Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

When a Wes Anderson movie is good, I don’t tend to have a whole lot to say about it.

Certainly I don’t have a lot to say that would convince anyone who finds Anderson’s work and world-building cutesy and alienating that this one is for them — but I do think The Grand Budapest Hotel is a step forward for Anderson. It still has that (precociously) childlike attitude toward adult concerns, like M. Gustave’s (Ralph Fiennes, containing multitudes) stint in jail; it really only focuses on his escape and the lead-up to that, and doesn’t consider how a man like Gustave H. would fare in a real prison. It has the same attitude towards the war: sometimes it’s hell, mostly it’s an inconvenience. Fine; Anderson’s not interested in making Hamburger Hill and isn’t suited to it in the second place. He’s interested in tiny models of sleds flying off alpine jumps in chase sequences, and in the rolling-dice sound cue that accompanies a set of fingers, um, departing their host.

But TGBH feels more confident about that than other recent Anderson films. Gustave’s story ends rather abruptly, but that felt right to me, and it’s good that Anderson doesn’t feel obligated to linger over it. (F. Murray Abraham’s trembling chin in that scene more than covers the subject.) The long, Police Squad-esque freezes in place followed by the camera whipping around; the deep shots through darkness that look almost animated; Fiennes’s frequent, impatient “darling”s; the “get me Monsieur [x] at the [hotel name] … take over” bit, each thing and all taken together, seem more assured to me. I wouldn’t characterize his previous projects as diffident, mind you. I think he’s always known he’s not everyone’s cup of Sanka, and not cared much. TGBH feels freer somehow.

But while it’s enjoyable, and beautiful, it’s also on the disposable side, partly because it’s trying to do a lot (it’s a love story! and a murder mystery! and a heist pic!) and doesn’t stay on any one area of the story for long, partly because Tony Revoloni’s performance as Zero doesn’t rise to the level of Fiennes and Abraham’s. You could argue that his halting delivery is a character beat, a lost boy finding his resourcefulness, but it still doesn’t work, and it’s hard to get invested in the kid when he spends most of the film scuttling after Gustave and gives the impression of reading cue cards much of the rest of the time. Again, somber realism isn’t required, and it’s not that I don’t think Anderson can or wants to engage with darker emotions, because he can, and has. The Grand Budapest Hotel keeps its inherent sadness at a distance, though, and while you can argue — and I would — that Anderson’s careful style, and the fact that many of his characters have that same exacting approach to ordering their worlds, is itself a way of engaging with it by keeping it at arm’s length, sometimes arm’s length is a little too far away. In this case it’s the difference between good and great.

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