The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Wes Anderson's films are instantaneously recognizable. From the first frame onwards, you can see his obsession with symmetry, his meticulously arranged settings - plenty of conceit and careful execution - and as the film progresses one is thrown into sad, yet heartfelt worlds that almost always feel like a past that never happened, a past we've dreamed up. For better or worse, The Grand Budapest Hotel is very much a Wes Anderson film; one could say it manifests some of his strengths as well as some of his more annoying tendencies. It might not be one of his best films but the quiet, sly humor and the nostalgic backwards-gazing is fascinating to admire on the big screen. However, as the ending title rolled I couldn't stop feeling that there was something flat about this tirelessly choreographed movie. Arguably, none of Anderson's films offer deep psychological portraits. This is not my complaint. Its just that this time around, the well-crafted world starts to appear paper-thin or predictable in a clock-work sort of way.

The story is narrated in a tricky series of stories and the main character, one could say, is a distinguished hotel situated in an imaginary country. This hotel has a glorious past and as the film opens, its heyday is long past. The story looks back upon some tumultuous events that took place as the history of the hotel took a downwards turn. Anderson focuses on a moment of transition and that moment is embodied by the elegant and utterly refined concierge of the hotel, M Gustave (Ralph Fiennes is obviously the man for the part), to whom one splendid guest has bequeathed a precious painting. Anderson taps into what appears to be mode of classic-era comedy to capture the state of upheaval that ensues. There are love stories, family feuds, rogues, astonishing-looking cakes and adventurous escapes.

Anderson mixes over-the-top orchestrated shots with slapstick and a very American style of dialogue (w-i-t-t-y). Here's my verdict: this film is good at conveying an atmosphere, a dreamland, a dream of a dream of a dream of a fantasy. Yet for all its stylized images of a dreamed-up past, this movie is not deep enough to give me a new perspective on what nostalgia is, what kind of point of view it is. Some reviewers have praised the movie for its tensions: that the real, troubled world seems to intrude on the perfected scenery and the stylized acting. After all, the film is about a fascist-like regime that bursts into the elegance and refinement of the world Anderson conjures up. But what perhaps is most troubling is that the image one gets of this fascist regime is that it is vulgar, that it disrupts a noble and fine community of good-hearted illusions and sophisticated folly. These fascists are, instead, rendered as brutes. In my opinion, this is about the worst interpretation of fascism one can end up with (even though it is far from uncommon): fascism is "barbarian".