Feb 14: Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) dir. Wes Anderson

Warning: contains mild spoilers.

On February 14th, rather than a love film... here's a film that I love. 

This film introduces another one of Wes Anderson's imagined worlds and is also one of my favourite films with some wonderful performances and set-piece scenes. It's another one in my Top 5, and that I would watch anytime if it was suggested.

As always, it's a visual treat with plenty of popping colours, dramatic graphic design and visual effects combined with models and miniatures and surreal touches, plus the usual symmetrical framing and intricate set pieces.

There are memorable characters and moments, such as the prison break and the repeated scenes in the train, with Adrien Brody, Ralph Fiennes and others on top form. 

Here's the trailer for the film to set the scene for the post:

The film is set in the fictional Central European country of Zubrowka.

This has an Eastern European vibe, with the landscape, climate and clothing styles worn.

Fictional map posted on Reddit by Zachary Wilson

Here's a review from Little White Lies.

National Geographic has actually put together an activity page exploring the film with some ideas for activities. - it has some dead links unfortunately as it was created some time ago.

This is partly based on the work of Adam Stockhausen, who won an Academy Award for his art direction on the film and production design. Here he describes how they created the fictional hotel which sits at the heart of the movie, and the top of the funicular which includes some of the more memorable scenes.

Here is one of the missing articles.

Screen daily article here describes some of the research and reference materials they used. It's interesting that Pixar send their teams to locations for weeks to try to capture their atmosphere before an animated movie.

“It started at the obvious places like looking at historical hotels, tons and tons of them. We also looked at a ton of Photochrom postcards, of old railway hotels in Europe, in somewhat obscure places. They presented a view of Europe that wasn’t just ‘Eiffel Tower and Big Ben Europe’ but showed travelogues across the mountains and different areas that you’re not used to seeing every day.”

Anderson’s eclectic film knowledge inevitably influenced the look of the film. “We were looking at all kinds of stuff, from Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around The Corner to Max Ophüls’ The Earrings Of Madame De… and a number of musicals. We looked at the Bergman film The Silence and Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. We were looking at all sorts of different things,” Stockhausen says.

Saxony, in Germany, provided many of the key locations, including the film’s stunning centrepiece hotel, which is represented in both the 1960s and 1930s. “We built the ’60s lobby literally as a shell inside the ’30s lobby set and shot it in reverse order,” explains Stockhausen.

Back in 2014, Sarah Le explored some of the filming locations and referenced a website which existed for a while, from which there is a screengrab:

Most of the key scenes in The Grand Budapest Hotel were specifically filmed in the easternmost area in Germany, namely Görlitz.

Görlitz’s old world charm has made the town very popular with filmmakers. Within the last few years alone, a host of feature films were shot in Görlitz, including Inglourious Basterds, The Reader, The Book Thief, and The Monuments Men.

She describes the ue of an old department store building.

Interior sets for "The Grand Budapest Hotel" were filmed in an abandoned department store in Gorlitz (Germany) pic.twitter.com/jAHWbV7TFT

— Hitch (@bobyperu) November 9, 2014

The look of the film was also inspired by photochrom images of hotels from the Library of Congress's collection.

The stag on the peak was inspired by Deer Leap Lookout in Czechia. Local bakeries inspired Mendl's the bakery at the heart of the plot and love story, and a museum in Dresden stood in for the museum in the film.

The imagery of Caspar David Friedrich was also used as an influence, although the large painting here was created for the film:

A range of merchandise can be ordered (as with other Wes Anderson films) from the shop of The Society of The Crossed Keys.

Finally, here's a film on the making of the film:

And here's some information on the important picture that is part of the plot as well.