What is the movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" trying to convey?

What is the movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" trying to convey, and how is the movie related to Zweig?

The main answer to the first question contains a trace of spoilers. For more on the relationship between this movie and Zweig please move to What is the context of The Grand Budapest Hotel? What are some works with similar themes to it?

The film is about the lost civilization of Europe, which Zweig wrote a book called "The World of Yesterday" about the elegant Europe that was once, and never will be again, and Monsieur Gustave, the protagonist of the film, is the embodiment and focus of that civilization. Interestingly, however, he is only a hotel concierge, or, to put it bluntly, a bellhop. He is a complete proletarian, with only "a set of ivory-backed combs and a collection of romantic poems" as his only possessions before inheriting/stealing the painting, yet he is so cultivated and educated that he is in stark contrast to the crass and uncultured image of the proletariat, which is the main punchline of the movie. We see him reciting poetry at all hours of the day and night, spraying himself with perfume on the way to escape, and paying silent tribute to his dead butler when the police catch up with him. Such behavior is naturally laughable, but the audience will also have a sense of admiration after laughing, because he does not just put "culture" and "humanity" on his lips, but also to practice it. On the other hand, the villain of the film, Dmitri, although of noble blood, has a lewd look, is greedy and violent, and likes to swear and interrupt others, while Dmitri, who was born an aristocrat, behaves savagely, and Monsieur Gustave, who was born of a lowly family, embodies the chivalry of the nobility, and the intrinsic difference between good and evil constitutes the ironic tension of the whole film.

This identity/behavior contrast is not only reflected in Monsieur Gustave, but also expressed in ZERO and Agatha, but not much. These two also belong to the bottom of the social ladder; Agatha is a bakery apprentice, and ZERO is even lower, a foreign refugee. Both of their righteous actions are motivated more by a simple view of good and evil, and as Monsieur Gustave says, Agatha's greatest virtue is her innocence. In the second half of the film, of course, the two men, influenced by Monsieur Gustave, begin to speak in a quoted, articulate way that can be interpreted as the indoctrination of a new generation in old Europe.

The movie has a nested narrative structure. The girl who reads - the older writer's self-reporting - the young writer's encounter with the older ZERO - the adventures of the teenage ZERO and Monsieur Gustave. For why the director used such a structure, I think one can understand an idea of civilization transmission. The fire of European civilization is passed from Monsieur Gustave to ZERO, from ZERO to the writer, and from the writer to the little girl (and to us). The Grand Hotel is dead, but civilization doesn't die, it is alive and well in our memories, and such a treatment is in line with the bright and optimistic tone of the movie.

All in all, I think the movie conveys the idea that whether a person is civilized or not does not depend on class, lineage, or ethnicity, but on whether there is the concept of humanity, the love of art, and the courage to act on it in one's heart. Just like Zweig, who was willing to be martyred for the belief of European civilization in his heart. Gustav's characterization is heavily based on Zweig's, and he dies under fascist fire to protect Zero, whose Arab ethnicity, I think, echoes Zweig's Jewish identity. It's ironic to think that the two men, as Gentiles, were incredibly embracing of European culture, as opposed to the self-proclaimed purebred Aryans who were destroying their own civilization. Now that nearly a century has passed and that golden age of Europe is gone, Wes Anderson's boyhood comedy is a sort of elegy for old Europe in a sentimental but hopeful way.

It's not easy to turn an elegy into a comedy, and laughing through the tears means you not only have to make the audience laugh, but also inspire them to think.

Wes Andersen has done just that.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a departure from the director's previous work in a number of ways: for the first time in his career, he has taken on a modern subject that is in the past, on the eve of World War II; the subject matter has shifted from the individual, the family or the community to the reminiscence of an era; and for the first time he has directed a work with a murder mystery as the main story line. murder case as the main story line. How to turn a murder case into a comedy, and how to incorporate the memorialization of a lost era into the story, and pass it on to the audience through the performances of the actors in a silent way, should be the biggest challenge facing Anderson. After all, the grandeur of the theme and the narrowing of the narrative space have formed a natural conflict. In the fast-paced narrative limited by the murder case, the loose narrative rhythm consistent in Anderson's previous films is no longer feasible. Although Anderson still makes extensive use of his usual means of displaying group phases, but only up to the point, the plot development of the entire movie is like mercury leaking out of the ground, with a clean and sharp beginning and end, and without any sense of dragging in the past. Narrative space is limited by pacing and the need to stick to the main storyline, which means that the number of ways in which Anderson can respond to his themes is drastically reduced. It's incredibly difficult to condense an era and present it in clusters, let alone move through a murder case.

