Imbolc Hare Moon
The Grand Budapest Hotel. A story told by a writer, an iconic writer for a faux eastern European country, as told to him by the former lobby boy of the Grand Budapest Hotel. At the end Anderson credits Stefan Zwieg, an Austrian author of the early 20th century whom Wikipedia claims was “one of the most famous writers in the world.” (Zweig)
The Ralph Fiennes character, M. Gustave, bears a striking resemblance to Zweig. M. Gustave, a hotel concierge extraordinaire, earns the affections of wealthy hotel patrons and runs the Hotel at its height, in the 1930’s.
The plot is full of Andersonian twists and madcap turns. During a prison break a ladder is lowered and it keeps going and going and going. One of the funniest scenes in the movie is a downhill chase on snow, Ralph Fiennes and the lobby boy on a sled schussing after the leather clad thug played by Willem Dafoe on skis.
Stars pop up everywhere. Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, Jude Law as well as Anderson regulars like Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson. Each has a particular and zany role, but all carried off with the trademark Anderson seriousness with a smirk just behind.
Also like Anderson’s other films, this one is gorgeous in a unique way: vivid colors, grand architecture, picturesque mountains, rube goldberg like bridges and towers and walkways.
It is a movie made of meringue, but you notice that only after it’s over. It wraps you up and coddles you along from the first scene to the last. A delight. Maybe, as Colin Covert said, a masterpiece.
Afterward we ate at the Hammer and Sickle, a Russian vodka bar. With surprisingly good food. I had a beet salad and a lamb skewer, Kate a vodka flight, borscht and pelminis (small balls of dough filled with a lamb, beef and pork mixture, much like a pot sticker).
Our waitress was a west Siberian transplant who went to school in Novosibirsk, married an American and is now studying computer science at home. “But I’m not so well disciplined, so I’ll have to go to school.” She’s headed back home for three weeks very soon.
