The Grand Budapest Hotel
I am currently revamping my room, which still looks like a children’s room: French books, manga, old posters, a black piano with plushies on top – if I walked into a room like this, I’d say it’s the room of a 16-year-old who goes to my old high school. I also found many, many memorabilia and random items, for which I did this: If I can remember the object and/or it’s stuff I wrote or made, then I would keep it. (The worst thing are actually the unsent letters to Loris – they are so embarrassing that I have to avert my eyes in horror after reading any random line. With that said, I also found Pixelmatsch’s and Pip’s old letters addressed to me… why are those always cute and well written?!)
I had all this time to re-do my room because I don’t have a ticket anymore, so I am essentially stuck at home. Last time I was in the city, I was dreaming about what I would do if I made a film. What would my style look like? There are so many films and so many styles I love, what would I choose? Well, the answer is pretty simple: A romantic comedy with serious undertones like late Lubitsch, characters like the Coen brothers, and finally, a style like Wes Anderson. Everybody and their hipster mother loves this style, but I am totally with the crowd there. On websites like Apartment Therapy someone snappily asserted that there is no such thing as timeless style, but people think it exists as some sort of amalgam between white kitchens and Wes Anderson’s style. However, if you think about it carefully, it’s simply true. The interior designs of a “Moonrise Kingdom” or a “Grand Budapest Hotel” will never, ever go out of style. The overuse of orange and yellow is beautiful at any time, and the suitcases of “Darjeeling Limited” would be stylish any time. (It’s even more shocking since Wes Anderson kind of looks like an awkward anime nerd… since I am an awkward anime nerd, maybe there is hope for us yet!)
A propos interior designs, I guess this is the time where I should come out and admit that I am obsessed with it. One thing I never understood is why people create color palettes, but for Wes Anderson’s style, for a change, it totally makes sense. I would like my life to be a Wes Anderson movie, please.
When I was asked about what I thought about “Grand Budapest Hotel”, I was a little overwhelmed by the question. Very quickly, however, I said: “It’s perfect”. Honestly, the movie is perfect: It has a great story, a fun cast, impeccable style, a humor full of heart and a typical Wes-Anderson-like optimism and love for the world, no matter how troubled and lonely its protagonists are. I cannot find a single fault with this film, if anything one may dislike the film for being too perfect, or for giving Mathieu Amalric a role which is way too small. To me, this film is the essence of what I want film-making to be – transporting you into a dream world, captivating you with lovely characters, throwing you into an intricate story, making you laugh and cry. The film has everything I think is fun – running gags with repeated exclamations (“Are you Gustave H…?”), almost supernatural luxuries (Mendl’s!) and action scenes in which the process and not the outcome is most amusing (the bob chase in the snow). If the Criterion Collection picks up this film, it would be the first on my list of next purchases. I got interested in Stefan Zweig’s works again, and since the whole film was shot in Germany, I have a strong desire to visit the places where the filmed the movie.
I was a little sad that we couldn’t see the film at the Berlinale, but in retrospect, having seen it at the International is almost better. Watch it.
PS. Speaking of having time: There are many, many movies I want to see, and the list of films I did not see at this year’s Berlinale is incredibly long. However, other things in life are more important right now. Besides the consumption of media, there is O and meeting friends (Lisbon!) and work and stupid bureaucracy. Amongst the time I allocate for the consumption of media, there are operas (which have priority over everything else), TV series and anime (which must be watched on a regular basis) as well as books and manga (which I have been neglecting in my life so I want to catch up on them again). In essence, even though movies are the non-human things I love the second most in life (after operas), I won’t be watching many of them anytime soon.