Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: Wes Anderson
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Mathieu Amalric, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Owen Wilson, Lea Seydoux, Bob Balaban
Runtime: 100 mins.
2014
Some of my best movie-watching experiences have been in movie theaters: the uproarious midnight showing of The Avengers; the palpable tension of Looper; the oppressive atmosphere of Sinister. Sitting on the floor in the aisle of an empty movie theater during Gravity and getting lost in space. Experiencing The Dark Knight in IMAX. Hating every moment of Knowing.
"Movie theaters are fun" is certainly no groundbreaking statement, but I think it's one we have to think about and reaffirm every so often now that the way we consume entertainment is shifting drastically. At any rate, I was more than pleased at having the opportunity to see Wes Anderson's new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, this past Saturday with a few friends. We had the movie theater experience, and we had it hard.
We saw TGBH at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, which is kind of a classy (snooty?) joint--they play a lot of off-the-beaten-path (pretentious?) films. I'm joking (jeering?) of course; I give the place a hard time because the last movie I saw there was The Great Gatsby, and it's hard to get that taste out of your mouth. At any rate, we claimed our seats and were immediately surrounded by old people as far as the eye could see. I wondered how they would experience the movie; would they laugh, or take it too seriously?
The movie started rolling, and there were quite a few laughs from all sides, although perhaps not as raucous as ours. We were loving it. Wes Anderson tickles your fancy, then he keeps tickling it, and tickling it, until you're asking him to stop through teary eyes, and peeing a little bit. Metaphorically speaking.
About 60%-70% of the movie had passed, and we found ourselves watching this delightful ski-based chase scene. As soon as the scene started, my friends and I busted a gut at the silly intensity of it. At this point, the middle aged-to-elderly woman in front of me (whom I will call Madame Vagabond because she made me upset) turned around and said:
Could you please stop laughing so loud? It makes it very difficult to hear the movie.I will mention first that, as I said, this was an action scene, during which there was no dialogue but rather the gentle WHOOOOSSSSHHHHHHH of skis swiftly descending a slope.
I will mention second that during scenes in which there was dialogue, we reined our laughter in, seeing as how we wanted to hear the dialogue too.
I will mention third that we had not engaged in any form of disturbing the movie-watching experience, such as talking, texting, opening loud candy, or playing the kazoo at inappropriate moments. So it was less like this:
And more like this:
 |
| except in our case Madame Vagabond was in front of us |
If TGBH is one thing (and it's not, it's at least 80 things), that thing is fun. Which is curious, considering the movie begins with a little girl in a graveyard. This melancholy moment is the first of a series of frame narratives, crafted like beautiful Russian nesting dolls that you slowly pull apart, examine, then put back together over the course of the film. Because if Wes Anderson has one thing (and he doesn't, he has at least 90 things...), he has craft.
That little girl is visiting a gravestone marked "The Author", upon which she looks down at a book in her hands called: The Grand Budapest Hotel. We are then introduced to The Author (Tom Wilkinson) before he has died, who reminisces to us about a strange encounter he had with the owner of said hotel during his stay there years ago. We then flash to his time in the hotel, where the young writer (Jude Law) listens to the owner Mr. Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) tell the story of how the hotel came to be in his possession. This final frame leads us to the meat of the story, set in 1932, when Mr. Moustafa was a lobby boy named Zero (Tony Revolori) who comes under the tutelage of the hotel's talented and dynamic concierge, Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). That's all I'll say about the plot, because it becomes delightfully complicated after that, though never confusing.
I'm not going to belabor the following point either, but it needs to be pointed at, because it is nothing less than on-point. Take a look at that cast. It's expansive and brilliant. I don't know if I've ever seen a movie so packed with stars this side of Ocean's Eleven. Everybody nails their part. I was more interested in Adrien Brody than I have been in a while, and Willem Dafoe absolutely destroys his role as a send-up to movie tough guys. But the real talent here is Ralph Fiennes. He inhabits Wes Anderson's rhythmic, clause-heavy dialogue like he was born for the role of a fussy, effeminate, principled, storybook concierge. His performance may not be the beating heart of this film, but it is certainly the chest cavity that allows us to get there.
