'The Grand Budapest Hotel': Grand Madness

Rating: 8/10 (23 March 2014)

As butts of humor go, the Nazis are the gift that keeps on giving. In "The Grand Budapest Hotel," writer-director Wes Anderson continues the proud tradition of "To Be or Not to Be," "The Great Dictator," "A Night in Casablanca" and "The Producers" in making totalitarianism grist for the comedic mill.
Inspired by the writings of Austrian novelist, playwright and journalist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), "The Grand Budapest Hotel" stars Ralph Fiennes as a concierge who joins with one of his employees (the wondrous 17-year-old actor Tony Revolori whose almond-shaped Wile E. Coyote eyes practically steal the film all by themselves) to prove his innocence after he is framed for murder.
The film opens with a teen-aged girl stopping at the cemetery monument of a writer (Tom Wilkinson) while toting a memoir penned by a character only known as "The Author." She begins reading a chapter about a trip he made to the Grand Budapest Hotel a half-century ago.
Suddenly we're in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka, a European alpine state, where we find the once-grand hotel now threadbare and mostly vacant.
The young version of the writer (played by Jude Law) meets the hotel's old owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham as an elderly version of Revolori's character) and over dinner in the hotel's enormous but empty dining room, Zero tells him the tale of how he took ownership of the hotel and why he is unwilling to close it down.
The owner's tale starts circa 1932 in the final years of the hotel's salad days, when he worked as a lobby boy, around the time Nazi-like thugs begin a rise to power.
Zubrowka is teetering on the brink of war, of course (wink-wink), but Gustave, the Grand Budapest's devoted concierge (the terrifically deadpan Fiennes _ the anti-Groucho) is blissfully oblivious as he wines and dines a series of aging, blonde women who love the hotel because of his, uh, "exceptional service." One of the these ladies is Madame D (Tilda Swinton), whom Gustave spends the night with before her departure (a departure, as it turns out, in more ways then one).
Madame D turns up dead (apparently not at all by natural causes), and Gustave, with Zero in tow, races to her wake and the quick-to-follow reading of the will, where he finds that she's left him with the priceless painting, "Boy With Apple." The family is enraged, and the chase is on. And so is the war.
At one point, Gustave is arrested and imprisoned for the murder of Madame D.
To say much more would spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that Gustave's path is littered with some fascinating characters played by, in no particular order, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Mathieu Amalric, Saorise Ronan, Lea Seydoux, Giselda Volodi and a raft of perfectly cast featured actors. To the person, each fully grasps the value of underplaying.
There are some wonderful touches, like the name of the newspaper announcing the start of the war _ "The Times-Alpine Yodel" _ and comically contrapuntal title cards that take on a life of their own. Anderson's use of ridiculous miniatures that would make "Plan Nine from Outer Space" proud absolutely work, as do his signature use of rostrum camera shots and slow motion.
But those of us of a certain age find special satisfaction in Anderson's wicked presentation of the would-be Nazis. It's almost enough to want Hitler back for a nanosecond so he could be insulted.
It seems fitting, beautifully so, that "The Grand Budapest Hotel" opened the 2014 Berlin Film Festival _ and that it won the Grand Jury Prize. And "heil" all over you-know-who.