Anderson handles this in an unusually clever way, combining character traits with narrative layers, and by shifting with the times and passing on character traits, he achieves a bridging of the two eras, then and now. To discuss this contradiction in depth, let's start with a brief rundown of the story. Of course, if you haven't enjoyed the movie yet, why not spend an hour and a half watching it first and then come back to continue the discussion?

The entire work is divided into four narrative layers according to the point in time, and according to the main characters in each layer, we name them the reader's layer, the author's layer, the narrator's layer, and the protagonist's layer.

The movie begins on the reader's level (now that the author has passed away), where a girl comes to the bust of the author, opens a novel called The Grand Budapest Hotel, and begins to read it; the camera pans to the author's level (the author's twilight years), where the author of the book is looking at the camera to tell the story's origin; and the camera pans to the narrator's level (the author's youth; the twilight years of Zero); the camera pans to the narrator's level (the author's youth; the twilight years of Zero); and the narrator's level (the author's young man). Zero) twilight), at this time is still young, the author came to the top of the hill this has been the decline of the Grand Budapest Hotel, accidentally met the owner of the hotel, Zero Moustafa (Zero Moustafa), Mr. Zero familiar with and love the author's work, so he asked him to **** dinner, during the meeting, to the author told a story.

As the story unfolds, we enter the protagonist layer (Zero Youth), at this time Zero is a newly recruited porter at the Grand Budapest Hotel, the hotel's concierge, Mr. Gustave (Gustave H.), as his own protégé, to his strict discipline. Murder also occurs at this time. Madame D., a woman Monsieur Gustave used to serve, dies under unclear circumstances. Monsieur Gustave goes to her home with a zero, but is accidentally declared by Madame D.'s lawyer to have inherited one of the most valuable paintings in her entire family fortune, Boy with Apple. Gustave for murder. After a thousand attempts, Gustave breaks out of prison and, with the assistance of his peers, Zero, and Zero's bakery girlfriend, pursues the clues of Ms. D's housekeeper, defeats the assassin on his tail, and ultimately proves his innocence by finding Ms. D's second will in the painting. The story doesn't end there, however, as war descends and Gustav is brutally gunned down by the army during a trip to protect Zero; Zero's girlfriend also passes away two years after their marriage due to a minor, now-unusual-petite-unsalvageable illness.

The protagonist layer of the narrative ends here, and the film's perspective moves step by step to the narrator layer, the author layer, and finally back to the reader layer, ending with a shot of a female reader sitting on a bench next to the author's bust, reading the novel The Grand Budapest Hotel. In terms of time allocation, most of the movie belongs to the storytelling layer, a small portion belongs to the narrator layer, and there are only two or three shots of the author layer and the reader layer. What is the point of Anderson going to the trouble of overlaying the authorial and readerial layers, when the narrative and readerial layers, if we take them out separately, are already a very complete and excellent movie?

It's in those two lines at the end of the last shot, "Inspired by the work of Stefan Zweig." (Inspired by the Writings of STEFAN ZWEIG)

Anderson has said that he referenced (or, in his exact words, stole (Stolen)) two of Zweig's works in creating the film, the full-length novel Beware of Pity, and the posthumously published Metamorphosis of Intoxication ( The Post-Office Girl). The characters of the author and Gustav are both Zweigian, but they represent different sides of Zweig. The character of the author undoubtedly represents Zweig's achievements as a writer, which can be seen in the inscription "In Memory of Our National Treasure" under the author's bust in the film, while Mr. Gustav's character is a reflection of Zweig's character, his beliefs and the tragedy of his life.

