My Cultural Diet

This week’s release of The Phoenician Scheme inspired me to go back and fill in this particular gap in my Wes Anderson viewing, which I missed during its original theatrical run and then just sort of forgot about over the years. Ralph Fiennes stars as Monsieur Gustave, the Grand Budapest Hotel’s concierge who is (in)famous for his various dalliances with the hotel’s older guests. But when his favorite guest suddenly dies, it sets in motion a complex and calamitous series of events involving murder, stolen paintings, the outbreak of war, downhill skiing, pastries, and prison breaks — all of which are rendered in Anderson’s highly stylized aesthetic. (The film’s set design really is wonderful and feels like a time capsule from another era.) Some consider this Anderson’s best film. However, I found it so highly stylized that it felt flat and trapped within its own artifice, even when Anderson twists the screws a bit near the end.

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