Someone asking me what my favourite film is can never be sure of what answer I will give, but a bet on The Grand Budapest Hotel is more than likely to yield some kind of financial reward.
My first Wes Anderson film was The Grand Budapest Hotel, watching it after arriving home from work one evening in 2016 and falling deeply in love with the director’s work as a result.
On first watch it is easy to get carried away with the charming campiness, the bright colour palette and the endless supply of symmetrical shots, that’s if you’re not too busy laughing at the endless stream of verbal and physical comedy.
But it only took one more watch to find myself enamoured with Ralph Fiennes, the true star of a film told from the perspective of his dear friend Zero. He has become something of a cult figure, prancing around the hotel where he serves as concierge (although his role appears to resemble a much higher management position). He speaks poetically and shares his insightful worldview with his young protégé and the audience alike.
Some may write him off as a one note character, a posh hotelier put into a difficult situation and some might think his self-proclaimed perfection as a person and the whirlpool he gets caught up in throughout the events of the film could lead audiences to believe he is simply too fantastical to be true.
But I could not agree with a conclusion less!
I actually firmly believe Gustave to be one of the most well realised characters to make an appearance in Wes Anderson’s vast catalogue of misfits. The details that zero shares about Gustave all work together to make him not just a protagonist but a human being with layers of depth.
He’s not as fancy as he seems…
One of the continuous sources of comedy from The Grand Budapest are Gustave’s frequent outbursts of anger and profanity. While it’s funny to watch someone so fancy lose composure
(like making the religious kids swear) it serves to add a great deal of depth to his background.
Gustave despite his airs and graces has still come from very little, having worked his way up from a lobby boy position and with that comes a much more blue collar personality, he will have spent decades with raging chefs, waiters off duty and butlers who have had quite enough and he likely served in all those roles too. The truth is people who work in hospitality swear a lot, even though the guests never see it and this is especially true of Gustave.
He’s very insecure…
Two other examples of his depth as a character are encapsulated when Zero describes him as insecure, like the women he had many affairs with. But it wasn’t enough to just call him insecure, especially in a film where he embodies confidence, two small details have always spoken to me as they’re characteristics I personal relate to.
He eats alone in his room. Despite commanding the respect of the entire hotel staff, he is not comfortable enough in himself to potentially display the imperfection that we all display when eating, it’s a short but melancholic moment when we see the now undressed concierge eating alone in a modest bedroom.
He is also very insecure about his smell. It is pointed out several times in the film how liberally perfumed he is, a man so terrified of letting slip a perfect façade that he won’t risk smelling like a human, even though his tendency to wear so much cologne only ever serves to draw attention to it. This is something most men have done at some point.
He’s a man who loves…
Gustave does his best to portray himself as not so much a human, but an extension of the hotel he loves. He conducts himself with strict professionalism and presents himself with complete perfectionism. For a great deal of his time with Zero he treats him like an employee more than a friend, as the hotel would demand.
He is frequently shown to be a mercenary, with how quickly he gets over his lover’s death when he realises he has inherited something and he hasn’t always respected Zero, a man who without question has followed his every need.
But he frequently lets his façade slip, the way he laughs with pleasure at meeting Agatha, the brotherly love he declares for zero at the end of their post-prison escape argument. Most notably of all is the way he loses his temper when Zero is threatened on the train, a slip of humanity what ultimately costs him his life.
Gustave is a man just like the rest of us.
It is truly amazing how Fiennes and Anderson created such a down to earth persona in such an off the wall fantasy. Gustave is a man that can be both aspired to and related to by most audience members and by myself especially.
T H E N A I V E F I L M M A K E R 