The superposition of the author's layer and the reader's layer has multiple effects: firstly, through the addition of these two layers, the film's time latitude increases from two to four, and behind it is the inheritance of the protagonist Gustav's personality traits through the author's novel, which has been extended from the eve of World War II to the present day; secondly, the superimposition of Gustav's personality and the author's personality creates the overall inheritance of the psychological state of Europe before World War II, through the author's layer and the reader's layer. Secondly, the superposition of Gustave and the author's personality forms a whole psychological state of pre-World War II Europe, and through the author's level and the reader's level of observation of this psychological state, the tragic atmosphere at the end of the film is extracted from the air in time and space, which triggers the viewer to think about this state more objectively; lastly, it is to realize the contrast between this superposition of the psychological state and the state of our own lives in remembrance, and to trigger our reflections on this world.

And the key to conveying all of this is a character who carries all of the film's meaning: Monsieur Gustave.

# Mr. Gustave

In the context of Anderson's past films, Mr. Gustave is a very conventional character, not as neurotic and quirky as the old man and the young man in "Rushmore" or the gang of chasers in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". ), nor the crazy crew chasing jaguar sharks in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," nor the quirky skills of the three gents in "Crossing Darjeeling" (The Darjeeling Limited). The credo that runs through Monsieur Gustave's life should be the word "elegance", and the intense conflict between the magic of his imprisonment and his rehabilitation creates the fundamental comedic element in this character. Gustave, who has worked his way up from porter to concierge, not only values traditional European high society etiquette, but also has very high standards for his own life. He loves peace and has never initiated a physical conflict with anyone; he loves poetry and art, and even in prison, he never forgets to enclose his own long poems in his letters to the hotel staff, and he knows how to appreciate the roadmap of the prison boss's escape from the perspective of fine art; he is extremely sympathetic, and pays great attention to and understands the old and faded women of the European upper-class families; he is extremely brave, and twice stands up for the safety and well-being of this war-ravaged refugee, and ultimately, for the sake of his own safety and security. The first time I saw this, I was so impressed with the way I was treated and the way I felt about it.

Mr. Gustave's elegance, like that of the Grand Budapest Hotel in its heyday, was at home in the context of peacetime Europe before World War II. He ran the hotel, which was run mainly by the upper crust, and served his clientele to the best of his ability, behaving and thinking in a way that complemented his work. But as the clouds of war descend, the peacetime behavior becomes anachronistic. The film doesn't dwell on the impact of the war on society as a whole, and just as Monsieur Gustave was chosen to represent the traditional European upper-class tradition, the war is represented in this film by the decline of Ms. D's family and by the murder itself.

One detail worth noting is that the contents of Ms. D's second will are not shown to the audience, and there is no direct indication of how Monsieur Gustave got out of the trap, or who killed Ms. D. (The film does hint at the fact that Willem Dafoe's assassin, J.G. Jopling, has a table with the highly poisonous Strychnine on it, and that he is not the only one in the film. Strychnine). In fact, it is possible to read this as follows: it does not matter who killed Mrs. D., but that a figure representing the order of the family was murdered by the family. If this event is mapped to Europe at the time, it is one of the countries that make up Europe that subverts the peace and order of the whole of Europe by means of war (murder). Through this murder, Anderson condenses the situation of the whole Europe into this small murder, and Mr. Gustave, who represents the upper class and traditional order, becomes the scapegoat of the killer. In the face of the murder, the peace-loving and art-loving man is almost incapable of struggling, and when he puts up a little resistance, he will be put in jail and can only be slaughtered by others.

Mr. Gustave's stubborn adherence to traditional rules, his machine-gun pace of speech and his placid tone of voice, which is always strained to keep up appearances, create a stark mismatch with the perilous situation that the character faces in the tense, intense, breathless process of escaping from prison, pursuing clues and ultimately solving the case, and bring about a clever comedic effect that will make you laugh. While his grace and order earn him the assistance of his cellmates, his peers, and Ms. D's housekeeper, they are not enough to clear his name.

It's not the upper-class apparatchik police system that can save him, it's two young people from the bottom rung of the social ladder: Zero and his girlfriend, Agatha, a bakery girl played by Saoirse Ronan.

