The Grand Budapest Hotel

The end credits of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ prominently acknowledges the inspiration of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. I’ve never read anything by him, but if his work gave Wes Anderson – one of the most unique talents in contemporary cinema – the impetus to make something as witty, inventive and sublime as this, then I need to read everything by Zweig I can get my hands on.

Remember the sequence of nested flash-forwards that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ‘The Lives of Others’ ends with? Anderson reverses the trick, opening in the present as a studious young woman visits a cemetery and stands before the monument to an author (the author is referred to solely as The Author). The monument is hung with hotel room keys. The woman begins reading from one of The Author’s books. Flashback to The Author as an older man (Tom Wilkinson) being interrupted by a potato-gun wielding grandchild as he delivers a monologue to camera on how he came to write his most famous work. Flashback to The Author as a younger man (Jude Law), sojourning at The Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968. The place is run-down, a shadow of its former self. In the bath-house, The Author meets the establishment’s reclusive owner Zero Moustafa (F Murray Abraham), who happens to me a fan of his work. Zero invites him to dinner and proceeds proceeds to tell him the story of how he came to own the hotel. Flashback to 1932 and … And here let us pause a moment.

Remember the opening sequence of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s ‘Cold Fever’ where the 1.66:1 aspect ratio for the crowded Toyko scenes is superceded by the full 2.35:1 widescreen as soon as the action shifts to the rugged vista of Iceland? Anderson reverses the trick, reducing the screen to a smaller aspect ratio as the 1932 story (i.e. the rest of the film) plays out. Contrapuntally, the screen floods with colour and the hotel in its glory days comes bursting to life. There are entire articles to be written on the production design, the look of the hotel and the matte painting landscape it occupies; personally, I’ll go for one of those “x-meets-y” cheats – imagine ‘The Shining’ made by Powell & Pressburger circa ‘Black Narcissus’ – and leave it at that.

The hotel is run to sycophantic perfection by its concierge, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes, in what the history of cinema may well record as his finest performance), who becomes mentor to newly appointed lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori, making his acting debut). Gustave insists on discretion, servility and good manners, and personifies every aspect of the old world civility that he holds dear … until something annoys him and he fires off a litany of curses as inventive as it is vehement. Gustave also offers services of a more intimate nature to a succession of eccentric and lonely dowagers. When one of these grande dames, Madame D (Tilda Swinton), dies under mysterious circumstances, she leaves Gustave a priceless painting, Boy With Apple, in her will.

It looks for a moment as if Gustave’s ship has come in. One problem, though: the will is subject to several hundred codicils and solicitor Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) cautions that her extended family – headed up by the villainous Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and his psychopathic associate Jopling (Willem Dafoe) – should be patient while the legal formalities are completed. Decidedly unwelcome at the wake, Gustave and Zero expedite the matter of Gustave’s inheritance by simply making off with the painting. Meanwhile, the political face of Europe is changing, with troops are amassing at borders; Gustave, however, is able to rely on his connection with Henckels (Edward Norton), commanding officer of a battalion which later occupies the hotel. But even nepotism can’t be relied upon when he’s accused of Madame D’s murder. Arrested and imprisoned pending trial, Gustave falls in with a group of hardened criminals led by Ludwig (Harvey Keitel), who are planning a jailbreak. But some outside help is required. Gustave ropes in Zero and the young baker’s assistant, Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), with whom he has become smitten. Cue the best “cake with a file in” gag ever.

By the way, we’re merely half way through a 100 minute film at this point. To say ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is rich in incident is like saying Metallica play a bit loud. And there is still plenty of incident to come: a break-out that plays like ‘Escape from Alcatraz’ re-orchestrated as a minuet; an “on the lam” sequence which sees Gustave call upon the services of The Order of the Crossed Keys (cue cameos from Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, just in case, y’know, the cast wasn’t awesome enough already); a couple of pure horror movie moments courtesy of Jopling; and a subplot wrapped up in espionage thriller imagery regarding Gustave and Zero’s pursuit of Serge X (Mathieu Amalric), the one man who can clear his name.

In lesser hands, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ would be a curate’s egg at best, and a tonally schizophrenic disaster at worst. Anderson’s control of the material, however, is so intuitive, so masterful, so sure-footed that there isn’t a wrong note in the whole thing. The balance is absolutely perfect: visual dexterity; knowingly ironic nods to diverse genres; intellectual wit tempered with beautifully timed moments of lowbrow humour; a propulsive screwball narrative of the type that even the Coen Brothers don’t trade in anymore; and (with the possible exception of Ronan’s slightly bewildered turn) a cast who are utterly in tune with their director, who “get” what he’s about and bring their A-game and then some.

