So in the spirit of end-of-term, dissertation-what-dissertation delight, the other day I went to the Arts Picturehouse just outside Downing and saw Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. The trailer itself is just brilliant, and the film lives up to that, an ornate and thrilling story-within-a-story-within-a-story which unravels against the mountainous backdrop of the imaginary former Republic of Zubrowska, and its premier (and very pink) Hotel, the Grand Budapest.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, though. It’s not the story I want to talk about (go and see it!) - it’s all that pink. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of Wes Anderson’s most visually stunning films, in an ouvre packed with them. My particular favourite image is there on the film poster - a doll’s-house version of the hotel, resembling confectionery in its incredible, multiple-tiered pinkness, all topped off with a big, arched sign giving its name. Set against the backdrop of dramatic mountains (complete with stag), it’s a mirage, surreal and brilliant - and it’s the work of graphic designer Annie Atkins, who created the poster, alongside every single graphic prop in the entire film.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, though. It’s not the story I want to talk about (go and see it!) - it’s all that pink. The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of Wes Anderson’s most visually stunning films, in an ouvre packed with them. My particular favourite image is there on the film poster - a doll’s-house version of the hotel, resembling confectionery in its incredible, multiple-tiered pinkness, all topped off with a big, arched sign giving its name. Set against the backdrop of dramatic mountains (complete with stag), it’s a mirage, surreal and brilliant - and it’s the work of graphic designer Annie Atkins, who created the poster, alongside every single graphic prop in the entire film.
This is a text-heavy film. There are signs, newspapers, death certificates, police reports, an entire box of letters making up a last will and testament - and hundreds of pink confectionery boxes, each bearing the legend ‘Mendl’s’, and according to Atkins the most coveted set steal for cast and crew. The boxes echo the pink of the hotel itself, another surreal, sugary interjection into a film which sets itself against the rumblings of war. One of the final scenes, in which ‘ZZ’ military personell have overrun the hotel, is particularly striking; the protagonists pose as Mendl’s delivery drivers in order to get inside, and the audience is treated to the sight of a black-armbanded ‘ZZ’ officer staring at a pile of cake boxes, his mouth smeared with pastel icing. The 'ZZ' font on the banners outside even becomes pink-tinted; evidently, even this fascist organisation is not immune to the powers of luxury and excess, which both Mendl's and the Grand Budapest come to represent.
Another wonderful moment (soon to be occupying the Pinterests, Tumblrs, and bedroom walls of everyone ever) is a point at which two major characters have just fallen from a ledge and come to a major realisation - landing in the back of the Mendl's delivery van, amid box after box of cake.
The fantasy perpetuated by both the hotel and the confectioner's is presented as unsustainable from the beginning, one of the two framing devices showing the Grand Budapest in its faded state under communist rule; and yet it is just this fleeting instability which makes the entire mirage so successful, the pastel colours heightened, one imagines, by the storyteller's nostalgia.
It's a wonderful film, the touches of tragicomedy just catching all that pink before it topples over into schmaltz - go and see it!
It's a wonderful film, the touches of tragicomedy just catching all that pink before it topples over into schmaltz - go and see it!