# Zero

As Mr. Zero says at the end of the film, in response to a question from the writer, "I keep this hotel, not in memory of him [Monsieur Gustave], but for Agatha, and we had a wonderful, albeit brief, time here." The difference between Zero and Monsieur Gustave can be seen in the way both men act: for Gustave, the most important thing in life is his work, and the order behind it. Even during his escape, having just gotten out of trouble, he would be furious that Zero had not brought his usual perfume. For Zero, it is not the order that matters most. It is Zero who acts to urge Monsieur Gustave to take the paintings away from Ms. D's home; it is Zero who figures out a way to pass the tools of the prison break with a snack; and it is still Zero who bravely pushes the assassin off the cliff when faced with the Joplin chase and already in a desperate situation. Although the film mainly depicts Mr. Gustave's beliefs that are out of step with the times, it is not Gustave who really drives the plot and breaks through the dilemmas step by step, but the quiet and unassuming teenager, Zero.

Zero's village was destroyed in the war, and he lost his family and was displaced to the Grand Budapest Hotel. Although Monsieur Gustave teaches him well, he represents a commoner who does not follow the ways of Monsieur Gustave, who also started out as a doorman. If we correspond to the metaphorical system we established earlier, Zero represents the commoner class, which is the counterpart of the upper class. What best characterizes the antagonism between these two classes is their attitudes towards relationships: although Gustave serves a large number of elderly women from the upper class, this is only part of his job, to make his customers happy; whereas Zero, who jumps off the balcony to save Agatha despite the danger he faces in the chase for the paintings, does not value the paintings but Agatha's life the most. Extending this to the brutal plot against him by members of Ms. D's family, we can see the biggest flaw in traditional European high society while holding a host of Monsieur Gustave's virtues: a disregard for human feelings.

The Grand Budapest's prosperity stems from the presence of its upper-class female clientele, most of whom in turn come for Monsieur Gustave's services. As Gustav said in a sermon to his staff, "Rudeness comes from fear, people are afraid they won't get what they want, and most obnoxious people really just need to be loved, and then they bloom like flowers." The Grand Budapest Hotel's existence stems from its mending of the flaws of high society. From there, the decline of the Grand Hotel is apropos when war breaks out and the upper class is completely destroyed.

The death of Gustave, who was at the end of the upper class, but who jumped into it through inheritance, signaled the final breakdown of the upper class order. Zero's inheritance of the Grand Hotel, on the other hand, hints at the future direction of society, which is shifting from an order lacking in humanity to an individual facing humanity. Zero continues to run the Grand Hotel, not out of remembrance of the past order, but out of remembrance of his own wife. Although the Grand Hotel is gradually falling into disrepair and its splendor is no longer there, it is no longer the same institution that once served the flaws of the upper class, but instead is warmed by Zero's nostalgia for Agatha.

The story comes to a close, but it is not until the end that Anderson really uses Zero's words to raise the question that the movie asks us to think about: "his world". To understand Gustav's world, you must understand the world of his prototype, Zweig.

# Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 to a Jewish family in the Austrian capital, Vienna, and believed in Internationalism and Europeanism. He believed in "Internationalism" (Internationalism) and "Europeanism" (Europeanism / advocating the political and economic union of European countries). In contrast to Gustav's lifelong opposition to violence, Zweig was anti-war throughout his life, and even at the beginning of World War I, Zweig, who was highly patriotic, refused to join the military and remained a pacifist throughout his life and openly supported the idea of a united Europe.

In 1934, with Adolf Hitler (Adolf Hitler) in power in Germany, Zweig left Austria, all the way around, living in the United Kingdom and ultimately across the ocean, in the United States, New York, after living for a period of time, settled in 1940 in southeastern Brazil, a city called Petrópolis (Petrópolis). In 1942, as the war situation worsened, Zweig, who was y worried about totalitarianism, dictatorship, and fascism, ended his life with his wife. This is a slightly different form than the film's ending, in which Gustav ultimately fights the brutal army and is eventually shot, but the essence is the same.

