“THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL” ****
Spring has just begun and it seems like this year’s best film is already here, and we just have to be grateful and cheerful about Wes Anderson for keeping up with his delightful characteristics of originality, his personal mark, which describes to a great American storyteller.
Throughout his career, Anderson has managed to remain truthful to his aesthetics, conquering critics and audiences as the new grandmaster of American filmmaking, conceiving strangely sharp and witty stories that feel real, intriguing, always high-spirited and optimistic in his own way of discussing troubled issues with irreverence and honesty. This time around, he gathers many of his previous collaborators such as Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson among others, to recount the adventures of Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge at a renowned European Hotel in between wars, who becomes the center of a trap getting him involved in the mysterious death of an octogenarian millionaire whom he had an emotional connection. The story is told through the eyes of an old guest who used to be the Lobby boy and main partner of Gustave. They explore dangerous situations bringing up a new element to the director’s perspectives: violence. Although he has depicted the subject differently in previous projects, here it seems to be more frequent becoming a key element to the plot: the characters go through challenges constantly facing deadly risks. Based on the stories of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (who lived his last years in Rio), Anderson’s script explores multiple levels of violence, adding a mysterious murder, a game of cat-and-mouse with a killer on the loose, and political intervention such as the Authorities’ intolerant behavior towards immigrants. He manages the whole situation, the humor and messy circumstances with magnificence, elaborating a perfect and necessary balance of dark humor, romance, adventure with a suspenseful atmosphere surrounding them, and although the violence exists, it becomes only relevant to the new push introduced early in the narrative and it never distracts the fundamental: the eccentricity of so many mesmerizing personalities and the unique and brilliant commanding of Anderson. Beyond its artistry skills, and the universal language reaching out to new audiences, the film also squeezed its way into the Top 10 Box Office last weekend, scoring about $4 million which translates to an incredible $55.000 per screen, claiming the 8th spot on the chart. It proves the respect Anderson’s been getting for his precious talent, putting the film on pace to become his most successful project yet. And we, as movie lovers, are pleased and delighted to experience his marvelous ideas. We ask for more!
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