Summary of the film

A teenage girl approaches a statue of an individual merely classified "Author." We then cut to the Author, who begins to tell us about his visit to The Grand Budapest Hotel many years ago. We see the Author's younger self staying at the hotel years before. It is here that he meets the hotel's owner, Mr. Zero Moustafa, who tells the author that he enjoys his writing and invites him to dinner to tell him how he came to own the hotel.

We travel back in time to 1932, when The Grand Budapest Hotel was thriving. Gustave, the hotel's meticulous and highly competent concierge, has a habit of sleeping with the hotel's wealthy older guests and is currently involved in an affair with Madame D., a wealthy dowager countess in her 80s.

Gustave gets to know of Madame D.'s death fairly soon after her visit. He and the new lobby boy, Zero, a younger version of Mr. Moustafa, pay their respects at Madame D's house. They find her children, extended family, and lawyer, Mr. Kovacs, waiting to hear the countess' will read. Only one detail is revealed by Kovacs: Madame has left Gustave a priceless painting, Boy With Apple. Dmitri, Madame D.'s son, demands that Gustave be arrested. Gustave and Zero flee quickly, but not before stealing the painting from the wall and hiding it at the hotel for safekeeping.

Gustave is arrested for the murder of Madame D once he returns to the Grand Budapest. He makes friends with other inmates and plans an escape while in prison. He has Zero hide digging tools inside pastries baked by Zero's girlfriend, Agatha. Gustave and the other men are able to escape and part ways. Zero and Gustave return to the Grand Budapest with the assistance of the Society of the Crossed Keys, a group of concierges who call in favors to help each other.

When Gustave, Zero, and Agatha return to the Grand Budapest, they discover that it has been taken over by the country's army; war has broken out. Agatha slips in to get Boy With Apple so they can sell it and flee. Dmitri enters the hotel and spots her with the painting just as she walks out with it. Gustave and Zero go inside to save her as she attempts to flee Dmitri. Dmitri opens fire on them, resulting in a gun battle involving all of the soldiers staying at the hotel. Agatha's escape attempt results in her and Zero hanging from the balcony of one of the rooms before falling into a car full of pastries, which breaks their fall.

When Gustave, Zero, and Agatha return to the Grand Budapest, they discover that it has been taken over by the country's army; war has broken out. Agatha slips in to get Boy With Apple so they can sell it and flee. Dmitri enters the hotel and spots her with the painting just as she walks out with it. Gustave and Zero go inside to save her as she attempts to flee Dmitri. Dmitri opens fire on them, resulting in a gun battle involving all of the soldiers staying at the hotel. Agatha's flee effort results in her and Zero suspended from the balcony of one of the rooms prior to actually falling into a car full of pastries, which breaks their fall.

Agatha discovers a note hidden on the back of the painting stating that if Madame D. was murdered, she is leaving everything to Gustave. Gustave becomes one of the country's wealthiest men and the owner of The Grand Budapest Hotel. He, Zero, and Agatha are traveling by train when they are stopped by army death troops, who tear up Zero's identification papers (he is a refugee). Gustave starts fighting the men and is shot dead.

Zero is Gustave's sole heir to his fortune, which is how he inherited his great wealth, but also why he traded all of his commodities for The Grand Budapest, which is now a struggling property because it holds all of his memories of Gustave and his relationship with Agatha.

The Author then turns this story into a book, which the young girl from the film's beginning adores. As the film concludes, we see her sitting on a bench next to the Author's statue.

Themes of the film

Secular Society and Privilege

The film's central theme is class and social structure. The Grand Budapest Hotel's attendees are all economically prosperous, as well as the establishment's employees are expected to meet their immediate needs at any cost. Gustave takes great pride in his ability to provide his guests with what they require with zeal and grace, and this pride is rooted in his well-mannered demeanor and classy demeanor.

Inherited wealth and trust funds

The film begins with the death of Madame D., who leaves an enormous fortune to be divided among her family and Monsieur Gustave, her lover and closest confidant. Inheritance then becomes a major theme, as Dmitri and his three sisters believe they have a right to their mother's fortune even though they have mistreated her (and ultimately, murdered her). When Gustave is left with a valuable painting, they attempt to frame him for murder to obtain it. As a result, the theme of inheritance drives the film's entire plot. Through the climax, we learn that Madame D. had a premonition she was going to be killed and that her assailant would be her son, and has therefore taken measures that if she is murdered, Dmitri's inheritance will go entirely to Gustave. Gustave inherits Madame D.'s fortune, and Zero inherits it from Gustave.