Zweig was once the world's most translated author, becoming famous for his novels, most notably Letter from an Unknown Woman, but the controversy surrounding his work has always been constant, with German poet Michael Hofmann commenting: "Zweig always reads like a forgery." ("Zweig just tastes fake."). Critical appraisal of his work is highly polarized, with those who praise his work finding it humanistic, simple, and effective style, and those who despise it finding it poor, lightweight, and superficial. If we compare these words to Monsieur Gustave, we find a striking match. Monsieur Gustave's anachronisms, the triviality of his life, the superficiality of his understanding of relationships, and even the humanity he reveals when he saves Zero, all mirror Zweig's literary style. And the miniature artificial landscapes deliberately interspersed at the beginning and middle of the movie are a direct counterpart to that word in Hoffman's commentary: "forgery."

When you look at Wes Anderson's comments about borrowing from Zweig, it's clear that he's being a bit self-effacing. The movie's homage to Zweig is not based on borrowing from his novel's bridge stance, but on a deep understanding of his life and work. The Grand Budapest Hotel isn't just a Zweigian movie, it's a biopic that metaphorically portrays Zweig's life.

# Epilogue

Wes Anderson's films are not many in number, but each one is extremely unique in style and has a wide range of subjects. The last film, the children's movie Moonrise Kingdom, reflected the hypocrisy of the adult world through the story of two teenagers who are in search of love; the adventure-style Life on the Water, which was a direct reference to the relationship between father and son; the campus-style Life on the Water, which was a direct reference to the relationship between father and son; and the school style Life on the Water. The adventure-style "Life in the Water" is a direct reference to the father-son relationship; the campus-style "Youth" explores the growing up process of a teenager; and the exotic "Crossing Darjeeling" focuses on family relationships.

Compared to previous works, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" relies on Zweig, and is more chewy with its insinuating plausible writing about the war and the current situation, which breaks away from the group-phase, straightforward performances of previous works. Although you can still see Owen Welson (Owen Welson), Bill Murray (Bill Murray) and other familiar faces in his works, but only a flash of surprise, the film's focus is very clearly focused on the process of solving the case and the two protagonists. The biggest change is that the pace of the movie has changed from the previous work, and the narrative is intertwined and climactic from the beginning to the end. The previous dispersed narrative structure constructed through the different perspectives of multiple characters has been replaced by a new way of hierarchical narration, which broadens the time and space dimension of the narrative, and consequently brings the story of the movie closer to you and me, making the past stories that seemed unusually distant, through the transmission of a few narrators, to reach you and me, and become more believable and more touching.

Ralph Fiennes' performance as Mr. Gustave is at the heart of the film's narrative. Whether or not the character's marvelous combination of seriousness and absurdity can be shown in a comedic form determines whether or not the film's theme can be conveyed to the viewer's heart, and whether or not this sad song of a crumbling dynasty can be a tear-jerker. What really moves us about Gustave is the words he says when confronted with the savagery of the soldiers: "In this barbaric slaughterhouse, there does remain some light of civilization that was once called 'humanity'." Though his life has passed with that fallen dynasty, Gustav's valor as an individual in laying down his life for the sake of the weak in the face of barbarism is a greatness that transcends his own time. What Anderson mourns in this song is the human side of the chivalry of the upper classes that was preserved in pre-war Europe.

Monsieur Gustave never used any violence for his own benefit, but he ultimately chose violence to protect zero, and paid for it with his life. The reality was no different for Zweig, who threw himself into the pen (Zweig had been a civilian in the army) and ultimately sent a deafening protest against the Nazis with his own life. In one of the last texts of his life, he wrote: "I think it better to conclude in this still good world, in which intellectual labor means the purest pleasure, and in which personal freedom remains the highest good in the world." ("I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labor meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth.")

As the author of the film says, "I'm going to tell this story in an incredible way." Anderson does tell Zweig's story in an incredible way and conveys the beliefs of Zweig's life through the experiences of the character Gustav. The viewer either laughs or cries while watching this movie, but I think more importantly for Anderson is perhaps the line at the end of the movie, "Inspired by the work of Stefan Zweig."

So, after seeing this movie, do you want to pick up a copy of Zweig's novel and give it a good read?

I think I would.