Written by Five Joe Hollywood Weirds: Wes Anderson
If director Wes Anderson’s films for so many years show one truth, it is that the style of the movie has nothing to do with the theme to be expressed, you can use the same persistently. The way to shoot a different story.
If you must use one word to describe all of his works, it must be: quirky. Wes Anderson's movies can be said to be the most distinctive and unique in Hollywood today. His movies do not even need to be marked with his own surname. The unique film temperament is the best personal trademark. For example, Anderson, an avid fan of perfect symmetry, almost always places the camera on the central axis of the screen. Even the decorations in the background prefer a balanced composition of left and right symmetry. In his films, the sense of humor is often expressed through the "Deadpan style": actors often have no expressions and no movements, but they pass through restraint, subtle changes, and an awkward pause. Weird sense of cold humor. Anderson is obviously not a fan of realism. The colors, props, and scenery in the film are often bright and weird, as if they are directly moved from a fairy tale, and the attention to detail has reached the level of paranoia. In short, Anderson's movie world is like a toy house he built by himself, and he is like a puppet master, pulling the thread on the character, and staged a story in this world that seems to be understood only by himself.
In "Budapest Hotel", Anderson pushed this style to the extreme: almost all the shots in the film were aimed straight at the character; the central axis of the room, corridor, and highway always stayed at the center line of the shot; The characters’ expressions are close to sluggish, and their actions are cartoon-like exaggerated and concise; the scenery has large characters added to indicate its purpose (for example, the big bold words "taxi" written on the taxi) are more toy style... ..
Paranoid perfectionist
However, if it is said that in Anderson's previous films, this style is only a means of telling stories, in the "Budapest Hotel", this style is the key to expressing the theme. It can be said that until this film, Anderson's style really has "meaning". The main story of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is not new: the lobby manager of the Grand Budapest Hotel, the middle-aged handsome uncle Gustav who is meticulous in his work and loves to make old blonde ladies, because he was involved in the murder of the old lover Mrs. D He went to jail after the case. With the help of a small running hall with zero work experience, zero education, zero background, and even the name "Zero", he successfully escaped from prison and washed away his shame and shame. He not only recovered his innocence, but also inherited it. All the property of Mrs. D. Written so plainly on paper, the story itself can be said to be lacklustre, but thanks to Anderson's film language, the viewing process is as interesting and substituting as playing a video game. More importantly, it is the message that Anderson is trying to convey with this story...
Almost every Anderson movie starts with a narration, the movie is divided into several chapters, and each chapter is titled. The organization of the film is slightly different on this basis: the film begins with a girl who comes to a cemetery to sweep the tomb of a writer who worships. On the stone statue of this writer, where the name should appear, only "Author" is engraved. The word. She hung her key on the stone statue of the unknown writer and took out a book called "The Grand Budapest Hotel". She turned the book over, with the author's photo printed on the bottom, looking at the camera with a solemn expression. Then the time and space switch (every time and space transition is accompanied by the change of the screen aspect ratio, the wider the screen becomes in modern times), in 1985, the writer stared at the camera with the same expression, using Zweig's novel "The Scorching of the Mind" The opening paragraph serves as the opening. Then time and space jumped again, and in the Budapest Grand Hotel, an elderly zero-to-young writer told his story. Time and space changed again with the narrative of Zero. When Zero was young, the adventure story of Gustav and Zero officially began...
Ignore the adventure story in the middle, and go directly to the end of the film. The last period of Gustav’s life is presented in the only black and white shot in the film. Then he jumps back to the writer’s youthful era, ends the conversation with Zero, and the writer sits. Lost in contemplation in the empty lobby of the Grand Budapest Hotel; then fast forward to 1985, when the elderly writer sat quietly in his office accompanied by his grandson; finally returned to the modern day again, on the bench in the cemetery, reader The girl quietly read "Budapest Hotel"...
that is to say, except for the ubiquitous symmetrical shots, even the narrative of the film is completely symmetrical and layered flashback mode. However, at the end of the film, in the melodious singing that corresponds to the opening, I strongly feel that Anderson uses such a neat narrative model, not only in pursuit of formal perfection, but in emphasizing the theme of the film: human nature is perpetual. , Endless life.
