The Grand Budapest Hotel
There is a story within a story within a story, in which once there was a grand hotel that the old and rich flocked to, which was the envy of hotels across the country. But The Grand Budapest Hotel is now only a shell of what it once was, wear seeping through its walls and tiled bathroom floors. The hotel's lobby is vacant, except for the occasional guest and the staff who stare out into the empty check-in line or unmoving doorways in front of them. One such person does not simply wait; he is the narrator of this story, Zero. Instead, Zero, the owner of the Grand Hotel, reminisces not only about what the hotel once was, but also about the people it once held.
Artistry and Craft
The Grand Budapest Hotel is exceptionally well shot, embodying the technical aspects of what a movie should look like as an art form. Wes Anderson's notable, slightly awkward pacing captures the imaginations and attention spans of the viewers with its dramatically shot angles and flat silences, with an abrupt shift to each new frame, making it a visually compelling watch. Because everything in this movie seems to be intentional, including the complex web of philosophical thought there is also much to be noted of the use of colour theory in the film and how it's used to support and bring alive the story, creating a simultaneously glaring colour scheme as well as creating a patina overlay, like an old film yellowed and warmed by the passing of time. In combination with technical choices that make the movie come alive, there is the "story within a story" concept, which makes it unique compared to a lot of other mainstream movies, giving it conceptual depth. This gives the viewer an almost overwhelmingly rich viewing experience without complete overwhelm by awkward breaks and silences. Nevertheless, there are several things to note in Wes's movie in terms of its content, which I feel it is necessary to not only point out but also warn my readers about because of its intensity as well as prevalence.
The movie, unfortunately, has quite a bit of sexual innuendo and visuals that can be explicit. Nudity is shown at the beginning of the movie during the introduction to M. Gustave, as well as in some paintings included in the film, making sexualized nudity almost unavoidable. This may give my readers pause to watch this movie, which I am glad of, because this movie, although masterfully crafted, has its points of difficulty and contention. There is a good argument to make to not watch this film based on sexual matters alone, so if you have convictions against watching a film that is permeated with sexual themes that are used as "humour," I would avoid this one if I were you. I have taken it upon myself to give you a dependable timestamp to avoid the worst of the sexual explicitness in the content discretion below.★★★
Themes and Messages
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a story told from a standpoint that there is some sort of unquantifiable weight to doing the right thing, to living with a humanizing ethic. This unquantifiable aspect is captured in the simple statement of “just getting it” when recognizing this ethic in practice in others. A secular way to sum up this "it" is from a secular and scientific philanthropic perspective, but viewing from a Christian worldview, I think this vague statement of how some characters in the film are “just getting it” can be explained by the nature of Yahweh and our relation to Him.
The only way the “it” becomes quantifiable is if it was observed from a system of order; that's where the ordered cosmos comes into play. Considering that God's ethic is not only the most ethical but the most humanizing, this scientific philanthropy's full growth resembles how we as Christians are supposed to act, even using language at times borrowed from scripture, like the golden rule, using the ethics of scripture to back a secular view. The film's ethic is like a shadow—unable to realize its own vision but still pointing towards a fuller revelation by means of the way humans are supposed to live. In this labelling of goodness, the film implicitly acknowledges the question that "it" has to come from a source that can decide what goodness is, pointing towards a God who orders the cosmos and named goodness as being good.★★★★
Final Thoughts
Overall, it was an artfully woven film that is philosophically deep, capturing aesthetics in the way the film was shot and the colours the director chose. The downsides of this movie have to be the explicit sexual imagery that is mostly unskippable and the frequent explicit language, but all the same, this is a good movie. From my perspective, this is 3.75 out of 5 stars. The reason I'm not saying it's a 4 out of 5 is because of the sexual nudity and humour.
Content Discretion:
Drugs and alcohol, frequent swearing, sexual nudity and perversion (time stamp at 1:25:06 to 1:25:41), murder, theft, betrayal and prison.
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