Bizarre, intelligent, good-looking, witty and poignant "cartoon" that isn't...

Rating: 8/10 (22 April 2020)

At some point in Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" - when you get past the shock or surprise of the strength in depth that is the stellar cast present here (often only briefly) - you'll realise that you are watching a movie whose look, brilliance, storyline and way of highlighting things most likely owes more to the cartoon than film-making.
And of course the cartoon emerged out of history to allow people to say strong things about the world and what is wrong with it in a funnier, perhaps lighter way.
This piece is no exception, but it's a flawed masterpiece - as so many are. In the first place, it takes the risk - a serious one - that many a viewer is REALLY going to say "why should I care?" And this is a danger that arises as easily 70 minutes in as at the start. The film is so surreal and so much of a pastiche that again and again one is tempted not to care. What held me in for the duration was the AMAZING visual side and the obvious fact that somebody in there was actually trying VERY hard with all this.
But - BE WARNED - you'll probably ONLY get your deepest feelings about this work a few minutes before the credits roll, and that's a mean way to treat an audience. Big SPOILER then, for the sake of encouragement - if you're like me, you'll suddenly realise (if the title doesn't make it clear) that you have been watching some kind of extended metaphor for the cruel things that happened to the Eastern Bloc from the 1930s through to the 1980s. And indeed those final credits roll - paradoxically - to an AMAZING Russian balalaika theme tune from a very gifted Alecandre Desplat.
You might need this injection of depth from me, because at first glance the eccentric and overtly-"meaningless" story presented about employees in a hotel of fading glory (at moments facing challenges of war and oppression) will look sharp and funny-ish, but in the end also dullish. And at times just too incongruous to live with. Who knows if we are looking for any "reality" in this movie? But if we are, then the delicacy and elegance and fastidiousness of Ralph Fiennes's starring character M. Gustave DO NOT correlate with his frequent resort to four-letter words. The 1930s were not like and a character such as his was not like that. And so this looks like an absolute own-goal from the makers, or indeed like a deliberate attempt to repeatedly shock us out of taking this thing seriously or treating it as anything other than an artificial arena.
Don't know about others, but I (probably) don't actually come to a film to be slapped in the face repeatedly. This work seeks annoyingly often to bury sentiment under crude farce, even though it's ultimate goal is actually really and truly a sentimental one. Why do that? It looks awfully like deliberately hurting your own fans and followers...
For all that, "Hotel" may offer you an experience you've rarely had elsewhere (conceivably a bit in, say "The Lady Vanishes" (1938)). Some may even concede that they've NEVER seen anything quite like it.
And there must be SOME merit in that...!