Wes Anderson’s latest film The Grand Budapest Hotel is a masterpiece and should not be missed. Anderson’s painstakingly created imaginary world is a perfect mix of sophistication and absurdity with an all-star cast including Ralph Fiennes, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law and F Murray Abraham. In the film, Anderson pays homage to Jewish émigré artist Stefan Zweig and the film itself is in the mould of Ernst Lubitsch, another Jewish artist who left Germany for Hollywood. Anderson has had a lot of fun dreaming up Eastern European style places. The hotel – pink ink and tiered as a wedding cake— is in the Republic of Zubrowka (for all you non-drinkers out there, that’s actually the name of Polish bison grass vodka) and the daily newspaper is The Trans-Alpine Yodel. Anderson has created a world of delightful make-believe in old Europe, like honey mixed with sachertorte. Ralph Fiennes plays Gustave, the purple-clad and promiscuous concierge, all oily sleaziness, at the luxurious hotel in the 1930s. He gives his older client Madame D (played by Tilda Swinton) some extra room service, so to speak, and ends up inheriting one of her priceless paintings, causing uproar in her family and resulting in him being accused of murder. What follows are scenes in prisons, steam trains and cable cars. There’s a great prison break, led by the leader of the jail house gang Ludwig, played by Harvey Keitel, some chilling confrontations with Jopling, played by Willem Dafoe, a brutal thug working for Madam D’s conniving son Dmitri played by Adrien Brody and lots of rapid-fire banter. It’s a tribute to another era, nostalgia for the antiquated styles of the past. Well worth seeing.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 13:45:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015