The Grand Illusion Hotel

Thoughts on "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

I took some time to wade through my exhausting collection of film and television collections the other day. What I found when I tried to start organising them was that when I changed one of the toolbar options to ‘Most Played’, Wes Anderson’s work had the most appearances in my Top 10.

It was definitely a delightful surprise, like all Wes Anderson films are-grandiose humour and overblown yet dream-like intricate sets and characters with quaint quirks all with a sophisticated aesthetic veneer and dialogue.  When you walk away from one of his films, you leave with a light-hearted joy and one of those little half-smiles that will surface time and time again when you think back to one memorable scene or another. It was with his latest and 8^th feature film-The Grand Budapest Hotel that I choose to base my words today on.

Here is the plot from Empire.com: An author recalls a visit he made in the ‘60s to what was once one of Europe’s most luxurious hotels. There, the young author meets its owner, Mr. Moustafa, who tells how he came to inherit the building from M. Gustave.

One of the themes present in the film, is that fading world of gentility and culture giving way to one of brutish crudeness represented by the violence of the Fascist troops.  In this, I was perhaps reminded back to my own selfsame desire for the illusion of high school to stay with me in my first post.

M. Gustave: You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that is what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it!

It is within all of us, I think, for some little part at least, that thinks and regards society as a collections of blunt uncultured brutes that cares little for what truly matters in life.

Or not?

I am told I assume and presume too much for my own good, extrapolating my own views onto others as I argue.

As the movie moves on, we realise that M. Gustave’s world is one that is quickly fading and being taken over by a new world order one that strips away the grandeur and refined elegance to simplicity and monochromes of colour-in attention-seeking orange and yellow.  He maintains the hotel as the solid illusion of his civilization.

I can see why he and others would want to maintain an illusion of sorts, *hint hint* Blanche DuBois. It is because we all have a need to believe in them. No, I don’t believe all life is an illusion, but there are moments when we must delude ourselves or a section of our lives for namely personal and psychological reasons-for hope.

The great part of these self-created illusions is that they can also be self-fulfilling. When one gets oneself into believing in the illusion that you can master a certain thing well, one will very often also learn to master it with due time. This can happen, even if in the beginning one could just be flying without wings, We are often kept afloat just by an illusion. Losing these illusions could again easily lead into desperation and despair. However, even most of the time we just need to fool ourselves up to some point. If we would really know the true limits of our understanding, expertise and knowledge, we would not dare do anything demanding.

Happily all of the people live in the same kind of bubbles of illusion. We do live in a world of commonly build illusions. We think that the other people do have the necessary understanding, expertise and knowledge that we deep down always will suspect that we are lacking ourselves. Similarly other people do trust us in a similar way, mainly because nobody ever reveals their real self-doubts to others.

One could say that it is a really good thing that the true state of things is never revealed to us. Maintaining the common illusion of understanding, expertise and knowledge keeps us safe from despairing on the fact with how little true understanding, expertise and knowledge the world is really run on.

 It brings me to the virtue of honesty, maybe something I will talk about next time. But here I leave with Zero’s words.

Mr. Moustafa: To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it - but, I will say: he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvellous grace!

The Roads to Perdition

A Fatherly & Emotional Gangster...

By now, you would have realised my penchant for films, especially of the revenge category. It is always something about revenge, of the vastness for human hatred to stretch beyond what is possible in order to lift us above our socio-economic stations, to overcome physical and mental difficulties and to enact in ourselves the grace of the Godly in sometimes morally wrong acts all for the sake and reason of revenge. 

I am attracted to that as much as anything, the rise and destruction of others enthrals me; captured on film it shows both the best and worst of man as well the capabilities and cowardice of man that we seldom are able to explore in reality.

This leads me to the Mendes film “Road to Perdition”, one of those little known but emotionally compelling and exquisitely crafted film about the gangster ideal.

The Gangster Cliche ain't it?

Here is a brief plot summary from Empire.com: Following a messy murder, hit man Michael Sullivan is betrayed by the man he called father, formidable Irish hood John Rooney. Leaving behind a murdered family and with a killer on his tail, Sullivan goes on the run, hungry for revenge.

John Rooney: There are only murderers in this room! Michael! Open your eyes! This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see heaven.

I chose this line because it resonates so heavily with the double-entendre in the title, what is the road to perdition? A town? A final state? Or the result of the revenge?