The visual world of TGBH is as sweet as one of the pristine confections that are one of the film's motifs. There's no one metaphor to describe Anderson's visual compositions--pastries? dioramas? storybooks?--so let me just find some examples.
Through years of releasing quality films and cultivating his craft, Wes Anderson's movies have become a genre of their own. This really smart review calls him "the most hostile aesthete [in contemporary American cinema]". In fact, the major criticism leveled against him is that he's a one-trick pony--he cannot do anything more or less than the quirky, stylized, cloying filmmaking that he is accustomed to. Instead of flexing his muscles, throwing his audiences a curveball, and proving all the naysayers wrong, Anderson makes what is probably the more mature choice with TGBH: He makes a film that digs deeper and broader into his own self-styled niche than ever before. It pays off.
A major way we take in stories is through our understanding of genre conventions and tropes. We know that certain things happen in certain movies in certain fashions, and true suspense/horror/drama/comedy is what occurs when those expectations are either confirmed or denied in exciting ways. Bad movies recycle those genre conventions wholesale, which is a privileging of form over function. Great movies understand the function of all the conventions they dabble in, and they put function first to exploit and innovate upon these conventions.
Wes Anderson fully understands the function of the worlds he creates for us, and he has honed that understanding to a razor's edge. With TGBH, that razor's edge is so cutting that it often feels like Anderson is talking directly to us. He has such control over his material that we feel what he wants us to feel every moment that he wants us to feel it. Anderson doesn't wield the messy Michael Bay blunderbuss of filmmaking; he is a sniper, far-seeing, far-reaching, able to pinpoint our exact spots of vulnerability. This is what good cinema can do.
That being said, one of the best things about TGBH is that it never lords its craft over us. It never condescends to us. It wants us to have a damned good time, and give us something to take home, something that will rankle around in our heads after the fact. I could do a critical analysis of the frame narratives and irony in TGBH--how they're situated and how they act upon the viewer. I could talk ad nauseum about how TGBH engages with themes of the idealized nostalgia of individual expression and its juxtaposition with the impending fascism of the 1930s. I could talk about Anderson's engagement with cinema history via the usage of an archaic aspect ratio for all scenes set in the 1930s (actually, I couldn't talk about that because I don't know anything about it... but someone could). But I really just want to talk about how happy the movie made me.
The world of TGBH is Anderson's playground, and he wants us to play.
Which is why being told to tamp down my enjoyment was such a moment of disillusion and dissolution for me. TGBH does just about as good a job as any film I've ever seen of transporting us into its amazing fictional world--is that not one reason we go to the movies? We certainly don't go for a peaceful, unmolested viewing experience, the kind that Madame Vagabond seemed to desire. If movies are to be a pure, peaceful experience, why not watch them in a safer space like your own home?
Because there is still magic at the movies. Even though we are sitting in a dark room with strangers, for that 1.5-3 hours everyone there is connected. They may be connected in revulsion or joy, suspense or boredom. But the connection is there. Have you ever clapped at the end of a movie? Most of the movies I listed above got a resounding round of applause afterwards. Why does that happen? Why do we clap to a screen, when nobody who made the movie could possibly hear us?
We don't do it for them. We clap for ourselves; we clap for each other; we clap with each other. We can watch movies on our phones with our earbuds in, and enjoy them immensely. But there remains something special about laughing right alongside someone else. It's a shared experience.
Madame Vagabond was probably off that night telling everybody about how rude and disruptive we were, just as I'm telling you right now about how rude and disruptive she was. It doesn't really matter whose movie theater protocol is more just. What matters is that despite my annoyance-bordering-on-anger about that moment, it was only a hiccup compared to the experience of enjoying The Grand Budapest Hotel alongside happy friends and chuckling old people. You should go share that experience.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
Edit: I forgot to talk about the joke at the end--not a post-credit coda, but a mid-credit coda. Stick around for the credits to enjoy the excellent music and the delightful gift towards the end of them. Madame Vagabond didn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment