What is the message of The Grand Budapest Hotel?

What does the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel want to convey, and what does this movie have to do with Zweig?

mainly answer the first question, with a little spoiler. About the relationship between this film and Zweig, please move on. What is the creative background of The Grand Budapest Hotel? What works are similar to it?

This film is about the lost European civilization. Zweig once had a book called Yesterday's World, which was about the elegant Europe that was once gone forever. The film's protagonist, Mr. Gustav, is the representative and concentrated embodiment of this civilization. However, it is interesting that his identity is only a hotel concierge, or, to put it bluntly, a waiter. He is a thorough proletariat. Before inheriting/stealing the famous painting, all his property was "a set of combs on the back of ivory and a collection of romantic poems". However, his cultivation and knowledge are boundless, which is in sharp contrast to the vulgar and unwritten image of the proletariat, and this is also the main joke of the film. We saw that he often recited poems regardless of time and place, and he didn't forget to wear perfume on his way to escape. When the police caught up with him, they had to pay tribute to the dead housekeeper in silence. Such behavior is naturally ridiculous, but the audience will feel admiration after laughing, because he not only talks about "culture" and "humanity", but also practices it. On the other hand, Dmitri, the villain in the film, although of noble descent, looks obscene, greedy and violent, likes to open his mouth and swear, and always interrupts others. Dmitri was born a nobleman but behaved savagely, while Mr Gustav was born from a humble background, but he showed aristocratic chivalry everywhere. The internal contrast between the righteous and the wicked constitutes the ironic tension of the whole film.

This identity/behavior contrast is not only reflected in Mr. Gustav, but also expressed in zero and Agatha, but not much. These two people also belong to the bottom of society. Agatha is an apprentice in a bakery, and zero is even lower. She is a foreign refugee. Their righteous actions are more out of a simple view of good and evil. As Mr. Gustav said, Agatha's greatest advantage is innocence. Of course, in the second half of the film, influenced by Mr. Gustav, the two of them began to quote classics, which can be understood as the enlightenment of old Europe to a new generation.

This film adopts a nested narrative structure. Reading Girl —— Old Writer's Self-report —— Young Writer and Old zero Meet —— The Adventure of Young zero and Mr. Gustav. I think we can understand the concept of civilization inheritance as to why the director should use such a structure. The flame of European civilization is passed from Mr Gustav to zero, from zero to the writer, and then from the writer to the little girl (and us). The grand hotel is dead, but civilization will not die, and it will live on in our memory. This is in line with the bright and optimistic tone of the film.

In a word, I think movies convey the idea that whether a person is civilized does not lie in class, descent or nationality, but in whether he has a humanistic concept, a love for art and the courage to act for it. Just like Zweig, he died for his belief in European civilization. Gustav's role is shaped by referring to Zweig's image to a great extent, and he finally died under the fascist gun to protect zero. Zero's Arab national setting, I think, also echoes Zweig's Jewish identity. As foreigners, they are extremely supportive of European culture. On the other hand, those Aryans who claim to be pure-bred are destroying their own civilization. It is ironic to think about it. Now nearly a century has passed, and the golden age that belonged to Europe is gone forever. Wes Anderson's childlike comedy is a sad but hopeful way to write an elegy of old Europe.

It's not easy to make an elegy into a comedy. Laughing with tears means that you should not only make the audience laugh, but also inspire them to think.

Wes Andersen did it.

"The The Grand Budapest Hotel" is different from the director's previous works: he is good at modern themes, and he first devoted himself to the past time on the eve of World War II; The theme of the work has also shifted from individual problems, family problems or social problems to reminiscence of an era; This should also be the first time in his works that murder is the main story line. How to make a murder into a comedy, and how to integrate the nostalgia of the lost times into the story and convey it to the audience through the actor's performance in a silent way should be the biggest challenge Anderson faces. After all, the grandeur of the theme and the narrowing of the narrative space have formed a natural conflict. In the fast-paced narrative defined by the murder case, Anderson's consistent loose narrative rhythm in his previous films is no longer feasible. Although Anderson still uses his usual means of group presentation in large quantities, the plot of the whole film has developed like mercury, and the transition is clean and neat, without any sense of procrastination in the past. The narrative space is limited by rhythm, so it must stick to the main line, which also means that the methods available for Anderson to respond to the theme are drastically reduced. It is extremely difficult to condense the time of an era and show it in groups, let alone in a murder case.