Perdition [per-dish-uhn]   noun

1. a state of final spiritual ruin; loss of the soul; damnation.

2. the future state of the wicked.

“Road to Perdition" is a title with dual meanings. In literal terms, Perdition is the name of the town to which Michael Sullivan and his only surviving son, Michael Sullivan, Jr., are headed. However, Perdition is also a euphemism for Hell, and in that regard, the road is one Michael Sullivan prays he can keep his son from travelling on their lonely road for revenge.

So, this leads to my thought for the day, choice. We all have choices, each a fork in the proverbial road of life that brings us to another decision, another state, each with differing results. For me, I could have chosen to go to two wholly separate ways in my youth. One was to follow the road set and advocated by my parents and my own pride for the International Baccalaureate diploma and then one of the Top 25 Universities. The other advocated by my peers of the time and my own personality was to remain complacent in my own bubble and Auckland.

No, I’m not putting down my home but for a 13-yr old success meant the world, it meant New York, London not Auckland. If I had stayed would I have been like Mike Sullivan mired in the world of gangster-dom as a hit-man for Rooney, leaving his family no choice. I didn’t want that for my future, I wanted a different life. Like it or not, New Zealanders lead a rather complacent life, with an easy-going lifestyle. I knew that to satisfy my own ambition and attain my goals I needed a wider and bigger platform where others were driven and focused each for their own success.

The message from Michael the father to Michael the son is that you get to choose the road you're on in this life, but don't choose what I have chosen…the road I've been on all my life. Somewhere in my past, I made the choice to go in a certain direction, and it leads right to perdition.

True, very little of us end in perdition but I think the message applies to all of us. We have the choice to make something with our brief time on this Earth, to bring our families and ourselves out and beyond our set roads to something truly worthwhile.

It is your own legs that walk your own road, why let other legs dictate that for you?

The Power of an Idea

The Power of an Idea

Creedy: Die! Die! Why won't you die?... Why won't you die?

V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.

The above quote is from the movie “V for Vendetta”, a highly esteemed film that I had the time to watch recently.  If you haven’t had time to watch this idea-challenging film, I would recommend you do to so, stat.

Here is a brief plot summary from the helpful folk at Empire.com:

In the not-too-distant future, Britain has become a fascist, totalitarian state, its population cowed and apathetic. But the nation receives a wake-up call when mysterious masked terrorist "V" blows up the Old Bailey and calls for the citizens to rise up against their oppressors.

V=Villain?

The film has many other challenging and thought-provoking quotes to be certain, yet the above particularly stood out to me for its simplicity. How many times have we wondered before sleep, in an important meeting or during school about one recurring idea stuck in our head? It could have been the lyrics of melody of a song, the harsh censure and criticisms of parents and teachers or the taunting or praise of our peers. Whatever, it was that one idea would stay in our mind no matter how we tried to ignore or distract ourselves from it.

Nevertheless, here is my take on this quote and situation. We are confronted with many ideas during a single day. How many do we reject and discard due to sheer whimsy and pure laziness. Having the time to reflect on the multitudes of discarded ideas I discarded with excuses of school, I’ve realised that I never truly followed through with any of them.

What makes V so successful in his plot to blow up parliament and liberate the people in the film his is own steadfast determination and focus on his idea-freedom and the ability to supplant and instill the self-same idea into his protégé-Evey so to aid him even after his physical death.

In my own life, the two have been sorely lacking. For example, we once had the idea to make rechargeable phone cases via solar power to solve the problem of Smartphone battery drainage. However, this fell through quickly enough as other fripperies of life overwhelmed my friends and me. Why? Because there was this lack of focus, we had not the experience or the hard work put in to bring the idea to life, nor did we actively seek and find ways to solve and counter this. Each member of our group had other priorities and this was nowhere near the top of our list. Our determination waxed and waned depending on deadlines and teacher reminders. With this, it is easy to see the weakness of the idea within us; it couldn’t or didn’t take root, and without that let’s not even think about it being bulletproof and full of life under a mask of schoolwork.

Ideas, raining upon me...how many am I absorbing?

So, what is my point by outlining my entrepreneurial failures? That it takes real focus and determination to unleash the power of an idea.  Like V, the 20 years of waiting, planning led to one final night of action, likewise it is with great effort and determination that leads to great results and great influence.   

May your own Ideas live long and prosper!