Strange, but utterly delightful

Rating: 9/10 (11 July 2014)

Those who turn their nose up at the thought of another fussily-filmed, wildly colourful journey into the world and mind of Wes Anderson, will no doubt detest his latest, and arguably most perfect work, The Grand Budapest Hotel. His work is criticised by his haters for being too meticulously structured, his camera limited to sideways and occasionally upwards movements, festooned with bold colours, always leading to that dreaded, overused word - 'quirky'. Yet this is a world a sly wit, of characters so ridiculous and charming that you could wish they would replace the monotonous bores that litter our reality, and one in which Bill Murray is omnipresent.
In the pink, mountainous haven of the picturesque, fictitious European country of Zubrowka, sits the Grand Budapest Hotel. In it's heyday, the hotel was meticulously managed by Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a charismatic, perfume-wearing horndog, who knew all about what his guests wanted before they even knew they wanted it. On the day that one of his elderly conquests, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), leaves the hotel, he meets new lobby boy Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), and immediately begins to groom him as his possible successor. When he hears of Madame D's death, Gustave and Zero travel to her mansion to hear the reading of her will.
She leaves Gustave a piece of priceless art, something heavily resented by Madame's two evil, leather-jacketed sons, Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and Jopling (Willem Dafoe), who don't wish to see this lecherous lothario receive a dime. Sensing trouble, Gustave and Zero steal the painting, replace it with some kind of grotesque lesbian erotica, and flee. This sets in motion a series of farcical events involving a prison escape, an apologetic police officer named Henckels (Edward Norton), a missing butler, and the rise of fascism. All of this is told by an ageing Zero (F. Murray Abraham) to a curious writer credited only as 'The Author' (Jude Law).
What it all about, you ask? Possibly nothing. This could all be just a splurge of the director's imagination, or a hark back to the grand eccentrics of the olden days. It could be about the state of Europe between the two World Wars, with the Grand Budapest Hotel a multi- national asylum for all of the continent's misfits. But the setting simply seems too fitting for it's comedic approach for it to be labelled with any kind of 'war' or 'period' label, with bursts of slapstick and comedy-of-manners worthy of Lubitsch, punctured by ridiculous exclamations from it's hyperactive concierge. When he hears about an enemy's dastardly plan, he responds "the f*****s!".
So, I don't quite know what it's all about. What I do know is that I loved every second of watching it's ludicrous story play out, anchored by an outstanding performance by Fiennes. He may seem an odd choice for an Anderson film, whose films are usually littered with the likes of Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Bill Murray (all of whom appear here), but his Gustave is Anderson's greatest creation, brought fearlessly and completely to life by Fiennes. He's certainly no spring chicken, but he's a strange delight to spend 100 minutes with. And that's really how I felt about the entire experience, it was certainly strange, but utterly delightful.
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