Corruption and Finances

While the Grand Budapest Hotel's high society is based on money, the film distinguishes between money-grubbing and a more nuanced appreciation of the finer things. While Gustave values his possessions and cherishes the trappings and privileges of the upper classes, Dmitri is a murderous and corruptible money-launderer whose desire for wealth drives him to violent ends. As a result, money's corrupt power is a major theme in the film. Dmitri appears to believe he lives just outside of the law due to his money throughout the film. He murders his own mother, then hires an assassin to coerce everyone else into paying him the money he does not deserve. In this way, his dirty antics contrast sharply with Gustave's sincerity.

How the film utilizes technical media elements to paint a narrative (especially mise-en-scene)

The film is very well done in terms of color, every frame of this movie is wonderfully crafted almost like an art piece. This is why it remains one of the best films in history for its use of color, framing, and mise-en-scene elements such as set design and cinematography.

The producer himself, Wes Anderson's films are known for their use of symmetry, which creates a sense of harmony and balance. While entertaining to watch, this type of composition also contributes to his films' fanciful, beguiling appearance. This symmetry can be found in almost every shot, the color and how he directs the shot of every film he produces always plays into the Avant Garde and Camp aesthetic, taking a comedic and vivid approach to his often dark-themed movies as seen in this case of "The Grand Budapest Hotel". Wes Anderson himself is known for his comprehensive use of flat space camera moves, intensely symmetrical compositions, knolling, snap-zooms, slow-motion walking shots, a purposefully restricted color palette, and hand-made visual style and production design that frequently incorporates scale models.

The use of color and aspect ratio

We can begin analyzing the color schemes in the very first scene, the introduction. The color palette of the intro is vastly different from that of the rest of the film. It provides insight into the scene's mundane and authentic nature. Unlike the others, this scene is indeed very dull and boring; it uses colors with brown and neutral tones to show the audience how the introduction is set in the present. The aspect ratio of the intro is also different because it is set on a larger scale, whereas the rest of the movie is set in the aspect ratio of 16:9, showing the audience what happened in the past and luring the audience into a 1930s era that is distinct from the 1960s, present day.

Wes Anderson wanted to represent imagination through color; when we see the girl in the intro, the color is washed out.

When we cut to the author's story, we see the color brighten ever so slightly and become a bit more saturated; when the man begins to tell his story.

we cut to him visiting the hotel when he was younger; this scene then cuts to a different aspect ratio, changing it ever so slightly to 2.35:1 which was primarily used between the 1960s and 1985. This scene is indicated to the audience as being in 1968 which we will travel back even further from this point on.

We can see that The difference in aspect ratio indicates to the audience that this is a different time frame than the others. The color is getting slightly more saturated as the movie proceeds. However, it must be noted that we haven't traveled to the land of imagination in this movie just yet as the aspect ratio hasn't changed and the colors are still very dull in comparison to the earlier time frame of the 1930s.

The aspect to touch on is the change in aspect ratio throughout the grand Budapest hotel. In the 1980s intro, it was 1:85, in the 1960s in anamorphic in 2:4, and in the 1930s in 1.37:1. Anderson uses the aspect ratio to tell the mood and time period of the story.

We can start to see the aspect ratio and colors change drastically as we enter the film's time frame, mostly set in, the 1930s. During this era, 16:9 was the standard size and is very telling of the time period.

Costume design

Costume design was done by Milena Canonero (at the 87th Academy Awards here Sunday night with Milena Canonero walking away with the golden statuette in the Best Costume Design category, and Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier receiving the honor in Best Makeup and Hairstyling category).

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a popular European ski resort for the rich and elite mostly set in the 1930s on the edge of world war 2. Monsieur Gustav is the hotel concierge and Zero is the hotel’s junior lobby boy who quickly becomes Gustav’s protege. Gustav runs a tight ship taking service very seriously and even takes on many of the elderly female guests as lovers. When Madame G mysteriously dies, Gustav is framed for the murder. Costume design was done by Milena canonero (at the 87th Academy Awards here Sunday night with Milena Canonero walking away with the golden statuette in the Best Costume Design category, and Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier receiving the honor in Best Makeup and Hairstyling category). The movie for the most part is narrated by Zero and takes the form of a flashback. The hotel is located in Zubrowka, a fictional European Republic. Gustav wears a purple tailcoat with notched lapels and a red bowtie. He’s extremely prim, proper, polished, pristine, and most certainly purple. The deep purple he wears and technically what all the hotel employee wears which serve to emphasize the reality of the hotel. Purple has always been connotated with luxury and grandeur. (The reason purple is associated with royalty stems from the purple dye trade. “Tyrian purple” from the ancient city Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon) came from the Bolinu brandaris sea snail. It was so rare that it was worth its weight in gold.) Both of which are associated with Grand Budapest.

