The Grand Budapest Hotel

"A murder case of Madam D. with enormous wealth and the most outrageous events surrounding her sudden death!"

2014 1h 40m EN

🙌

8.0

BANGER

★8.0TMDB · 16,580

ComedyDrama

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

“A murder case of Madam D. with enormous wealth and the most outrageous events surrounding her sudden death!”

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Cast

Ralph Fiennes
M. Gustave
F. Murray Abraham
Mr. Moustafa
Tony Revolori
Zero
Adrien Brody
Dmitri
Willem Dafoe
Jopling
Mathieu Amalric
Serge X.
Jeff Goldblum
Deputy Kovacs
Harvey Keitel
Ludwig

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Wes Anderson
Writers: Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness, Wes Anderson
Languages: English, French
Countries: United States of America, Germany

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 5.8× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 12 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: United States of America, Germany.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Wes Anderson, shot by Robert D. Yeoman. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Alexandre Desplat. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Barney Pilling shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Ralph Fiennes and F. Murray Abraham and Tony Revolori carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Wes Anderson directs. Robert D. Yeoman behind the camera. Alexandre Desplat scores. Barney Pilling cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America, Germany. Dialogue in English, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Made its money back 5.8× over at the box office.
2Released 12 years ago.
3Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, French.
4International production across 2 countries: United States of America, Germany.
5Directed by Wes Anderson, shot by Robert D. Yeoman. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Alexandre Desplat. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Barney Pilling shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Ralph Fiennes and F. Murray Abraham and Tony Revolori carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "A murder case of Madam D. with enormous wealth and the most outrageous events surrounding her sudden death!".
10IMDB entry: tt2278388 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11The top-rated still from this film on TMDB has multiple community votes — a signal the frame composition stuck with viewers.
1216,580 TMDB user ratings logged — serious cultural footprint.
13Classified under 17 themes, including "hotel", "painting", "wartime", "eastern europe".

The technical file

Cinematography: Robert D. Yeoman
Original score: Alexandre Desplat
Editing: Barney Pilling
Production design: Adam Stockhausen
Costume design: Milena Canonero
Makeup / hair: Julie Dartnell
Stunt coordinator: Volkhart Buff
Runtime: 100 min · 1h 40m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $30,000,000
Box office: $174,600,318
Return: 582% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Awards

Academy Award for Best Production Design
Academy Award for Best Costume Design
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize
Academy Award for Best Original Score
Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Wes Anderson

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

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Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Andres Gomez2015-08-15
★ 7/10
Yet another well crafter Wes Anderson's movie. Fiennes and Revolori perform well and the amount of well known actors and actresses is incredible but we have seen similar ways and scripts in his previous movies. It's entertaining, though.
CRCulver2018-05-27
★ 6/10
Wes Anderson's THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is the director's celebration of Central Europe culture and fashion in the years between the World Wars, and an elegy for what was lost with the rise of fascism and communism. Set in 1932 in a fictional country called Zubrowka, the streets, military regalia and (ersatz) German names we are shown could have come from anywhere between Germany and Estonia. Its protagonist Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) is a concierge at the eponymous luxury hotel, the splendour of which disappeared, we are told, with World War II. Gustave H. is known publicly as one of the best concierges in the business, able to dash around the hotel at lightning speed to satisfy the most varied guests of the elite clientele. Privately, he's a rake with a rather foul mouth, and fond of bedding the rich old women who patronize the establishment. When one of those old ladies, Madame Céline Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis (Tilda Swinton) dies and Gustave is framed for her murder, he must evade the law and unmask the true culprit, with the help of newly hired lobby boy Zero Mustafa (Tony Revolori). The films of Wes Anderson are known for their immense visual detail, and THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL is no exception. The elaborate framing of shots, the myriad cute items to look at on every set, and the architectural detail are like a diorama blown up to the big screen. Curiously, that visual detail is matched to a real slackness in the human characterization. Anderson has brought in a large number of actors he had worked with before, including Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Norton, and Bill Murray, for roles that range from the main villain to little more than cameos. These characters are never fleshed out like Gustave H. or Zero Mustafa, and the actors don't even try to pass themselves off as Central Europeans from the entre deux guerres. Instead Adrien Brody plays Adrien Brody, etc. There are two supporting roles that I felt were stronger. William Defoe plays a nearly mute henchman whose look is a nod to early vampire films (Transylvania was Central Europe, too). More remarkable is Harvey Keitel's turn as an old prisoner: when so many handsome leading men try to hide the effects of time after they enter their sunset years, 75-year-old Keitel was not afraid to show the ravages of old age here. Unfortunately, I found the 21st-century Americans strutting about (and a few speaking in rough New York accents) in a historical drama to be jarring. I was also disappointed by the resort to Hollywood tropes here, when Anderson's earlier films managed to be very quirky and sui generis. For example, did we really need not just one scene where a character is hanging off a cliff's edge as the villain stands over him, but two? And the amount of plot details that are introduced but never really explained makes one feel that the work was subject to some heavy cuts to please a studio. Still, if you liked Wes Anderson's earlier films, you'll find much to enjoy in his dollhouse approach, and it is amazing how every one of his films has a completely new and fresh visual theming even if his quasi-autistic obsession with prettiness never changes. Another thing I liked about the film is its "story within a story within a story". The entire plot of Gustave H. is, we are shown, taken from a fictionalized treatment by a writer who met a middle-aged Mustafa (F. Murray Abraham) in the 1960s. Befitting this novelistic layer -- and the work of Stefan Zweig that Anderson credits for inspiration -- this framing story is written in stilted, unrealistic dialogue like an old-time novel. And the aspect ratio changes for each layer of the film, a little treat for cinema anoraks.