Am I gushing? That’s because ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is one of the finest films I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s Anderson’s masterpiece in a filmography that is uniformly excellent. It provides the perfect material for the fullest synthesis yet of his trademark visual style and aesthetic concerns. Its touches of melancholy are acutely judged and give just the right amount of weight to a film that otherwise puts the fun in fin de siécle.

Road to Perdition

I wrote about WTF Syndrome when I reviewed ‘Snatch’ a while back. WTF Syndrome is when you tell someone, usually very sheepishly, that you’ve never seen a certain film and their patented response is an incredulous “what the fuck?”

Usually, though, there’s a good reason why you’ve never seen the film in question. In my case, with ‘Snatch’, it was because I was influenced by a raft of reviews which painted it as just another iteration of ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ only on a bigger budget. Which it kind of is and kind of isn’t but is kind of missing the point.

(This, I hasten to add, was back in the day when I was influenced enough by the mainstream critics to make my viewing choices based on their say-so. This was also back in the day when I actually had disposable income and could have just gone to see anything and everything regardless. God, I could give the me of two decades ago a right slapping for not seeing more movies. And not buying a sports car. But I digress.)

When ‘Road to Perdition’ was released in 2002, expectation was high. Sam Mendes’s debut ‘American Beauty’ had cleaned up critically and commercially, bagging six Oscars. It was acute, acidic, brilliantly observed and littered with terrific performances, including a career best from Kevin Spacey. ‘Road to Perdition’ had a lot to live up to. Ads were everywhere. I lost count of the amount of times I sat through the trailer. It looked like a showreel for cinematographer Conrad L Hall. I didn’t know if I could take Tom Hanks seriously as a gangster. Early reviews suggested it wasn’t a patch on ‘American Beauty’. People whose judgement I trusted saw it and gave a shrug of the shoulders. I didn’t bother going to see it. Nor, for nine years, did I have the urge to rent the DVD or catch it on TV.

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a lend of the DVD. I sat down to watch it over the weekend, the mid-way stretch of an offbeat triple-bill that started with ‘Messiah of Evil’ and ended with ‘The French Sex Murders’. Comparatively speaking, ‘Road to Perdition’ boasts greater narrative coherence than the former and somewhat higher production values than the latter. And for the most part I enjoyed ‘Road to Perdition’ – it looks great, there are a triumvirate of excellent supporting performances from Paul Newman, Daniel Craig and Jude Law, and a rain-soaked set-piece towards the end is bleakly iconic – but watching it inbetween two B-movies threw something into sharp relief.

‘Road to Perdition’ is essentially a man-on-the-run narrative powered by the embittered heart of a revenge movie. Adapted from the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, the material cries out for down-and-dirty B-movie treatment. The story is boilerplate: Michael Sullivan (Hanks), a mob enforcer who tries to keep his family separate from his working life, goes on a strong-arm job with his boss’s loose-cannon son Connor Rooney (Craig); Sullivan’s son (Tyler Hoechlin), curious as to what his old man does, sneaks along for the ride; Rooney goes apeshit at the job and blows someone away; Sullivan Jr witnesses it; Rooney goes over to chez Sullivan to whack the kid but ends up murdering the uninvolved members of the family. Sullivan and son go on the run. Connor’s father, ageing patriarch John Rooney (Newman), reluctantly enters into an agreement with fellow mobster Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci) to shelter Connor and engage the services of photographer/hitman Harlan Maguire (Law).

At 90 minutes, fast and nasty, this could have been as cynically brilliant as Sam Mendes evidently wanted it to be. As it is, the running time is just shy of two hours. And it’s not like Mendes or scripter David Self need those 118 minutes to work on the characterization, since virtually every character is resolutely one-note. Sullivan is a professional enforcer who just happens to have a family. John Rooney is the creaky but charismatic head of the family. Connor is the wild card. Harlan is the stop-at-nothing psycho who enjoys his work a bit too much. There’s some gumph at the start about how Sullivan owes John so much and how John always thought of Sullivan as a son, but it’s never explained or explored. Quite why the schism between John and Connor came to pass is never explained or explored. The repercussions of Sullivan Jr surviving the massacre he inadvertently caused is never explored, except for one perfunctory scene where Sullivan angrily tells him it’s not his fault.

