I suppose you'd call that a draw

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2014)

A living poster boy for the auteur theory, Wes Anderson makes movies so idiosyncratic - the surreal humor, the whimsical bittersweet tone, the distinctive visual style with pastel color palettes and quick cut-aways, an uncanny ability to marry images and music, weird but sympathetic father figures - that if you ended up 200 years in the future with a time machine and found a thirty seconds scene from an unreleased film by him, you'd recognize it at once. Of course, a deadpan Bill Murray would be in it somewhere.
A choral story focused on a murder mystery and a mitteleuropean luxury hotel, the movie finds its center in the relationship between concierge Gustave (Ralph Fiennes in a phenomenal comedic performance) and his lobby boy and protegé Zero (Tony Revolory). Among the rest of the cast, Willem Dafoe as an ogre-like hit-man and Saoirse Ronan as a young baker have the most significant roles, plus Jude Law and F. Murray Abraham providing the narrative frame as a writer interviewing an adult Zero. Anderson's veterans Murray, Wilson and Schwartzman get cameos.
The director crafts his tableaux with meticulous attention. See how the unstoppable determination of Dafoe's killer is conveyed through his constant movement, as he appears to be menacingly propelled towards the viewer; how the passage of time at the Grand Budapest is portrayed with a change in the dominant color palette; how mentor Gustave occupies the left side of the screen and Zero the right one in their scenes together, only for this to be reversed with older Zero and the writer.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is more Anderson quirkiness. From another director it would feel like stagnation, but since nobody else at the present does what he does, it's still welcome. To quote the movie, he certainly sustains the illusion with marvellous grace.
7,5/10