Point-By-Point: The Grand Budapest Hotel 8/10

Wes Anderson has always enjoyed creating complicated setups for his films -- replete with absurd situations and characters and an exhaustive attention to detail, but the towering layer cake that is The Grand Budapest Hotel, in both narrative and architectural structure, is a step above most of his work. Hell, if anything, I don't know if I've seen another film that becomes (I think I have this right): a flashback being told as a story, inside a flashback, inside a novel.

The Good:
While I enjoyed Anderson's most recent offerings, Moonrise Kingdom, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Darjeeling Limited, I couldn't help shake the feeling that some of the sheer joy and energy of his earlier movies had disappeared. One of the most striking aspects of The Grand Budapest Hotel is precisely what those movies lacked: a jubilant, unfettered freneticism. This is not a movie during which you can easily take a bathroom break or even check your email: it demands your full attention, but it rewards it, as well. I feel like Anderson had spent some time marathoning Guy Ritchie movies and pulp action flicks like Shoot 'Em Up when writing this script and it works. It works possibly better than it should. TGBH is more violent than anything else Anderson's done, unexpectedly and sometimes shockingly, but it adds an interesting counterbalance to some of the more twee aspects that, of course, permeate this film.

Yes, that's Tilda Swinton. She had to get in on this somehow!

Not least among the more Anderson-y elements are the performances. When you think of Ralph Fiennes, you think of his work in such things as Schindler's List, The English Patient and other brooding, intense, roles. Here, however, he is exuberantly everything-but-that... and it looks wonderful on him, darling. It's fun that each scene is pretty much a who's-who of character actors and the hipster elite of Hollywood... but this is Fiennes's show.

The Bad:
The sugar-rush giddiness that powers TGBH, for as much fun as it is, unfortunately sometimes overpowers some of the more resonant and potentially-meaningful underpinnings that could have really made it powerful. The Royal Tenenbaums managed to nail this balance exquisitely, and Hotel has a few scenes that almost attain that level, but as a whole it chooses fluff over substance. It was so close, too!

One of the hallmarks of Anderson's scripts is rapid-fire, repeated lines of dialogue ("This is M. Ivan, please get me M. Edward." --> "This is M. Edward, please get me M. Jonathan." --> "This is M. Jonathan, please get me ..." etc). This admittedly annoys the hell out of me and in TGBH it's used just a few times too often, and in each case, a few too many times in a row. It's a little thing, but it sets my teeth on edge.


The Ugly:
I was taken aback by how violent and sometimes crude this movie was. This isn't rated R for a few well-placed profanities or an errant nipple -- it earned its classification, and not in the artsy, restrained way that, for example, The Royal Tenenbaums did.

Points I Pondered:
1. I feel like I've seen the intentionally-obvious backdrop paintings effect in a few movies recently. Is this a thing?

2. "Funicular" is a great word. It doesn't get used enough.