Anderson's handling method is very ingenious. He combines the character characteristics with the narrative level, and through the transformation of the times and the transmission of the character characteristics, he has realized the connection between the two eras at that time and today. If we want to discuss this contradiction in depth, we should first sort out the story simply. Of course, if you haven't seen the film yet, it's better to spend an hour and a half watching it before continuing the discussion.

The whole work is divided into four narrative layers according to different time points. According to the different main characters in each narrative layer, we name it as reader layer, author layer, narrator layer and protagonist layer.

The film begins at the reader's level (now, the Author has passed away). A girl comes to the bust of the author, opens a novel called The Grand Budapest Hotel and starts reading. As soon as the camera turns, it comes to the author's layer (the author's twilight years), and the author of this book is facing the camera and telling the origin of this story; The camera turns again and comes to the narrator layer (the author is young; In the twilight of Zero, this fashionable young author came to the top of the hill in this declining The Grand Budapest Hotel, and accidentally met the owner of this restaurant, Zero Moustafa. Mr. Zero was familiar with the author's works and loved him, so he invited him to dinner. During the dinner, he told the author a story.

as the story unfolds, we enter the leading role (zero youth), at this time, zero is a newly recruited doorman in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Mr. Gustave H., the concierge of the hotel, regards him as his disciple and strictly disciplines him. The murder also happened at this time. Madame D, who Mr. Gustav once served, died under unclear circumstances. Mr. Gustav went to her house with change, but was unexpectedly declared by Ms. D's lawyer to inherit the most valuable painting "Boy with Apple" in all her possessions. After sneaking the painting back to the hotel, the police arrested Gustav for murder. After painstaking efforts, Gustav successfully escaped from prison, and with the help of his peers and his girlfriend in the bakery, he pursued the clue of Ms. D's housekeeper, defeated the killer who followed, and finally found Ms. D's second will in the painting, proving her innocence. However, the story didn't end there. With the coming of the war, Gustav was brutally shot by the army to protect Zero during a trip. Zero's girlfriend also died two years after marriage because of a minor illness that is now common and incurable at that time.

The narrative of the protagonist layer ends here, and the perspective of the film moves to the narrator layer and the author layer step by step, and finally returns to the reader layer, ending with the female reader sitting on the bench next to the author's bust and reading the novel The Grand Budapest Hotel. In terms of time allocation, most of the whole film belongs to the story layer, and a small part belongs to the narrator layer, while there are only two or three shots in the author layer and the reader layer. If we separate the narrative layer and the reader layer, it is actually a very complete and excellent film. Then, what is the significance of Anderson's efforts to superimpose the author layer and the reader layer?

The two lines just after the last shot: "Inspired by Stefan Zweig's works." (inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig)

Anderson once said that he consulted (or, in his original words, Stolen) two works of Zweig, the novel Beware of Pity and his posthumous work The Post-Office Girl. Both the author and Gustav in the film have the shadow of Zweig, but they represent different aspects of Zweig respectively. The role of the author undoubtedly represents Zweig's achievements at the writer level, which can be seen from the inscription "In Memory of Our National Treasure" under the bust of the author in the film; Gustav embodies Zweig's personality, beliefs and the tragedy of his life.

The superposition of the author's layer and the reader's layer has multiple effects: firstly, with the addition of these two layers, the time latitude of the film has increased from two to four, and behind it, the personality characteristics of Gustav, the protagonist, have been passed down from the eve of World War II to the present; Secondly, Gustav and the author's personality are superimposed, which forms the overall inheritance of the psychological state of Europe before World War II. By watching this psychological state from the author's level and the reader's level, the tragic atmosphere from the end of the film is pulled away in time and space, which causes the viewers to think more objectively about this state. Finally, it is to realize the contrast between the psychological state produced by this superposition and our own living state in retrospect, and to trigger our reflection on the world.