Gustav also wears the emblem of the society of the cross keys which is an international network of concierges in high-class hotels who assists each other. This is based on the real-life society of the Golden Keys which still exists today. The society of Golden Keys was established in Paris, France in 1929 but it wasn’t until 1953 when they adopted a badge and not until 1998 that Butcher provided the official version we see today. The Golden Keys insignia is very similar to the one we see in the movie and they actually endorsed this recreation. To be a member is an honor and the result of a very selective process, in Gustav wearing one adds to his prestige but also alludes to his innocence. Zero wears a similar uniform, though his looks cheaper with noticeable wrinkles probably to show he’s still new and budding in this hotel world.

Except for Gustav’s prison uniform, the two dress very much alike the entire movie, this puts a further visual emphasis on showing that zero is Gustav’s apprentice and why it makes sense that Gustav would pick Zero as his then successor. After Gustav gets arrested, he wears a striped prison uniform. Prison stripes in America originated in the 1820s and were designed to make prisoners immediately recognizable as criminals, to further degrade them as they worked in chain gangs, and also to aid in capturing them again when or if they escaped. By the early 1900s prison stripes started going out of style because society deemed them as unnecessarily disgraceful. The Grand Budapest however, is set in Europe which has a slightly different history than the US in striped uniforms, they were never as widely used as they were in the US, however, we can trace them back to medieval times, and stripes were always considered to be this kind of unnatural pattern.

One academic theory posits that there was an inaccurate translation that went around from the old testament which originally said: “not to mix two kinds of things such as wool and linen as the same fabric”. Then in the 13th century Pope Boniface the eight prohibited all clergymen from wearing stripes and around the same time in Saxony or modern-day Germany laws enforced sex workers and criminals to wear stripes. Despite their outdatedness prison stripes have been used often as a kitschy comedic device such as in cartoons and in movies. For that reason alone, I could see why Anderson chose striped uniforms. The prison uniforms are also very drab and dull in color emphasizing further the struggle Gustav is facing, having this in his previous costume be so different demonstrates how great the gap is from where he was to where he is now.

Gustav continues to wear drab colors until he returns to Grand Budapest. The guards and evil characters/antagonists also wear gray and dark colors to visually distinguish them as enemies compared to the saturated and light colors worn by the heroes and allies. The vibrancy in the color palette is of course very trademarked to Wes Anderson but it objectively works in this movie because the movie takes place as a flashback to a more decadent pre-war period.We also learn later that Gustav and Agatha pass away not too long after the main events of the film so it makes sense that Zero would hold fonder memories of this period adding to the brightness and saturation as he's recollecting it.

Canonero’s fourth Oscar came in February at the 2015 Academy Awards for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. In an interview with Vanity Fair Canonero cited her sources of art as inspiration: Gustav Klimt, Kees van Dongen, Tamara Lempicka and Geroge Grosz. These are a few of their works.

Production Design

His set design is undeniably unique, and primarily does this through costumes and set design which act as representations of either the character or the story.
Anderson’s team creates worlds that place the viewer inside a storybook, as we see in the example of the Grand Budapest Hotel certain time frames have different aspect ratios, have different colour palettes such as the difference in saturation that play into the storybook imagination aspect of his unique craft.
The setting almost acts as characters, as the setting moves with the character, placing an emphasis on the theme of such particular movie. In the Grand Budapest we can see that the set design is robust, implies rich history and helps to build mood and tone. Anderson knows that the Grand Budapest almost acts like a boat that sets the story in motion for Gustav and Zero as to why he makes the place so grandeur, It makes Gustav look like he is sucking up or even sees himself as part of the elite and shows how different Zero is as to being an outcast with his cheap-ish uniform in comparison to Gustav and how his room in the hotel looks so vastly different to Gustav’s and the other guest bedrooms.
Adam Stockhausen (american production designer who worked with people such as Steven Spielberg, Steve Mcqueen and Anna Pinnock) notes that the German artistic style Jugendstil (popular from the mid-1890s to the early 20th century) was the primary influence for the hotel's decor. He is the driving force in Anderson’s film as his ecletic production design is still famously known today. For “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Stockhausen wholeheartedly embraced the handmade, analog world of Eastern European opulence. The town became a pastel delight, and The Grand Budapest was modeled after many hotels from the region, cobbled together with a patchwork of eye-popping designs, colors, fabrics, and decor.
We see the hotel in its '30s heyday, then watch it wilt during the Soviet era of the '60s before becoming the inspiration for a beloved book in the present day. This meant that a lot of the film's storytelling had to be born out in the sets, some of which were built within each other in order to portray different time periods using roughly the same physical space. Production designer Adam Stockhausen, a frequent collaborator of Anderson's who also worked on The French Dispatch, compares the filmmaking of The Grand Budapest Hotel to solving a puzzle.
The filmmaker's innovative approach to problem-solving extended beyond the titular hotel itself. The characters travel around Europe a bit, so several scenes are set on a train — and there is a marked difference between riding the train before war breaks out and later in the film when it's staffed by black-clad fascists. A similarly inside-out approach was taken on the film's climactic ski chase, when Zero (Tony Revolori) and Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) are on the run from the deadly assassin Jopling (Willem Dafoe). This kind of action set piece seemed a little out of the ordinary for an Anderson movie, but the creative solution was very much in keeping.

