Tuesday 25 March 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Despite having The Royal Tenenbaums on DVD somewhere and always meaning to go and watch Fantastic Mr Fox, I have never actually seen a Wes Anderson film before this. The Royal Budapest Hotel certainly makes me more inclined to finally get around to them, however. A very silly, very fun and very carefully-crafted film - including Anderson's distinctive style of framing with the centre line always in mind - it was exuberant fun and, of course, had a stellar cast - not only in its big names like Ralph Fiennes and Jude Law, but with cameos from more or less all the stars of The Darjeeling Limited (though a major one for Brody) and even the kid I just saw in the Zero Theorem showing up as a gas pump attendant. 

A story contained in a series of flashbacks - a girl at an author's grave thinks about the book he wrote about the time he went to a hotel and heard the life story of its aged owner - it revolves around Ralph Fiennes' Lothario of a character who is willed a priceless painting by an old woman he seduced - which leads to a caper of theft, jailbreaks, a sweet little romance, gangsters hunting down lawyers, a very daft ski chase sequence, a civil war and a huge shoot-out. There's a sense of fun here that is missing from so many modern films, and is much needed - which is why this film, I feel, is becoming such a sleeper success. 

And for Wes Anderson's next films - well, I shall have to make a point of going. 

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