Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel reminds me of being carsick. I dont mean that it made me literally sick. No, what I mean is that The Grand Budapest Hotel stirred up a sense-memory of an involuntary and particularly torturous road-trip I was taken on as a kid. It reminds me of being helplessly strapped into a sweltering backseat, fending of my younger brothers attempts to rub boogers on me hour after tedious hour, listening to music I didnt care for on my way to a destination I didnt care about, and longing and longing and longing to just. be. free. According to Google Maps, the drive from San Clemente, California to Bass Lake, California should only take 6 hours. My eyebrows went up when I saw that: Im absolutely certain that childhood trip took several days. Im likewise astonished that TGBH is only 1:40 minutes long. It should have an intermission. Its not that the movie is *bad,* exactly. Its just that Wes Andersons infatuation with patina - patinaed sets, patinaed costumes, patinaed characters, patinaed dialogue, patinaed manners, hell, even his camera lens has a patina - is completely exhausting in the way that childhood roadtrip was exhausting. The helpless feeling of experiencing it wears on the very psyche. Its telling that the movies two greatest scenes (as agreed on by the folks I saw it with) occur when the movie breaks character *from itself*, allowing the characters to express a brightly present lucidity and humanity in their moments of genuine exasperation and astonishment. Those moments are like pit-stops at a McDonalds PlayPlace, all too brief a chance to run before the confinement of the stuffy backseat and the hum of the road. Wes Andersons nostalgia is a thing I dont want to remember anymore.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:44:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015