“The Grand Budapest Hotel” is the closest thing to a Saki story on screen. Saki, a sadly forgotten British author from the turn of the century, wrote some of the wittiest black humor of his era, impressive in a generation that includes Oscar Wilde. Most of his stories involve the threat of death, and quite a few result in actual murder, carried off with quippy dialogue, all against the background of central European hotels and castles. This combination inspired Noël Coward’s dark plots and light talk in plays like “Blithe Spirit”, as well as Rohald Dahl’s morbid fairy tales, a debt both Coward and Dahl freely acknowledged.
Anderson, it seems, can be added to the list. At a glance, “Grand Budapest” shares the setting and basic plot of a Saki story, taking place in central Europe at a resort hotel, beginning with a murder in the first 15 minutes- not to mention the dozen or so casual deaths which follow. As for quippy dialogue, Ralph Fiennes was given one-liners for each increasingly desperate situation. To place the cinematic cherry on top of this comparison, the hero of “Grand Budapest,” Gustave, is a perfume-wearing fop who mimics Saki’s Edwardian-era dandies in everything except his strong sense of purpose.
Gustave’s sense of purpose, however, might be less of a break from the Edwardian dandy than an elaboration on him. You see, above all things, that Gustave’s identity has a strong performative basis, which implies a degree of facade. In a brief moment between scenes of action, the young apprentice, Zero Moustafa, says that Gustave never told him who his family was, or where he was from. This narration serves as a backdrop against the darkened shot of Gustave laying awake in bed, staring at the camera. As an understated hint at dark memories, Anderson seems to show us the shallowness of Gustave’s current prosperity: though polished and erudite, Gustave is no more a native to the world of the luxury hotel he runs than Zero, his immigrant apprentice.
Facade and hidden reality are just a part of the thematic common ground between “Grand Budapest” and Saki, supplemented by either the banal, the humorous or the dark. An example of all these three elements coming together is shown where the author meets Zero at the film’s beginning, which is sometime in the late 1960s, long after Moustafa’s youth in the 1930s. Beginning with an idle conversation between the author and the concierge named Jaques, Zero is quickly pointed out as someone worth knowing, a banal piece of advice.
Immediately after Jaques points this out, “a brief parenthetical incident requiring his immediate attention called Jaques away from our conversation.” The “parenthetical incident” is a choking hotel guest on whom Jaques has to perform the Heimlich maneuver, to the curiosity of the other cold-blooded guests, and the boredom of the even more cold-blooded author. The banal conversation, followed by dark humor, is so concise that it helps set the movie’s bantering tone, making it a cheerful facade about one of the darker times in human history.
