Summary
A title card tells us that we are “On the farthest eastern boundary of the European continent: The former Republic of Zubrowka, once the seat of an Empire.” We see a young woman walk up to a statue of a man’s head, take a key out of her pocket, and hang it on a hook on the monument, dedicated to an author, the author of a book that the young woman is holding in her hand called The Grand Budapest Hotel. She turns over the book and looks at the author’s photo.
The scene shifts back in time and we see the author sitting at a desk. It is 1985. A light goes on and the author begins filming a monologue in which he talks about the writing process. All of a sudden he snaps at a young boy nearby, who is spraying him with a water gun. The boy runs from the room. “To him who has often told the tales of others, many tales will be told,” the author says, adding, “The incidents that follow were described to me exactly as I present them here and in a wholly unexpected way.”
We see a bridge between two large mountainous peaks as the author begins to narrate his story. The story takes place in a “spa town” called Nebelsbad, at the Grand Budapest Hotel, where the author spent some time to recover from a sickness. We see the hotel, a large pink building in the middle of a snowy mountain. The author’s voice changes and we see him as a younger man walking through the Grand Budapest Hotel in the warmer off-season. He describes the hotel as being populated almost entirely by quiet and solitary people at this time in the season. “Perhaps as a result of this general silence, I’d established a casual and bantering familiarity with the hotel’s concierge, a West-continental known only as Monsieur Jean, who struck one as being at once both lazy and really quite accommodating."
Monsieur Jean and the author stand at the concierge desk one evening, when suddenly the author notices an elderly gentlemen “with an exceptionally lively, intelligent face” in the lobby. What distinguished this older gentleman from the rest of the people, the author tells us, was not only that he was alone, but that he seemed lonely. The author asks Jean who the older man is, and Jean tells him that it’s Mr. Zero Moustafa, once the richest man in Zubrowka, and the owner of the hotel. Jean tells the author that Moustafa comes and stays at the hotel every once in a while. “I’ll tell you a secret: he takes only a single bed sleeping room without a bath in a rear corner of the top floor, and it’s smaller than the service elevator,” Jean whispers to the author.
The author tells us in voiceover that Moustafa owned “some of the most lavish castles and palazzos on the continent.” Suddenly a man begins choking in the lobby and Jean has to go deal with it, while the author goes to his room. He tells us that thoughts of Moustafa occupied him all evening and into the following morning. We see the author sitting in a thermal bath at the spa, when suddenly he hears Moustafa say, “I admire your work.” Moustafa is in a bath nearby and knows that Monsieur Jean and the author were talking about him.
The author asks Moustafa how he bought the hotel, to which Moustafa replies, “I didn’t.” Moustafa invites the author to dinner, with the intention of telling him how he came into possession of the Grand Budapest Hotel. The scene shifts and we see Moustafa and the author dining in the ballroom of the Grand Budapest. Moustafa orders a lavish meal of ducks, rabbit, salad, and drinks.
The men drink and Moustafa begins his story. A title card shows us that Moustafa’s story begins with the original concierge of the hotel, M. Gustave. It is 1932. M. Gustave goes to answer the door of a hotel room, and instructs a flood of hotel employees to bring in a table and other items. We then see M. Gustave and an older woman sitting at the table eating breakfast. “I’m not leaving,” the woman tells M. Gustave. “I fear this may be the last time we ever see each other,” she continues. She then asks him to come with her, but he tells her he cannot, before noticing the horrifying color of her nail polish, telling her, “I am physically repulsed!”
The scene shifts and we see Gustave and the old woman in the elevator, along with the elevator boy and the lobby boy. Gustave begins reciting a poem as they ride the elevator. As the older woman leaves the elevator to get in a car, she hands Gustave a coin and asks him to light a candle in a church nearby. They each say “I love you,” and the old woman is driven away abruptly.
As the car drives away, Gustave turns to the lobby boy and brags about having earned the loyalty of the old woman. He then gives the lobby boy some money to go light the candle in the chapel as the old woman asked. Before the lobby boy leaves, Gustave asks him who he is. “I’m Zero, sir, the new lobby boy.” Gustave asks Zero who hired him, and he tells him that Mr. Mosher did. Gustave calls up to Mr. Mosher, who pops his head out of an overhead window, and confirms that Zero is an employee of the hotel. Gustave then takes Zero aside to officially interview him. They walk through the hotel lobby and Gustave questions Zero about his experience, unimpressed with what he hears. Zero tells him he has no family as they get into an elevator.