Camera and Cinematography

Anderson is best known for his use of symmetry and is a constant throughout his works. A large part of his works and what makes a shot a Wes Anderson shot however is how he frames for mise en scene where every element of the scene is carefully considered and functions to depict space, time period, theme, plot and character. As a result he uses composition, blocking and camera movements to create a complex ballet.
Take this scene for example, it begins with a wide shot to take in the opulent dining hall, it’s nearly empty reminding us once again of the once great hotel’s current status. The menu for which is visible for a second contains an easter egg on the front.
Here the diners are in a symmetrical two shot. Eye to eye and on equal ground
The last aspect to touch on is the change in aspect ratio throughout the Grand Budapest hotel. In the 1980s intro its 1:85, in the 1960s in anamorphic in 2:4 and in the 1930s in 1.37:1. Anderson uses the aspect ratio to tell the mood and time period of the story.
His cinematography is precise, casual and punctuated
This is to provide context to the viewer. Wes Anderson conventionally uses long shots with minimal cuts however when cutting, he occasionally hides the cut to keep the same pace but able to cut and change to a different location. This is shown when the camera crab dollies to the right and passes a pillar in the foreground which means a cut could be made and the audience can’t notice.

Editing and Post production

Wes Anderson ussually avoids aggresive editing, often staging his scenes in two-shots, and long takes with theatrical blocking. At times he would move through scenes with a quick pace when suddenly static and can help with comedy, generating an unusual effect on top of that, a sort of emotional inertia
Anderson also tends to share a single thought or conversation across multiple scenes, he uses a single idea throughout multiple cuts.
Builds emotional inertia with his edit and connects scenes like a jigsaw puzzle
Wes focusses more so on the camera movement and the shots taken, the only editing that is really noticeable are the rough cuts and even so it is a very stylistic choice. As a lot of his movies incorporate that of pov shots.
Wes Anderson conventionally uses long shots with minimal cuts however when cutting, he occasionally hides the cut to keep the same pace but able to cut and change to a different location. This is shown when the camera crab dollies to the right and passes a pillar in the foreground which means a cut could be made and the audience can’t notice. Parallel editing is used during this scene as we understand that what Agatha and Dimitri are doing is happening at the same time as what M. Gustave and Zero. Another Wes Anderson convention is using a two shot rather than the classic shot reverse shot continuity editing technique that most directors use. This is to give the audience context and also provides more symmetry.
For example:

Sound design

In the film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014) uses a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound to fit the sequence of the film. The sequence starts with a kettle drum beat that remains present throughout the sequence.
In the film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014) uses a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound to fit the sequence of the film. The sequence starts with a kettle drum beat that remains present throughout the sequence. However, this is altered to the actions of the scene and will occasionally pause; this makes it dominant and subdued. This beat also creates a sense of movement and pace.
The director also uses diegetic sound effects to create the atmosphere of the film, even if some of these effects were added in post production. These effects include the diegetic sounds of paper rustling, wind and the fuel pump. The sounds of wind are used to show the distance from the characters in the scene. Narration is also used as non-diegetic sound that is used to add context and additional information for the audience.
The music continues to layer throughout the sequence as the simple drum beat advances to a complex beat with a bass line, however the layered sound stops to focus on another diegetic wind sound isolates the score from the rest of the sequence. As the action continues the layered score increases in volume and starts to build up to the church scene. When Zero and Gustave enter the church, the score develops and changes to incorporate the chanting sung by the monks to match the scene. The diegetic dialogue in the confessions booth sounds deliberately like it was done in a box to match the scene in the film.
It’s a fast pace at the beginning and utilises similar techniques to montage editing. This fast pace could foreshadow the upcoming tense chase scene. Almost all of the cuts synch with the non diegetic composed score as do the actions of the characters such as Agatha’s opening and closing of the curtains. Not only is this satisfying to the viewer but also means the soundtrack provides and maintains pace.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel film analysis