Movie Crush Monday: Little C and The Grand Budapest Hotel

Happy Monday readers,
It's my first day off since getting back from Denver so I slept in and enjoyed my coffee slowly and generally put off actual work as long as I possibly could. Now it's back to the blog to follow up CT's post on The Brothers Bloom. I toyed with a few different movies on this one, but eventually I settled on a movie that I didn't like the first time through. A movie that took time before I came to understand and love. I'm following Adrian Brody from Brothers Bloom to...

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Most of my hesitation with this movie came from my hit or miss record with the director Wes Anderson. I love Fantastic Mr. Fox but I hated Moonrise kingdom. Mr. Anderson has a very distinct style and sometimes he tends to lean on the style more than the story. Which drives me crazy. I work with dozens of people who will sit through complicated art pieces and at the end will be unable to tell me what the hell was happening because "It's not about that", but I need a story and characters I can follow. Otherwise I just don't get the point of watching.

It's not that this movie has a lack of style. Every set piece, every costume, every shot is meticulous. Wes Anderson gets a little more control over every detail with each movie he makes which makes his movies visually stunning. You can pause any shot in the film and find huge amounts of detail that the camera never focuses on. If it is in the frame, it has been put there intentionally. It must be exhausting to create but it's completes the feeling for the viewer. 

The main draw for me in this film (that I feel is missing from some of Anderson's other movies) is the richness of the story. It's a story of two hotel workers who get entrenched in a scandal as their country approaches a war. For such a serious premise there's also a fair amount of levity to balance. Ralph Fiennes manages to bring both humor and a deep gravity to a character that could so easily be ridiculous. His character is a good projection of the rest of the movie which spends so much time perilously close to being too over the top to be watchable. 

Now that I've spent a little while writing about it, I think I'm going to have to go out and buy this movie. It feels like a perfect addition to our overflowing bookshelf of film. 

Happy watching,

Little C