“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Makes Me Sad
In anticipation of Wes Anderson’s next feature, “Isle of Dogs”, premiering later this month, I revisited his last film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. I’ve seen it five times since its release in 2014, and each time the sadness hits a little deeper.
I keep going back because, if not his best film, it is certainly Anderson’s most “Wes Anderson” film. He and his longtime collaborators (Robert Yeoman, Cinematography; Milena Canonero, Costume Design; Alexandre Desplat, Musical Score; to name a few) meticulously craft every detail of production and create a world that is equal parts fantastic and poignant.
The cast is full of Anderson regulars (Jeff Goldblum; Bill Murray; Bob Balaban; Owen Wilson; etc.), but it’s the newcomers I’m most affected by. Ralph Fiennes, never any doubt, is brilliant as the Hotel’s Concierge, Monsieur Gustave H. His prim-and-proper facade is constantly at war with his suffering sense of self, and Fiennes conveys the character’s pain in distant, pinched glances at the future he may be setting himself up for.
Saoirse Ronan plays Agatha, a young Baker’s apprentice who falls in love with the Hotel’s Lobby Boy, Zero, played by (at the time) newcomer, Tony Revolori. Agatha and Zero share a simple, warm love that I recognize. They care for each other, and want to be together no matter what happens to their war-torn home.
“Grand Budapest” is as fantastical and colorful as Anderson’s previous films, but its sense of time and place is more integral.
Agatha is a talented baker, but that will only take her so far. She is loomed-over by her mentor, the nasty Heir Mendl, who stands for the men she will need to overcome if she is to have a career as a woman. No matter her natural ability; no matter her work-ethic and dedication to her craft; she will always be second-rate in the eyes of her male peers, just for being a woman.
Zero is an immigrant, hounded by proto-Nazis, working hard in a country that, largely, isn’t working for him in return. Late in the film, Zero aids in springing Gustave from jail, but forgets Gustave’s favorite perfume.
“I suppose this is to be expected in Aq Salim al-Jabat,” Gustave tells him, “where one’s prized possessions are a stack of filthy carpets, a starving goat, and one sleeps behind a tent flap, and survives on wild dates and scarabs. But it’s not how I trained you.”
When Gustave asks Zero why he left the homeland for a country that was getting on just fine without him, Zero explains he left because of the war.
Zero’s family and village were killed and burned, and survivors were forced to flee. Gustave feels awful. Seeing Zero now as a refugee, rather than an immigrant, he apologizes and offers his condolences. But the damage has been done. This racist attitude is something Zero will be forced to confront the rest of his life, even from those closest to him.
Agatha and Zero fight for each other. They accept and understand each other in a world full of uncertainty and misunderstanding. Their future holds plenty of challenges; better to face them together.
That’s why, when the mention of Agatha’s (and Zero’s) fate passes in the time it takes to sip a Pouilly-Jouvet ’52, it is so devastating.
A colorful adventure becomes a reverie of grief.
