I agree, which is why the plot seemed like such a weird choice. If you’re telling character stories, you can get away without it. I feel like the heist elements required tension to work, and without it the second half of the movie left me cold. I’ve read reviews that have characterized it as “thrilling”, so clearly somebody feels that it worked that way.
I saw In Bruges a while ago and like it quite a bit, so maybe that colored my expectations. It almost felt like Anderson realized that Fiennes was in the movie, and so he pivoted to making a Ray Fiennes movie, which he isn’t very good at.
I didn’t understand the point of the story-book parts while watching, but I guess that makes sense. I’d basically forgotten about that frame story by the time we saw that stuff. I wasn’t crazy about that part, because I think it missed the point of the kind of author-worship that Eastern European countries exhibit, but that’s another thing entirely.
Tom, does you chiming in here mean we aren’t getting a podcast of this? Too bad, if so.
I waved the other guys off – I basically told them they don’t need to rush out and see it – but I’m sure they’ll see it eventually. So who knows? But for the time being, we’ve got our hands full with Important Movies like, uh, Oculus and that latest Captain America boondoggle.
With a global box office taking of $104m and rising, The Grand Budapest Hotel has become Wes Anderson’s highest-grossing film. It’s the first to take over $100m, beating The Royal Tenenbaums’ haul of $71m in 2001 and Moonrise Kingdom’s $68m in 2012.
Over 60% of the revenue came from overseas markets.
I thought the visuals and acting were great. The plot left me flat. I laughed a few times, but it otherwise felt tedious. I could not help but keep thinking “Top Secret!” without the funny throughout the movie. Not the best comparison, I know, but my brain is like that.
I finally got to see this last night. In some ways this reminded me of Inception, in that both movies seem to represent directors indulging their favorite techniques to such an extreme that the movie becomes a technical exercise. The end result, in both cases, is impressive in many ways, but also a little cold.
With Christopher Nolan we see this progression from Following to Memento to The Prestige to Inception where all of his movies are little Chinese puzzle boxes growing increasingly complex. I feel like he hit the right balance in The Prestige with a movie that unfolded perfectly without ever losing sight of good story telling and emotional connection with the characters. Inception was his one step too far movie – A fun technical exercise but it doesn’t all hold together and it left many people cold.
Grand Budapest Hotel lets us know right away what we’re in for by taking us four framing devices deep before the story even begins. Matt Zoller Seitz, in the introduction to his book, The Wes Anderson collection, draws parallels between Anderson and the artist Joseph Cornell saying that both artists create scale models of the world and enclose them in frames. On some levels this is almost the definition of a movie but Anderson has always taken it to a nearly literal level. It’s a big part of what gives his movies their distinct visual style and whimsy. This movie takes the framing to hilarious extremes, both with the use of narrative framing devices and with almost every single scene being exquisitely framed. As CLWheeljack said, it’s not hard to imagine appreciating this movie as a series of screenshots rather than a continuous narrative. (And let’s not forget that Ralph Fienne’s character is framed for murder and that the second copy of the second will is hidden in the frame of the painting of the boy with an apple.)
Personally, I found this hilarious and fascinating but I was also consciously aware of how these extremes of technique were taking away from my ability to connect to the characters or the story. Which is not to say that it completely failed on these fronts – I did still enjoy the story and the characters and overall I really liked the movie but I was conscious that the technical aspects undercut it to an extent. It’s an incredible technical achievement but it’s a flawed movie.
Interestingly enough, Moonrise Kingdom is my favorite Wes Anderson movie so, as with Nolan, it was his next movie after the one in which he struck the perfect balance that he decided to take things one step too far on a technical level. It’s an indulgence I’m perfectly willing to tolerate from my favorite directors so long as they don’t make a habit of it ;) I love both movies in spite of their flaws.
(The other director I found myself thinking of during the movie was Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Most people are familiar with Amelie and The City of Lost Children but I’d also recommend Micmacs to anyone who hasn’t seen it.)
Sorry for the necro but I just wanted to say that I recently watched this movie again whilst flying from San Francisco to Tokyo. And then again several weeks later flying from Singapore to Tokyo. And then again a few hours later flying from Tokyo to San Francisco. A bit excessive, yes. But I remembered the scenes involving talk of immigrants and refugees and wanted to rewatch them in these… trying times. As well, I adore the dialog in Anderson films, much like I love the dialog in Altman films.
Funny, I also watched the movie much belatedly while on an airplane. And it was the first, I think, Wes Anderson film I’ve seen. Which, since I had not seen this thread before, makes me think I need to go look for other films of his, as I found it charming. The story was as light as one of those courtesan au chocolat that @rrmorton linked in that video above, but likely just as tasty (I want to make one now, but I am a cook Jim, not a baker!)
I mean there is a reason that basically every other book I’ve been reading for the last 6 months has been by Terry Pratchett. Leafing in some Anderson into my movie watching wouldn’t be a bad choice, it seems.
Heh, Pratchett is always my go-to travel author. That is, I always seem to have at least one or two of his books with me whenever I’m out of town (or country). I think my favorite thing about Pratchett books is that everyone always seems to get what they deserve.
I watched the first half of this movie this morning on Max, since it’s slated to leave the service soon, and I’ve been meaning to watch it for a long time.
I really love it so far. I had no idea that the main co-star along with Ralph Fiennes was played by the kid who also showed up recently in the excellent Willow TV series as Prince Graydon.
Anyway, I’ll refrain from commenting further until I’ve seen the second half.
But in the end, I was left slightly confused as to why they bothered to do a third/fourth layer of storytelling. So it was someone reading a book of someone who stayed at this broken down hotel, who met the person who told him about the story we saw. The second layer makes sense. They want to show us the aftermath of the story. But I guess the third layer was added so that Jude Law could do a voice over narration in the 2nd layer of the story. And then the fourth layer of someone reading his book was added for comedic purposes maybe?
Anyway, Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori were excellent, and the story was almost a thrill ride in the second half. The action scenes reminded me of the stop motion in Fantastic Mr Fox. It worked really well, I thought. I wonder if that was a huge cost saving method of doing action scenes? And if so, more movies should be using it.
