Wes Anderson at his best

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 2019)

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" has the rather peculiar narrative structure of the double flash back. In the beginning of the movie we meet an old writer who remembers an interview he has hold when he was still young (flashback 1). In this interview an old man tells the story of his life (flashback 2).
Just like in "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012, Wes Anderson) the story seems an adaptation of an exciting boys book, but it is (even more) over the top. Wes Anderson likes his films to be artificial. In his opinion everybody knows that a film is fake and artificiality does not preclude identification.
Being over the top the film has also something of a persiflage. The character of Jopling made me think of Anton Chigurgh from "No country for old men" (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen). That was a persiflage of a Western but of what genre is "The Grand Budapest hotel" a persiflage? At first I thought of Agatha Christie adaptations, the disagreement about the heritage of a person who was murdered being at the core of the plot. At second glance I think "The Grand Budapest hotel" is a persiflage of Max Ophuls films, glorifying a society that definitely belongs to history.
The world I am alluding to is the Habsburg double monarchy. This world is personified by monsieur Gustave, the hotel concierge who anticipates on the wishes of his (female) clients before they themselves are aware of them. Anderson himself has indicated that "The Grand Budapest hotel" was not written but was certainly inspired by Stefan Zweig ("The world of yesterday, 1942). Maybe the writer in the film is Stephan Zweig?.
Given this references to the Habsburg empire it was a bit of a surprise to me that the war in the film is not the First- but the Second World War. To give his actors a hint of the ambiance of the film he was aiming at Wes Anderson mentioned "To be or not to be" (1942, Ernst Lubitsch), so it really is the Second World War. One of the others film he mentioned was, not surprisingly, "Grand hotel" (1932, Edmund Goulding).
In the present tense after flashback 1 (the time when the writer is still young en when the narrator is telling his story to him) the Grand Budapest Hotel is definitely in decay. The design is seventies at its worst and makes one think of that other famous film hotel": the Overlook hotel from "The Shining" (1980, Stanley Kubrick).