Truly Unique Among the Truly Unique

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2014)

I'm left in a rather awkward position. Having exhausted my vocabulary of every synonym for "quirky" and "unique" in my review of Wes Anderson's previous film, Moonrise Kingdom, I'm left with the option of reviewing his latest venture as a pastiche of my last review, or use an unsightly amount of hyperbole and hyphens. Or I could try what many have tried and failed; try to use the mere 26 letters of the alphabet to narrow down and capture the conceit and the crux of the appeal of Wes Anderson's movies. Well, challenge accepted.
We've come to expect the unexpected from Wes Anderson, but this film is a departure even for him. What makes this a different film from every other Wes Anderson film is its large helping of heart. Anderson is no doubt one of the greatest artisans in cinema history, and he has a truly freakish ability to create his own world in every film he makes but his films have never been one to strike an emotional chord.
The Grand Budapest's script has an expedient amount of the necessary "Wes Anderson-ness" but for the first time ever, it's eclipsed by a flash-back driven story with an amount of warmth and profoundness I've never seen from Anderson's ramshackle school of quirk. What is typical is the cinematography, colors and mise-en-scene. Classic Wes Anderson. It's the best that I've seen in any film. Each frame is pure, art-deco poetry with a level of calculation I haven't seen since Kubrick. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of the most beautifully shot film I have ever seen.
Before you burn me at the stake for giving The Grand Budapest Hotel 4.5 stars out of 5, let me state my peace. The deep parts of the script are more than welcome, and offer a film that's utterly, utterly original. And that's a brilliant thing. But *deep breath* I would have enjoyed it more if it had been funnier, wittier and not as dark. I hate myself for feeling this way, but even though it's not to my taste, Grand Budapest is still a riot of creative genius that needs words invented for it to describe it.
I've had meaningful screen time with every kind of film ever made. I thought I knew my way around the cinema landscape pretty well, but after watching The Grand Budapest Hotel, I feel a bit lost. And it's a good kind of lost. The kind of lost that opens my mind further to the vast expansiveness of possibilities available in the medium of film, as well as the essential, simple joy I get from watching. Does this praise sound perverse after I bashed the crux of this film in the last paragraph? Perhaps, but only if you attempt to apply a layman's logic to the delightfully contrary world where cinema fairy dust magics flaws into virtues.
Sorry but that's the best I got.