Written by Steven Collier
Director Wes Anderson is no stranger to saturating the screen with his trademark visual extravagancies. From the vivid primary colors of Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009), to the cartoonish architecture in Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012), to the impossible animals that populate The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Anderson, 2004) his filmography perpetually brims with an enchantingly childlike sense of wonder. It perfectly complements the equally whimsical tones which normally punctuate his movies. However in The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2014), Anderson creates a picture in which the narrative actually supports the director’s unique stylistic embellishments.
While The Grand Budapest Hotel’s story is primarily a quirky, comedic mystery, the way in which Anderson presents this yarn simultaneously creates an enormously potent metanarrative. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a story about stories, and especially how susceptible they are to transmogrification whenever retold. This concept is brilliantly realized through the transformation of background locations presented throughout the movie.
While The Grand Budapest Hotel’s story is primarily a quirky, comedic mystery, the way in which Anderson presents this yarn simultaneously creates an enormously potent metanarrative. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a story about stories, and especially how susceptible they are to transmogrification whenever retold. This concept is brilliantly realized through the transformation of background locations presented throughout the movie.
The Grand Budapest Hotel opens in the modern day. The audience is shown a series of scenes in which a teenage girl (Jella Niemann) treks through a lonely, dilapidated graveyard to find a memorial dedicated to a nameless author. It’s a ritualistic pilgrimage to a decaying literary Mecca. This is demonstrated by the girl’s ceremonial act of taking a hotel key and hanging it upon one of the innumerable hooks which adorn the monument, where it joins the ranks of hundreds of similar offerings. The girl then takes out a book, written by the enshrined author, entitled, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
The movie then cuts to a filmed interview with the unnamed author (Tom Wilkinson) made in 1985. He proceeds to offer the first spoken lines of the movie:
“It is an extremely common mistake. People think the writer’s imagination is always at work, that he’s constantly inventing an endless supply of incidents and episodes; that he simply dreams up his stories out of thin air. In point of fact, the opposite is true. Once the public knows you’re a writer, they bring the characters and events to you… The incidents that follow were described to me exactly as I present them here, and in a wholly unexpected way.”
This statement is critical, as it is the only paltry evidence offered that any of the film’s events ever occurred. Everything that follows onscreen is nothing more than the visualization of the author’s story. This includes even the segments which are narrated by others, as they only exist as inhabitants of the author’s ongoing narrative. However, we’ll get to them a little later.
“It is an extremely common mistake. People think the writer’s imagination is always at work, that he’s constantly inventing an endless supply of incidents and episodes; that he simply dreams up his stories out of thin air. In point of fact, the opposite is true. Once the public knows you’re a writer, they bring the characters and events to you… The incidents that follow were described to me exactly as I present them here, and in a wholly unexpected way.”
This statement is critical, as it is the only paltry evidence offered that any of the film’s events ever occurred. Everything that follows onscreen is nothing more than the visualization of the author’s story. This includes even the segments which are narrated by others, as they only exist as inhabitants of the author’s ongoing narrative. However, we’ll get to them a little later.
The author’s story begins in 1968, while he stays at the Grand Budapest Hotel, a luxury hotel that has seen far better days. There the author (Jude Law) encounters the establishment’s reclusive owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), who claims to be an enormous fan of the author’s writing. The two quickly hit it off, and Zero offers to tell the author of how he came to be the hotel’s proprietor.
At this point, Zero begins to narrate a story within the author’s narration. Zero’s story takes place in 1932, when he was a lobby boy within a still prospering Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson wastes no time in showcasing the marked difference time has wrought upon the structure. Unlike the grey, utilitarian building of 1968, the Hotel of the 30’s is a sumptuous piece of architecture. Bursting with color, and festive cupolas, its appearance is deeply evocative of an elegant, layered cake. However it is unlikely that either ever existed in any real, tangible manner.
My reason for saying this goes back to the way that the Grand Budapest Hotel is introduced: not as a dilapidated building, nor as a flourishing getaway for elite clientele, but as an illustration on a book jacket. The dilapidated hotel only exists as part of the author’s recounting of a trip he allegedly took in the 60’s. Similarly, the hotel of the 30’s only exists as part of a story allegedly told to the author while on that trip. The establishing shots of the movie further reinforce the idea that the Grand Budapest Hotel exists only as a sort of metafiction within its universe, as it is only visible as a story, as a novel. Even at the movie’s end, the hotel bows out as it was introduced. The film’s final shot returns to the young woman still holding the book, as she sits beside the monument to the Author.
My reason for saying this goes back to the way that the Grand Budapest Hotel is introduced: not as a dilapidated building, nor as a flourishing getaway for elite clientele, but as an illustration on a book jacket. The dilapidated hotel only exists as part of the author’s recounting of a trip he allegedly took in the 60’s. Similarly, the hotel of the 30’s only exists as part of a story allegedly told to the author while on that trip. The establishing shots of the movie further reinforce the idea that the Grand Budapest Hotel exists only as a sort of metafiction within its universe, as it is only visible as a story, as a novel. Even at the movie’s end, the hotel bows out as it was introduced. The film’s final shot returns to the young woman still holding the book, as she sits beside the monument to the Author.
Anderson never shows the audience The Grand Budapest hotel in any context outside of a metanarrative. This constantly reminds the audience that first and foremost The Grand Budapest Hotel exists as a story. As such, its state is dictated entirely by whoever is telling that story. When the Author speaks of it, the melancholy resort is drab and exclusively populated by disenfranchised souls. When presented through the sentimental eyes of Zero, it springs to life as a brilliant structure filled with adventure, romance, and comradery. The definitive truth of The Grand Budapest Hotel seems left up to the anonymous reader’s discretion, yet she never expresses her thoughts on the matter.
As such, she becomes a representative of the movie’s audience. Just as the reader has traveled to the author’s memorial and offered her key as ritual tribute, so too has the audience traveled to a theatre and offered their own admission for the privilege of exploring The Grand Budapest Hotel. Neither the audience nor the reader actually enters a real building, but that does nothing to prevent either from experiencing it. And I believe that’s the ultimate message of Anderson’s latest offering: when we invest ourselves in them, imaginary places do take on a strange sort of existence. Regardless of circumstance, whereabouts, or even reality we are all capable of reaching a shared destination through the venue of narrative. Author, Zero, Reader, Audience, we have all been guests within The Grand Budapest Hotel.
As such, she becomes a representative of the movie’s audience. Just as the reader has traveled to the author’s memorial and offered her key as ritual tribute, so too has the audience traveled to a theatre and offered their own admission for the privilege of exploring The Grand Budapest Hotel. Neither the audience nor the reader actually enters a real building, but that does nothing to prevent either from experiencing it. And I believe that’s the ultimate message of Anderson’s latest offering: when we invest ourselves in them, imaginary places do take on a strange sort of existence. Regardless of circumstance, whereabouts, or even reality we are all capable of reaching a shared destination through the venue of narrative. Author, Zero, Reader, Audience, we have all been guests within The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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