I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.
This is Beastly Reviews, where I write about films that made me feel something.
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I love Wes Anderson. His films are weird and wonderful, and his latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is no exception. Anderson's most visually striking film to date, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a jewellery box of interlaced stories led by Ralph Fiennes in the role of M. Gustave, the lonely, well-mannered, melodramatic concierge of an elegant mountainside resort in the fictional alpine state of Zubrowka.
Gustave is a flamboyant, queer-coded (if not explicitly queer) master of the house who undertakes a young protege, Zero (Tony Revolori) and instructs him on the ins and outs of satisfying a hotel guest's every need—a duty Gustave wields with utmost seriousness.
This may also be Anderson's most violent film. Someone's fingers get sliced off, a cat is thrown out a window, there's a severed head, and various people get knifed and shot at. When a wealthy hotel guest mysteriously dies, Zero and M. Gustave embark on an adventure of murder and mystery—the film becomes a charming (and unexpectedly tense) whodunit, a game of cat and mouse with a genuinely scary villain played by Willem Defoe.
But more than a story, it feels, most of all, like a cross-genre love letter to old movies, with scenes and sequences that nod to various classic film motifs. It’s a caper and a buddy movie, a mystery and a comedy—a little slapstick, a little creepy. One gets the sense with every lovely frame that the film is self-aware, that it’s trying (successfully) to delight in the filmmaking process, and it’s a delight to watch.
Zubrowka, a European alpine state, is experiencing some unspecified political unrest for most of the film that seems to mirror Nazi Germany or, at least, the Weimar Republic. M. Gustave is a fabulous queen ("I go to bed with all my friends") who gets framed for the murder of a rich dowager before a chase for a priceless stolen painting ensues. The cast features Anderson's signature ensemble, including Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and, of course, Bill Murray. Willem Defoe nails the part of the hitman with little more than a grimace and cold stare.
In its staging and costuming, the film feels antique—a delicately textured world in which the backdrop of war contrasts with the warmth and heart that keeps it afloat (the script is flawless). Its story-with-a-story-within-a-story format seems to comment on the idea of history as a tale told by conquerors, often overlooking the experiences of immigrants and refugees, queer individuals, and the imprisoned; its two male leads embody all the above. Do they find justice? Do they win?
Go watch it and find out. Five stars.
Love, Beastly