“The Grand Budapest remains in your hands, as does its impeccable reputation. Keep it spotless, and glorify it. Take extra-special care of every little bitty bit of it as if I were watching over you like a hawk with a horsewhip in its talons, because I am.”
Behind every great looking Wes Anderson film in recent years is Production Designer Adam Stockhausen. He won an Academy Award for this film and was also nominated for 12 Years a Slave, Bridge of Spies and West Side Story. Because of Anderson’s production deal with Indian Paintbrush, Stockhausen has always kept busy being the first person to show the other crew departments what the next Wes world will look like.
The high quality has carried through to The French Dispatch, Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme, but the best script among these is Grand Budapest. Wes Anderson’s style is perfectly complimented here by a screwball comedy story that heavily inspired Paddington 2, but is much more densely layered here. The number of small details and delicious bits of dialogue are so plentiful that even with the strong sadness to the adventure, it’s like getting to open a present again and again.
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