The Grand Budapest Hotel: Coming to Terms with Change
Wes Anderson’s Consolation for Nostalgia and Impermanence.
C. N. Mathur
WE’VE ALL FELT A YEARNING FOR THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’, a wish to travel through time, back to when things were simpler, a time devoid of the woes we face now, a place of perfection and peace. Yet at some point we are inevitably struck by our sobering reality that time does not sit still but that it is transitory, that it moves. This feeling seems to me to be central to the function of the arts in our culture, as they work to immortalise human experiences, worlds and feelings.
Perhaps you’re feeling nostalgic for the engaging writings and personalities of the SWR committee of old (like me!). Yet, as you open the pages of the new edition’s first issue, you are reminded of the unyielding truth—life and time are in constant motion.
On the tail-end of the recent Wes Andersonesque social media trend, wherein ordinary people would romanticise their lives as if they were subjects in Anderson’s auteur film world, I felt it somewhat topical to explore Anderson’s, sometimes misunderstood, 2014 whimsical drama, that left me nostalgic for a time and place that doesn’t even exist, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Predominantly, the film is set in the fictitious, romanticised, European town of Zubrowka, wherein the titular Grand Budapest Hotel resides. The film tells the story of hotel concierge, monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) and his lobby boy, Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), as they investigate the murder of one of the hotels’ distinguished guests. After Gustave is wrongfully framed for murder, the duo start off on a series of adventures, seeking to clear his name. Against a backdrop of impending military occupation, the film subliminally portrays the inevitable decline of Europe in a pre-WW2 setting, whilst outlining the tragedy of diminishing tradition, civility and culture.
By capturing the essence of a romanticised Europe in the 1930s—a time of grandeur, elegance, and sophistication, and placing it within the historically tumultuous time (30s Europe) Anderson creates an impermanent tragedy; Europe will never be as it was…
The narrative frame and the main story background are inspired by the works of Jewish- Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig, who wrote about the declining state of middle-eastern Europe between the two world wars. His writings explored his deep yearning and nostalgia of a lost, pre-occupied Europe.
Anderson’s homage to Zweig’s works underscores the film’s exploration of impermanence and the melancholic beauty found in the passage of time. Inspired by Zweig’s use of layered narrative frames, Anderson employed a similar narrative structure, composing in four layers: first, the film begins with a young reader paying a visit to the monument of the author who wrote the novel titled The Grand Budapest Hotel; then it flashes back to 1985, the second layer in which that particular author, who is in his senior years, introduces how he encountered the story of The Grand Budapest Hotel; the story, therefore, turns back to the 60s when the author met old Zero Moustafa, now the owner of the hotel, who then reminisces his past; finally there comes the story of the protagonists, Monsieur Gustave H. and young Zero Moustafa. By framing his narrative within multiple time periods, Anderson conveys the impermanence of time and experience, and thus creates a sense of longing for a world that no longer exists.
As soon as we get attached to the idyllic world Anderson creates, the film abruptly ends, moving through time, showing the decline of the hotel and its eventual loss of utility for society leading to its demolition. All that is left of this world and time is a book. There is no catharsis in this tragic ending and Anderson perfectly outlines the nature of our nostalgia: no matter how dear our wishes are, we can’t travel back through time and re-experience the height of our lives.
The fate of the once-grand hotel becomes a metaphor for the transitory nature of everything we hold dear. The vibrant and lively place we once knew becomes a mere memory, preserved only within writing.
Perhaps a corny sentiment on its own, but simply, The Grand Budapest Hotel reminds us to cherish the fleeting moments we have, to recognise that the time we live in right now are ‘those good old days’ we will one day look back on with fondness – and to enjoy them as such. Most profoundly, Anderson conveys the power of narrative and the arts in immortalising experience – in colouring in the pages of our history we thought were long lost to the murky black-and-white haze of senescence.