“Why do you want to be a lobby boy?” Gustave asks him, and Zero replies, “Well, who wouldn’t at the Grand Budapest, sir? It’s an institution.” That is exactly the answer Gustave wants to hear, and he leads him into a hotel room where an envelope is waiting for him with money in it.
Gustave officially hires Zero, and we see him walking through the lobby. Gustave says to Zero, “A lobby boy is completely invisible yet always in sight. A lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy anticipates the client’s needs before the needs are needed. A lobby boy is, above all, discrete to a fault. Our guests know their deepest secrets—some of which are, frankly, rather unseemly—will go with us to our graves.” Gustave then goes into a guest’s room and dismisses Zero. Zero realizes that many of the guests at the hotel came there for Gustave, implying that Gustave carried on sexual relationships with the guests. “The requirements were always the same,” Moustafa narrates, referring to Gustave’s sexual conquests: “They had to be rich, old, insecure, vain, superficial, blond, needy…”
We see Zero washing his face getting ready for work, drawing on a thin mustache. We then see him eating dinner with the other hotel workers as Gustave makes a speech about the service industry. “The identity of the owner of the hotel was unknown to all of us,” Moustafa narrates, and we see a car drive up in front of the hotel. The owner’s emissary, Deputy Kovacs, emerges from the car, to give messages from the owner and meet with Gustave.
“This was also when I met Agatha, but we won’t discuss that,” Moustafa narrates. We see Agatha baking at a local bakery, Mendl’s, covered in flour. We then see her riding her bicycle through the town.
Analysis
From the start of the film, Wes Anderson employs his singular visual style to tell this uncanny fable. Anderson is known for placing many of his focal objects in the center of the frame in his shots, and this is true at the very first moment of the film. We see a woman walking alongside a brick wall. The wall’s door is positioned directly at the center. This framing gives the story a whimsical flair, a symmetry that is unusual and visually surprising. Adding to the whimsy is the art direction. While the film is a period piece and all of the details are period specific, the costumes, props, and set design seems as though it has become animated from an illustration in a storybook. There is a highly theatrical and aestheticized style to the art direction of the film that helps to communicate to the viewer that this is a slightly unbelievable and whimsical story.
Our central narrator and protagonist, at first, seems to be the author, an older gentleman who invites us into the story of the Grand Budapest Hotel by way of a book he has written about it. As he sits at his desk, he tells the viewer about his philosophy of writing. Basically, he believes that the writer must not go seeking inspiration and material, because life delivers material directly to the writer without his having to try. This proves to be as much a philosophy of life as a philosophy of writing. The author’s notion that fiction unfurls without the author needing to seek it out becomes true of the events of the film itself, as more and more layers of plot and time begin to peel back.
Indeed, the plot unfurls in various ways. First, we travel back in time to when the author was a young man and first visited the Grand Budapest Hotel. He lives a quiet life at the hotel until he comes into contact with the hotel’s owner, Zero Moustafa, a mysterious gentleman who, lo and behold, seems to materialize in his life unbidden and deliver him the compelling account at the center of the story. Over dinner, Moustafa tells the author about his early days as a lobby boy at the hotel, and we are yet again transported back in time. The film’s relationship to time and event is loosely held, and different moments blend into one another and lead to new revelations and flashbacks.
While time jumps around quite a lot, the Grand Budapest Hotel remains constant. We see it at various points, a large and ornate building in the middle of a snowy mountain, pink and ornamental, almost like a decadent wedding cake. It is a romantic vision, a kind of communal fantasy, equipped with fine food, spas, and other fineries. Guests come and go, but the hotel itself remains the same, a large ship ripe for intrigues and private encounters. Gustave, the alarmingly competent concierge who hires Zero, is behind both its efficiency as an institution and its various intrigues; indeed, he is sleeping with many of the elderly female guests, while at the same time making sure everything is in top order. His promiscuity seems linked to his competency as a concierge, almost as though his ability to serve the guests sexually is interchangeable with his hospitality.
Just as the author attests, material and events seem to present themselves without anyone having to do anything at all. The sense of forward momentum and brisk pace are only heightened by the theatricality of the settings, the scenes, and the performances. People walk quickly down halls, giving and taking orders; doors lead to new and meticulously designed spaces; and new characters emerge from cars and rooms without fail. At one point, Gustave seeks to speak to Mr. Mosher about Zero’s employment and he simply calls Mr. Mosher’s name. Without skipping a beat, Mother emerges from an overhead window, as though he has been intently waiting for this exact moment. This hastiness and timing add to the whimsical and unrealistic tone of the film. We are not exactly in reality, but in a heightened fictive universe, a pop-up book, or a cuckoo clock.
