A candy factory

There are some filmmakers who have such a consistent visual style and thematic concern that with each new film that they come up with, there can be no doubt that it is their film. The auteur quality is just unmistakeable. Wes Anderson is one such filmmaker. And "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (winner of the Grand Jury Prize in this year's Berlin film fest) is the latest addition to his signature body of works. 

I'm not a serious devotee of Anderson, this precocious whiz kid of deadpan prank and hilarity, but I always find his films visually smart and fresh, a dazzling and picturesque eyecatcher ("Bottle Rocket", "The Royal Tenenbaums", "The Darjeeling Limited", "Moonrise Kingdom"). Instead of getting amused and laughing without thinking, you get amused and laugh while thinking. Though this may be some kind of an acquired taste. For it's highly probable that not many of us welcome the idea of being humored while exerting some mental effort. Yet, even if the "looks" may say otherwise, Anderson's comedies don't really demand a high level of cerebral exercise, in the same way that a Jean-Luc Godard serio-comedy would. 

The first few minutes of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is rather nothing out of the ordinary, even half-amusing. A young girl stands solemnly in front of the memorial of a revered author, holding a copy of a book which bears the film's title. Then flashback to 1985, in which we see the author himself directly addressing the camera as he introduces himself to us. And then flashback again to some decades earlier, in which we see again the author in his younger year (played by Jude Law), staying as a guest in the titular hotel, wherein he gets to meet the hotel's "mysterious" owner, Zero Moustafa (played by F. Murray Abraham). Such a meeting again ignites a flashback to some more years earlier (the 1930s-40s) as the latter recounts the days when he worked as a lobby boy and became the most trusted assistant and friend of the hotel's much sought-after concierge, M. Gustave (played by Ralph Fiennes). 

The film begins to have its "footing" (the plot thickens, so to speak) when one of the hotel's most distinguished patrons, Madame D. (played by the chameleon-like Tilda Swinton), dies a mysterious death, as a result of which her most valuable possession, an absurd-looking painting called "The Boy with an Apple", gets bequeathed to M. Gustave, much to the chagrin of the deceased's duplicitous family members (among which are the villainous sons Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe). From thereon, in a uniquely Anderson fashion (as can be discerned from his previous works mentioned above), one absurd and outrageous situation follows after another, as the hapless concierge gets wrongly accused and imprisoned, eventually escapes and undertakes to solve the mystery of the old lady's death himself. The nature of the "comical" situations borders among the farcical, slapstick and black comedy that, at times, it makes us wonder how much the similarly deadpan yet utterly austere Aki Kaurismaki can take of Anderson's garishness. While the director's trademark visual cues are very much in use - the swift pans, the colorful palette and design, and the suggestive costumes - which, rather than mere garnishes, aid a great deal in "telling" the story. The result thus is an altogether visually lovely and exhilarating film experience, just like an intricate and enticing candy factory. 

And as in any Anderson film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is a film whose screenplay relies so much on highly-stylized and -quirky dialogue that an actor who doesn't have the "sensitive" ear for its distinctive syntax and cadence would make everything sound flat and banal. Thankfully, the director always has his reliable actors who are up to the challenge - the likes of Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Edward Norton. But this time around, everything falls in the hands of "neophyte" Anderson actor Ralph Fiennes - and how he does it marvelously! As the once-esteemed but now down-on-his-luck hotel concierge M. Gustave, he delivers his lines (at times, even waxing literary) in a manner that is alternately witty, sarcastic, haughty, noble and emphatic. He can be beyond the clouds at one point or down to earth at another, but all the same he appears to come across as the "only fabric of civility in this barbaric humanity". 

Which brings us to that invaluable point which the film perhaps is trying to put forth:That however the ravages of time may be (those wars, political and social upheavals, changing mores and customs, etc), there are things that could fortunately withstand them for posterity, like an old and revered establishment, an enduring literary piece or work of art or simply, human principle and dignity. Now we have something that isn't absurd.

Life is absurd for the denizens of "The Grand Budapest Hotel"