The key to convey all these thoughts depends on a character who bears all the meaning of the film: Mr. Gustav.

# The creed that runs through Mr. Gustav's life should be the word "elegance and propriety", and the fierce conflict between his magical experience from being imprisoned to vindicating his wrongs has created the most fundamental comedy element in this character. Gustav, who has been a concierge all the way from a doorman, not only attaches great importance to traditional European upper-class etiquette, but also has very high requirements for his own life. He loves peace and never takes the initiative to have physical conflicts with anyone; Love poetry and art, even if I am in prison, I don't forget to attach my long poems to the letters to hotel staff, and I know how to appreciate the prison boss's escape route map from the perspective of art; Very compassionate, and extremely caring and considerate for those European upper-class family women who are old and faded; Extremely brave, he stood up twice for the safety of this war-torn refugee, and finally died generously.

Mr. Gustav's elegance is appropriate, just like The Grand Budapest Hotel's heyday. Under the background of Europe in peacetime before World War II, he is complacent. He runs this grand hotel with the upper class as its main customers, and tries his best to serve his customers. His behavior and way of thinking complement his work. However, when the dark clouds of war came, the behavior in peacetime became out of date. The film does not exaggerate the influence of war on the whole society from the macro level, just as Mr. Gustav is chosen to represent the traditional European upper-class tradition. The spokesman of war in this film is the decline of Ms. D's family and the murder itself.

There is a detail worth noting in the film: the contents of Ms. D's second will are not shown to the audience, and how Mr. Gustav got out of trouble and who died of Ms. D are not directly explained (the film does suggest that the killer J.G.Jopling played by willem dafoe has a bottle containing the highly toxic Strychnine on his desk). In fact, this may be understood as follows: it doesn't matter who killed Ms. D. What matters is that the person representing her family order was murdered by her family. If this incident is mapped to Europe at that time, it is one of the countries that made up Europe and subverted the peace and order of the whole Europe by means of war (murder). Through this murder case, Anderson condensed the whole situation in Europe into this small murder case, and Mr. Gustav, who represents the upper class and traditional order, became the scapegoat of the killer. In the face of the murder case, he loved peace and art and had almost no ability to fight. With a little resistance, he was trapped in prison and could only be slaughtered.

Mr. Gustav's stubborn adherence to traditional rules, the speed of speaking like a machine gun, and the calm tone of keeping a straight face all the time have formed a striking dislocation with the danger faced by this character in the whole process of escaping from prison, pursuing clues and finally solving the case, which is so intense that people can't help laughing. Although his elegance and order won him the help of his cellmates, peers and Ms. D's housekeeper, they were not enough to wash away his grievances.

What can save him is not the client police system of the upper class, but two young people from the lower class: Zero Sum and his girlfriend, Agatha, a bakery girl played by Saoirse Ronan.

# Zero

As Mr. Zero said when answering the author's question at the end of the film: "I kept this hotel, not to commemorate him (Mr. Gustav), but for Agatha. We had a wonderful time here, although it was short." The difference between Zero and Gustav can be seen from their acting styles: for Gustav, the most important thing in life is his work and the order behind it. Even in the process of escape, he just got out of trouble and was furious because he didn't bring his usual perfume. For zero, the most important thing is not order. In Ms. D's home, it is zero to urge Mr. Gustav to take the painting by action. It is also zero to find a way to pass the escape tool with snacks; In the face of Joplin's pursuit, when it is desperate, it is still zero to bravely push the killer off the cliff. Although the film mainly depicts Mr. Gustav's beliefs that are out of keeping with the times, it is not Gustav who really pushes the plot forward and breaks through the predicament step by step, but the taciturn and unattractive teenager.

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