The film is great, full of fun adventures and lovable characters

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2014)

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a comedy set between world wars one and two, Gustave H, the Grand Budapest Hotel concierge and Zero Moustafa, his "lobby boy" embark on a crazy adventure when one of Gustave's lover and guest dies leaving him a very important and expensive painting at her will. The film is divided into three time periods, the 80's 60's and 30's all easily distinguishable through the Grand Budapest Hotel's impeccable decoration. The film is very stylistic with it's bright colours and camera angles which gives the aspect of a very organized chaos and allows for a number of image systems to be placed without the fear of interfering with the plot. The most obvious image system is it's own crop factor. The film variates between three different aspect ratios which separates the three different time periods. During the 80's we experience a cinema-scope aspect ratio (2.35:1), when the characters are in the 60's the film is shown at standard wide-screen (1.85) and throughout most at the film which happens in the 30's the factor is in 4x3 (1.37). From the beginning to the end of the film's time-line the Hotel gets progressively worst and so does the posture that the characters adapt, with the choice of replicating the time periods using aspect ratio it also helps to unbalance the frame weight, the closer to a square the more balance a frame will be at both the X and Y axis, this is also noticeable with the lens choice that gets wider within time generating more and more curved lines and distancing the viewer from an idealistic symmetry. An other very obvious image system is the film's own colour pallet. Each hotel, institution, family or just any group of people have it's own key colour and Wes Anderson uses it as a conscious device that helps the viewer orients himself in the story with this unusual method. The Grand Budapest Hotel staff is always wearing a purple uniform, the family of Gustave's lover (which represents the film's antagonist) always wears black, the prisoners wear a tinted pattern of white and gray stripes, the police force wears gray (part of the antagonistic factor throughout most of the film), the other hotels has it's representatives wear the same saturation value ￼￼￼￼ of the purple uniform but with blue, orange, red, green and brown uniforms, the monks are always wearing white robes and Agatha (love interest) is often bringing with her a pink box from her bakery. In this case the amount of saturation seams to be an equivalent to the "goodness" of the characters, which makes for a very easy way to understand who is who at chaotic scenes with hundreds of extras, such as the final battle at the hotel. Throughout the entire film characters are shown from different kinds of rectangular frames which gives the viewer the ability to reflect the scene as if seen from the inside of the film but as an outsider to the action, it is as if we were watching it all from a window, it also makes for a very comedic motif. Some of the characters are shown with a circle vignette around their face, because the only two characters whom are presented with the vignette in the end of their development are the ones that goes through certain character change, the unusual effect could be associated with the closure of the character's internal development. The entire film is filled with little image systems, shapes and interesting frames that fits beautifully within this world where everyone tries to act as robotically polite as possible at the most chaotic situations which makes for a grate example of format following content.