it was shot to the narrative at the beginning, it was all a bit too much to me. To the point where I was wondering if I was watching some sort of self-parody of a Wes Anderson movie. Should rewatch it to see if I still feel that way though.
I'll admit, I had a similar feeling. The opening shot of the cemetery wall seemed very familiar to me because of Royal's funeral in Tenenbaums. Then the shot of the author at his desk seemed very familiar too, like Raleigh St. Claire during his intro scene in Tenenbaums as they describe Heinsbergen Syndrome. Wes seems to have an affection for Hotel employees, Bell hops etc. Here's a neat short on the concierge
To me that came across as a nice bit of self-awareness on Anderson's part. Kind of a 'Yes I know what my movies look like, so I'm going to hit you over the head with it at the beginning so that we can get past that prejudice and get on with the movie.'To the point where I was wondering if I was watching some sort of self-parody of a Wes Anderson movie.
A bit of lampshade hanging (WARNING: TV TROPES LINK), perhaps?
On my phone right now so it's hard to go into too much detail, but if you click thenewgreen's link to the Souciant article above, you can get a taste of why I hated it in the comments on that review. Turning Nazis into keystone cops only works if you have something constructive to say. Wes Anderson, at this point, seems to be mainly interested in making Christmas ornaments.
I don't know if I'm correct in assuming this, but my guess is that the reason that the "Nazis" are so Keystone cop-ish is that we are seeing the story through the eyes of a teenage girl. Perhaps if we are seeing it through the lens of an older man or woman it would be a very different perception and telling (with actual brutish nazis). -This likely doesn't change your enjoyment but it's good to realize that the writer/director had reasons beyond simple ornamentation for portraying certain things the way he did.
I doubt it. Maybe one can make an argument that a teenage girl might lighten the story a bit, but the force was even called the Zig Zags. If that's not supposed to be as cutesy as the Mexico-shaped birthmark on Agatha's face, then I've lost all ability to spot bullshit that I thought I had. I can't imagine we're supposed to suspend disbelief to such an extent as to think that the girl got the name of the force incorrect, as it should be a well documented part of history in that universe. Even with all that, I'd be willing to forgive if the movie had things like plot points, for example. Probably the worst thing I've seen in a Wes Anderson movie was the part where old Zero is crying about Agatha's death, an obvious indication that it's important in the story (see e.g. Chekhov's gun principle), but then it figures exactly 0% into the story (same goes for Gustave). The story isn't about sacrifice; it isn't about change; it isn't about mystery; so far as I can tell it is literally pointless. Hence, my critique about christmas ornaments, beautiful things that serve no purpose other than decoration and nostalgia. This movie is a live action cartoon (in fact, Anderson did voice overs for all the story boards himself long before the movie was shot, making it literally a cartoon) that lacks even the depth of a good Bugs Bunny classic.
What you want from an auteur is hardly ever what you get or should get. Is your complaint that WA did not give this film the solemn treatment that such a travesty as WW2 deserved? I think he spells it out pretty clearly and your comment is appropriate but still misses the point, though the point may not offer any respite, because you are demanding something from a work that it doesn't offer. I think this film is truly about what WA feels his job is as an artist, and addressing concerns about him approaching something, anything with a lil more gravitas. I think the hammer hidden underneath the sculpted sugar is the work itself and the journey. Life is almost constant tragedy (it begins and ends with his formal expose of a lifetime of grief felt by Zero) and, somehow, in a film set in Europe before the onslaught of World War 2, he manages to avoid almost any horrors, and instead focuses on a little world full of wonder, creating his most immaculate and wonderous film yet. This isn't set with the excuse of being around WW2 to bring about drama and desecrate the memories of the tragically slaughtered while giving us more "suffering porn." The fact that the fascists are rising in power is a central component to the film, that the world we enjoy cannot even dare to exist under brutes such as the nazis. His treatment of them seems less to me as "Keystone Cops" but more so that he feels everyone on earth is a child, that this is a good thing, and they are the most horrid children of all, brutish, cruel, dim-witted, and, worse yet, armed. You may feel that this is disrespectful, I feel that this is in memoriam of a people almost completely eradicated by the whims of a few childish sociopaths and a homage to an idealized culture destroyed. We all surround ourselves with these little worlds and strive to defend them against brutish forces and this is the lesson that is still so relevant and that continues today. I just finished Fanny and Alexander last night, it was probably an enormous influence on WA, but I think this final monologue] summarizes his ethos. There's always room to critique, of course, but I don't think you're being quite just. also this too: [this film is] about christmas ornaments, beautiful things that serve no purpose other than decoration and nostalgia.
Also, Gustav's death is absolutely a part of the story. It doesn't happen too far removed from the events of the plot. Much like Royal's death in Tenenbaums, it occurs after the plot resolves, therefore giving us the satisfaction of knowing that he enjoyed the resolution, even if only briefly. Then, as the war escalates and his charms no longer suffice as a shield he is killed. Old Zero says something akin to "He was a man out if time with his era," and as such his death is almost merciful given what would have come to pass. -Died in his prime. The irony is that the war that killed Gustav will now make Zero a very wealthy man. There was plenty of plot in this film, interesting characters etc. It's definitely fantastical and even ornamental, but like the best art those ornaments have representation behind them. Two thumbs up, even with the pseudo SS "zigzags." But I can see that if you wanted a film with actual nazi's that wasn't essentially a dreamscape remembrance, you'd be disappointed. Watched it again last night. It didn't disappoint with a second viewing either.Zero is crying about Agatha's death, an obvious indication that it's important in the story (see e.g. Chekhov's gun principle), but then it figures exactly 0% into the story
-at the end of the film Jude Laws character asks Zero why he still keeps the Grand Budapest, is it to stay close to Gustav? The answer was no, it's to remain close to the memory of Agatha. I'd say that her death plays an important role in the film. If she were still alive, that sad old man never meets the author.
The only problem I had the first time around, or only large problem, was the shoot-out scene in the hotel which seemed gratuitous, ridiculous, and not adequately explained (why would we all just start shooting at each other in a hotel? just because someone else is shooting?) the character motivations didn't seem to work enough there. However it was amusing which I think was partially the point.