The film opens as a nested memory: a writer recalls the elderly owner of a once-grand Alpine hotel, who recalls his youth as lobby boy to its legendary concierge, Gustave H.
Beneath the caper energy sits real dread: fascism creeping into a fictional European republic in the early 1930s. Anderson plays the loss for both comedy and grief, so the film's problem is tonal as much as narrative.
Anderson has said the film grew out of his discovery of Stefan Zweig, the Austrian novelist whose work captures the same vanished Mitteleuropa the film mourns. Zweig fled the Nazis and eventually took his own life in exile in 1942, and Anderson has pointed to novels including "Beware of Pity" as the source of the film's voice and structure, including its story-within-a-story construction stacked three layers deep.
Anderson matches each of the story's three time periods to a different aspect ratio, so the image itself narrows as the story reaches further into the past, a rare case of a formal gimmick doing real storytelling work. Inside that frame, Ralph Fiennes carries the picture as Gustave H., playing a fussy hotel concierge who can pivot from profanity to poetry without losing the character's dignity.
The Grand Budapest Hotel tied for the most nominations at the 87th Academy Awards with nine, including best picture and best director, and won four Oscars for its score, production design, costume design and makeup. Check your PLOT watchlist for tonight's confirmed streaming and rental options in your region before pressing play.
