The Magnificent
Budapest Hotel
The immense amount of mesmerizing detail put into The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson makes it clear why it
is a complex and award winning film. The Grand Budapest Hotel has every element
you could possibly think of from side splitting comedy and cold blooded
killers, to romance that warms your heart and mystery that keeps you guessing.
For me, it has to be the stunning miniatures and detail in every nook and
cranny that wins my stamp of approval.
The first scene is present day, and a girl is
walking into a cemetery, then sits down to read a pink delicate looking book
titled: The Grand Budapest Hotel. This is the first hint of detail that catches
your eye. For a few short seconds there is a close up of the book and it has
the hotel on it with “Grand Budapest Hotel” in big letters and the background
is filled with the infamous cross keys all of the concierges’ seen throughout
the movie have pins of. When she opens the
book a narrator chimes in who is also the author of the book, and it shows him
doing an on camera interview speaking about the book in 1985. When the narrator
begins telling his story the setting changes, and you are in a hotel lobby with
a much younger version of himself when he begins enlightening us of his
experience at The Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968.
In this time period the hotel is looking rather
tacky and outdated, and the narrator begins to ask the bellhop about a man
across the room reading the newspaper. He finds that this mystery, gray-bearded
man is Mr. Moustafa and he stays in the same cramped, corner room every few
months. The next day Mr. Moustafa approaches him and requests that he dines
with him. Of course he is intrigued by the invitation and accepts. Once at
dinner, Mr. Moustafa orders them all of the best cuisine for an exquisite
dining experience just before he begins to reminisce on his time at The Grand
Budapest Hotel.
At this time, not only does the time period and
setting change, but so does the screen formatting. From that point on whenever
the author of the book was narrating from the 1968 or 1985 time periods the
screen was wide, but once Mr. Moustafa began to narrate the screen format was
narrow. I have never seen anything like that happen in a movie before, but I
liked it because it distinguished one time period and narrator from the other.
Throughout the movie when the
characters are traveling in outdoor settings through the town and mountains you
can immediately tell that the backgrounds aren’t real. They have clearly been
crafted and they were, by Annie Atkins who is a well-known graphic designer with an
astounding talent. Atkins is responsible for the hand crafting of hundreds of
backdrops and miniatures that really tie this film together. Some of the most noticed
pieces she made were of the infamous Mendel’s pastries from the pastel pink and
blue boxes, to the fancy little pastries, even the one that made it into the
jail with tiny digging tools inside. My personal favorite props Atkins put an
astounding amount of work into were the written out ones such as the
newspapers, police report and passports.
These
might not seem like they would have a lot of detail put into them but that is
where people are wrong. Whenever a newspaper is shown in the picture its main
focus is a specific article, for example when Madame D. is murdered. What no
one notices is everything else on the page that Annie Atkins created. In order
to make it seem realistic she wrote fake articles relating to that time period
and a weather report to go with it. The police report she created when Kovacs
is murdered only is shown on screen for enough time to get a glimpse of it, but
this also has ample detail imbedded. When you really get a good look Atkins
wrote a conclusive report about how Kovacs died and there is a section with
spaces for finger prints of all 10 fingers, but only 6 fingerprints are there
since the other 4 were severed. Lastly Agathas passport looks so real it could
pass as the real thing. The photo looks precise to one from the early 1900’s
and is stamped complete with all of Agathas personal information such as
birthday, height, and even under distinguishing features it says “birthmark on
face shaped like Mexico”.
When
Annie Atkins was asked in an interview with Creative Review what her favorite piece she designed for the movie was
she replied, “My absolute favorite piece is the book itself that opens the
story. It's a modern pink hardback with a drawing of the hotel on the front,
and the name of the movie as the hotel sign. It's a relatively simple piece,
but it's really special having a prop that you made with the movie's name on it
like that.” Earlier in the review I mentioned that this book is the first
detailed piece you notice.
Kyle Smith from The
New York Post wrote a review
on the film, one of his statements being, “GBH is a featherweight screwball
comedy that, trying mightily to be cosmopolitan, feels awfully provincial,
desperately touristy: Europe is just this nutty place where a lot
of crazy mixed-up stuff happened and look at this darling model ski lift!
That’s Wes Anderson”.
In my opinion these characteristics are what
I like about it. The movie isn’t trying to be cosmopolitan,
it is cosmopolitan, and who says that’s a bad thing? The movie has a lot of
diversity which appeals to many different people. Giving the environment around
the hotel a local feel gives it a more welcoming feel. I couldn’t imagine this
movie having a big city setting, after all, the time period is in the early
1900’s when many European cities were still in the making. As for being “desperately
touristy”, the movie IS based on a hotel, where tourists stay when they travel
so being touristy also works for the movie.
The Grand Budapest
Hotel shows grave amounts of detail that make this motion picture so astounding.
I cannot express how much I adore everything about this movie from the directing
to the meticulous artwork. Wes Anderson really chose well by Annie Atkins, this
film would be nothing her keen eye for detail. Hopefully this duo will have
many more masterpieces to come in the near future.