Ultimately, all ‘Road to Perdition’ is about is how Connor Rooney fucks over Michael Sullivan and how Michael Sullivan manoeuvres in order to (a) protect his son and (b) get revenge. And when Law is onscreen, all shark-like smile and twitchy menace, the film moves and grooves in an effectively nasty way. The rest of the time, though, everyone seems to be conscious that they’re working with an Oscar-winning filmmaker. Whole sequences have “prestige picture” and “Oscar clip” stamped all over them. The pace sometimes flags to the point of funereal. Thomas Newman’s score alternately drops to a hush and swells to a crescendo. ‘Road to Perdition’ is a depression-set gangster movie that is too concerned with straightening its tie, shining its shoes and practicing its speech for the awards ceremony when it ought to be liquored up on moonshine, grinning round a fat cigar and firing a tommy gun in the air from the running board of a Ford sedan.

Wilde

Posted as part of Operation 101010
Category: biopics / In category: 6 of 10 / Overall: 83 of 100

Brian Gilbert’s handsomely produced biopic of poet, novelist, playwright, wit, raconteur and all-round genius Oscar Wilde has a lot going for it. The period recreation is convincing without ever suffocating the viewer in the manner of, say, a BBC Sunday night costume drama. The script, by Julian Mitchell from Richard Ellman’s biography, is literate and witty. The performances are excellent across the board, with Stephen Fry perfectly cast in the title role. If anyone deserves the sobriquet “an Oscar Wilde for our times”, it is probably Stephen Fry.

With one caveat (and it’s an unfortunately significant one), I enjoyed ‘Wilde’ very much. And yet it falls prey to the inherent problem of virtually all biopics: it is, by its very nature, episodic. Opening in 1882 with Wilde fetching up in Colorado as part of his grand tour (Gilbert plays the opening credits sequence, in terms of its imagery and music, like a western), the film then packs the incidents of almost two decades into less than two hours.

Thus, in short order, Wilde returns to Britain, marries Constance Lloyd (Jennifer Ehle), makes his mark in society, fathers two children, meets Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen), has his first homosexual experience, writes ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, enjoys huge success with ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’, meets Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (Jude Law) and the two of them embark on a rocky and ultimately destructive relationship.

This is the point at which the film’s pace slows and, for a while, it becomes something of a two-hander, scene after scene depicting Wilde’s almost hopeless infatuation in the face of Bosie’s increasingly callous and selfish behaviour. Their relationship is tempestuous (seriously, these guys were more on-off than Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood) and Bosie’s mood swings are exacerbated by the influence of his father, the Marquess of Queensbury (Tom Wilkinson), a bullish no-son-of-mine type who decries Wilde as a pervert.

When Bosie’s brother (also gay) commits suicide rather than face his father’s wrath, Bosie seizes the opportunity of the Marquess making defamatory comments about Wilde in writing to convince Wilde to launch a libel action. Ross begs him not to but Wilde, committed to stand up against the hypocrisies of society, goes ahead. Minor problem: the defamatory comment in question (“posing sodomite”) is, although hateful, not without basis in fact. Therefore Wilde is forced to perjure himself. With the defence ready to call rent boys with whom Wilde had dallied, Wilde drops the prosecution against Queensbury, leaving himself (a) bankrupt after being obliged to settle the defendant’s legal fees and (b) facing charges from the Crown of gross indecency.

The sheer god-awfulness of British society’s attitudes to homosexuality at that time (and, from the experience of some of my gay friends, it seems to be an inculcated prejudice that’s still a long way from being eradicated) are effectively highlighted. Fry’s performance is exemplary, infusing Wilde with a dignity and a vulnerability beneath the flamboyance and flippant witticisms.

A basic knowledge of Oscar Wilde’s life and work, while not essential to an appreciation of Gilbert’s film, helps contextualise the references and quotes as well as clarifying the chronology. Although I’m confused as to when the film actually ends. The final scenes (SPOILER ALERT) are of Wilde visiting Constance’s grave; Wilde reminiscing with Ross; and Wilde, having travelled abroad, reuniting (albeit briefly) with Bosie. Yet Wilde and Bosie’s final period of time together was in 1897 whereas Constance died in 1898. An earlier scene has Constance visit Wilde in gaol (old spelling used by way of homage to his epic poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ – my favourite work by Oscar Wilde) and assure him she won’t divorce him and that he can return to his family as long as he never sees Bosie again. Later, Wilde tells Ross that now he’s lost his wife and is disallowed to see his children, he may as well see Bosie again. (SPOILERS END)

It grates that the filmmakers, after demonstrating so much commitment to their subject, blithely fuck with historical accuracy for no other reason I can discern than creating a Hollywood-style “happy” ending with Wilde and Bosie locked in each other’s embrace. Oscar Wilde was a literary genius, but like anyone of great creative capacity he was a flawed and deeply complex individual. ‘Wilde’ is almost a great movie, but misses out on greatness because, in the final analysis, it avoids its subject’s complexities and tries to iron out the flaws by sanctifying him.