A great building is a monument of civilization,
as Gustav said: in this barbarous and primitive slaughterhouse once called "humanity", there are still gleams of light sporadicly. Zero said that Gustav was one of those glimmers. This may be the meaning of the Budapest Grand Hotel—those beautiful memories that are about human nature and only exist in memory, and the colors are so bright that they are not real. This so-called humanity may exist in Gustav’s pursuit of the ultimate taste, the exquisite perfume he would spray on during the days of fleeing; perhaps it is represented by the mysterious organization marked by the crossed key. Trust and loyalty; perhaps it was Gustav who stood up for zero and almost stupidly took his own life...Great buildings are monuments of civilization. The Grand Budapest Hotel-the great building that was once glorious for a while, finally defeated in the change of times, and became a broken wall only for the lonely soul to seek refuge. In the end, even the broken walls disappeared. She became a part of the legend. People can only imagine her once glorious glory in the narration of the old people and from the cover of the novel. However, what she symbolizes is the calmness and elegance of the passing time, like a culture in which people live without knowing it, and it has not faded with time.
At the end of "The Grand Budapest Hotel", Zero, Gustav, and Agatha still failed to escape the tragedy after experiencing so many adventures and tribulations. When you feel that evil has finally been defeated by less evil, the stylish and quality poor uncle has finally become rich, and the kind boy is finally going to grow old hand in hand with the simple girl, the film makes Gustav die without warning. Yu defending his friend also died in the history of the extinction of humanity in the last century; Agatha also died, because of the flu that can be cured within a week today.
The film tells you so calmly that there are many catastrophes in this world. "These catastrophes are like a pair of big scissors. Good and bad people will be cut off together. Maybe some people can escape the catastrophe and save their lives. However, people are born and enter. Death, the fragility of life does not differ between good and evil. "After all, we are just a boat in a long river of time. If you happen to be in the whirlpool of history, you will inevitably be swept away by the times. What is really important is that the beauty of human nature can be passed on from generation to generation. This kind of transmission is zero instead of Gustav becoming the best trotting hall in Budapest Hotel. Zero and Agatha also fell in love with Gustav’s favorite poems. It was a girl sitting quietly in the cemetery and reading time precipitation. Down the story. The story about the Budapest Grand Hotel, passed on word of mouth among people in different time and space, is the most commendable in itself.
The artist is the conscience of society
Anderson thanked Zweig for his inspiration in his opening speech. Although the beginning of the film quoted passages from "The Anxiety of the Mind", the story of the film is not related to "The Anxiety of the Mind". At most, Anderson borrowed the nested narrative model in the novel. Although the writers in the film finally left the European continent and went to South America to seek "good medicine" for their souls—this also coincides with Zweig's real experience—but the writers in the film do not explicitly refer to Zweig. The real Zweig left his home country of Austria after Hitler took power, and moved to Britain, the United States and other places, and settled in Brazil in 1940. In an environment increasingly lacking in inclusiveness during World War II, in an era of totalitarianism, dictatorship, and Nazism, as well as in the deep despair of human nature, Zweig’s residence in Brazil in 1942 and his first The second wife's fingers interlocked, and both committed suicide by taking medicine. He never returned to the European continent, nor could he see the revival of humanity.
People from generation to generation may have sighed that "people's hearts are not old." However, people in the twentieth century may be more disappointed in their times than in any other era. Extreme violence and progress are the characteristics of the twentieth century. In just one hundred years, people have witnessed the greatest progress and at the same time witnessed the most terrifying crimes. The artist is the conscience of society. In fact, it does not matter who the writer in the film refers to, and Anderson even deliberately omitted his name. Maybe he is every writer who has made a little contribution to human civilization. He can be not only a writer who moved a girl, but also a poet cited by Gustav, or even Wes Anderson himself. It doesn't matter, what's important is that they all shouted a little bit in their own time. They may be heard or buried, but the wisdom they created together is the most worthy beacon in human civilization.
The last line of the film: "She is indeed a charming ancient ruin, but I never saw her again." Is this charming ruin the once glorious hotel or the humanity that was once lost? "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is a comedy as well as a tragedy, as if Anderson, a paranoid perfectionist, is telling: The world is beautiful, but humans don't know good or bad.
****This article has been published in "Beijing Youth Daily", if you need to reprint it for commercial use, please privately write to the author, please.
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