Over the course of 18 years, the characteristic “dollhouse aesthetic” of director Wes Anderson's films has intensified. Through increasingly fussy production design, striking compositions, and wry, dense scripting, the filmmaker creates a kind of hyper-reality: Andersonland. His stylistic signature reaches a quirky apotheosis in the splendid Grand Budapest Hotel, which unfolds in a storybook world as fantastical as that of Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Budapest has three nested framing narratives, and at the center of them is Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) He is the spit-polish concierge at the titular hotel, nestled in the fictional Alpine nation of Zubrowka. It is the 1930s, and Gustave approaches his job with zealous perfectionism. He is also a romantic who recites poetry from memory and woos elderly noblewomen. Early in the film, he takes lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori) under his wing, and they quickly establish a firm friendship. When one of Gustave's dowagers dies suddenly, the two men are thrown into a series of astonishing tribulations. What follows is part wrong-man thriller, part prison break picture, and part breathless chase movie—all given a charmingly cartoonish twist by Anderson.
In a sense, Budapest is a love letter to bygone Continental elegance and intrigue. The magnificent hotel is practically a character in its own right, and the plot contains traces of the adventure and spy stories of John Buchan and realist dramas of Stefan Zweig (the latter credited as an inspiration for the film). Gustave can be seen an avatar for Anderson himself: a fearsomely meticulous professional, pining for an era of loveliness, poise, and erudition that is slipping away. As with Anderson's other works, Budapest achieves an astonishing feat by finding genuine pathos and exhilaration within a pointedly artificial, affected setting.
