Wes Anderson is an acquired taste. I liked some of his movies and disliked others. However, there's no denying that what he has achieved here is pure magic.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is romantic literature meeting the perfect rendering of those turbulent and historically disturbing (or disturbingly historical) years of Central Europe when style and piercing intellectuality had to give way to preposterous dogmatism and relentless destruction of thousand-year-old values. I never would have imagined an American director could tap with this precision on those slight nuances that gave this region I call my homeland its uniquely playful charm and later an air of decay that still smelled of royal patina.
The architecture, the set design, the costumes, the mannerisms are so peculiarly Central-European, even though the playful colors and general satirical layer give a whole new texture to the movie, I can't stop contemplating how much time Anderson must have spent researching our history going as far back in time as the golden years of the Austrian- Hungarian Monarchy and a pre-WWII Germany and Switzerland. He, for sure, has done a great job. The desktops standing on legs made of antlers, the crystal chandeliers hanging enormously like the sun on the sky, and the way the 'old' Grand Budapest Hotel transitions to the one in the late 1960s - torn and worn by socialism - are baring witness to his quest for presenting extraordinarily faithful details. Like I was turning the pages of my grandfather's postcard collection from East- Germany, Czechoslovakia and Southern Poland.
Elaborate and entertaining characters, playful visual effects paying homage to basic animation techniques used 40-50 years ago, joyful color choices, and it is all spiced up with some of the most memorable lines of the year. My guess would be, a good dozen of them will stand the test of time.
Ralph Fiennes is brilliant as always. A relentless powerhouse, yet he delivers this force with utmost wantonness. Goldblum as Deputy Kovacs is the icing on the cake. The rest of the cast is like the all-star game of the year too. You cannot expect anything else but greatness from this ensemble. And that's exactly what you get.
This is a satire however, not a suspenseful crime drama. So, go see it if you want to celebrate life and not mourn it.
'There still are faint glimmers of civilization left in this Barbaric slaughterhouse once known as humanity.'
The Grand Budapest Hotel is romantic literature meeting the perfect rendering of those turbulent and historically disturbing (or disturbingly historical) years of Central Europe when style and piercing intellectuality had to give way to preposterous dogmatism and relentless destruction of thousand-year-old values. I never would have imagined an American director could tap with this precision on those slight nuances that gave this region I call my homeland its uniquely playful charm and later an air of decay that still smelled of royal patina.
The architecture, the set design, the costumes, the mannerisms are so peculiarly Central-European, even though the playful colors and general satirical layer give a whole new texture to the movie, I can't stop contemplating how much time Anderson must have spent researching our history going as far back in time as the golden years of the Austrian- Hungarian Monarchy and a pre-WWII Germany and Switzerland. He, for sure, has done a great job. The desktops standing on legs made of antlers, the crystal chandeliers hanging enormously like the sun on the sky, and the way the 'old' Grand Budapest Hotel transitions to the one in the late 1960s - torn and worn by socialism - are baring witness to his quest for presenting extraordinarily faithful details. Like I was turning the pages of my grandfather's postcard collection from East- Germany, Czechoslovakia and Southern Poland.
Elaborate and entertaining characters, playful visual effects paying homage to basic animation techniques used 40-50 years ago, joyful color choices, and it is all spiced up with some of the most memorable lines of the year. My guess would be, a good dozen of them will stand the test of time.
Ralph Fiennes is brilliant as always. A relentless powerhouse, yet he delivers this force with utmost wantonness. Goldblum as Deputy Kovacs is the icing on the cake. The rest of the cast is like the all-star game of the year too. You cannot expect anything else but greatness from this ensemble. And that's exactly what you get.
This is a satire however, not a suspenseful crime drama. So, go see it if you want to celebrate life and not mourn it.
'There still are faint glimmers of civilization left in this Barbaric slaughterhouse once known as humanity.'