Analyzing the Writing and Meaning Behind Wes Anderson Films

  In this blog I will be analyzing two of Wes Anderson’s films. For those who are unfamiliar with Wes Anderson, he is a well known film writer, producer, and director, and is famous for his colorful, intense, and unorthodox style. If you have seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, probably his most mainstream movie, you have watched a Wes Anderson film. I will be analyzing in this post, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and his most recent film, Asteroid City. This blog will contain spoilers and may also be… kinda long. SO buckle up!

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel has a layering of different storylines, but the main one is about a young adult, Zero, in the 1930s. Zero becomes a lobby boy for, of course, the Grand Budapest Hotel. The major storyline is Zero’s relationship to the great M. Gustave, the Hotel Concierge. Gustave is a strange fellow, having relationships with many of the hotel’s rich elderly guests. The plot expands when one of these guests is murdered. Gustave is then accused, and Zero teams up with him to prove his innocence. Together, they go to the deceased guest’s estate to find evidence to clear Gustave’s name . By way of a will reading, and partial stealing, Gustave takes possession of a very expensive painting, and that is where this story really takes off. Wes Anderson’s artistic twists in this story certainly indicate there must be a deeper meaning behind what is shown, so here is what I've gathered that message to be. 

            I believe the storyline to be representative of changing times. The story itself exists in 4 time periods at once, the time of you watching it, the time period of the first scene in which a girl reads a book titled “the Grand Budapest Hotel” in the 1980s, the time period of that book’s author listening to Zero’s story in the hotel in 1968, and of course, the era of Zero’s story in the 1930s. So what could be the point of all this inception? Well maybe it's to represent the color and fantasy we view the past in. The different time periods are also represented with different color schemes, with the hues becoming brighter and more saturated in the older time frames. The most interesting part of this is that the brightest shots are the ones with the darkest meaning, these are the scenes throughout Zero’s story. In this timeline, there is death, Gustave goes to jail, Zero and Gustave are escaping their imminent murder, and through it all there is the ramp up of changing social times and war. But through it all the scenes feel as though you are watching children sing and dance on rainbow-cloud-imagination land. This could represent how Zero views his past as times have now changed. Even when in terrible, dire situations he still views this time of his life with a layer of nostalgia, partially because of his connection with M. Gustave. Zero’s sugarcoated memory of his life story suddenly disappears in the final scene of his story, it is  shot entirely black and white. In this scene, M. Gustave is killed. Perhaps, this is the one memory Zero knew he could not wrap a pretty pink bow around. Nonetheless, it is proof that Zero viewed the past in a way that did not ever quite exist. You can see parallels to this in a line Zero says to the author towards the end of the film. In reference to M. Gustave Zero says, “to be frank, I think his world(The bright, expensive, luxurious life that the saturated hotel symbolizes) disappeared long before he ever entered it. But I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.” 

            To wrap this analysis up, as I have rambled for quite some time now, The Grand Budapest is about viewing the past with bias and nostalgia. It is about people, and social class, and how that plays a role in our judgment of the “good old days.” Finally, it is about changing times, and the meaning we as a society pin to them.

2.  Asteroid City

   
   
   

            Asteroid City was released within the past year, and is similar to The Grand Budapest Hote in that it is a period piece. Also similar to The Grand Budapest Hotel,  it is a layering of different storylines/timelines all at once. Asteroid City is technically a play within the film, and so the story of Asteroid City may actually be the second major plot, while the lives of the theater actors being first storyline. It is all very difficult to explain so I recommend watching it to make sense. Asteroid City, the play, focuses on a father (Augie), son (Woodrow), and three little sisters as they spend a few nights in Asteroid City for a science competition. The father and son battle with the recent loss of their mother as they are trapped in this empty desolate desert town. There are also many other characters that have come to town for the competition. They all however get trapped in this town temporarily when an alien stops by to steal a rock in front of the entire town’s eyes.

            I watched this movie twice in theaters within its first week of coming out, the first because I wanted to see it, the second because I wanted to actually understand it. Neither time did it make sense. I then scanned the internet for answers, but at that point no one had actually truly studied it, and there were few to none hour long video essays explaining it. In fact, most reviews of the movie were entirely negative, accusing Wes Anderson of “losing his meaning,” and only focusing on making the movie “aesthetically appealing.” I too then got frustrated and didn’t look any deeper into it at the time, because I wasn’t planning on buying a third movie ticket. But now that some time has passed, I think I have a better idea of the point of this movie. 

            So I think the unclear meaning of the movie is the overall message it aims to portray. At the end of the film, the audience sees the unraveling of the main character, the man who portrays Augie on the stage version of the play, Asteroid City.  In this scene, Augie’s actor asks himself a question he’s been repeating since the beginning of the film, “why does Augie burn his hand on the quickie griddle?... I still don’t understand the play.” And then he marches off the stage in the middle of the scene. Next you see him walk around the set asking everyone, “what the meaning is, what is the metaphor the alien represents? What is the point to any of this?” The answer given by different characters to all of these questions is “I don’t know.” I think that perhaps this is representative of life. The actor playing Augie on the stage is pretending to live a life and is just as clueless living his own life as he is portraying Augie’s life. ‘Life does not have a meaning’, and ‘life does not make sense’ is an idea that ricochets throughout everyone’s mind at some point in their life and that is what Wes Anderson attempts to demonstrate. I feel like the clearest line in this movie is given in Augie’s actor’s breakdown, as he asks the director “Am I doing him right?,” the director says “I don’t think you just became Augie, he became you.” Following this statement, the discussion continues:

Augie’s actor: “I feel lost.”
Director: “Good.”
AA: “Do I just keep doing it?”
D: “Yes.”
AA: “Without knowing anything?”
D: “Yes.”
AA: “Isn’t there supposed to be some kinda answer out there in the cosmic wilderness!... I still don’t understand the play.”
D: “Doesn’t matter.”
While this interaction begins with him asking if he is playing the character well, but it definitely feels as though it shifts to be about life. The final point I want to make in this is about how people/other characters are used to make this question ‘what’s the point’ disappear. Augie is certainly the loneliest character, and his son, Woodrow was too. However, although at the beginning Woodrow feels just as unhappy and beaten down about life as Augie, he meets a girl and by the end seems to be almost entirely resolved. Augie however, without really anyone, spirals into this lonely questioning of life. 

            So to put all of these points together. As the actors of these characters are technically ‘living a life’, the fictional town Asteroid City represents a smaller version of the world around us. Where everyone is searching for meaning, but ultimately there is not one to find. And the only way to silence these fears, and walk away from that rotten feeling is to create connections with the other people around you, that are spending time in the same world as you.

Thank you for reading my blog post! I hope it was at least partially interesting, and I recommend checking either of these movies out sometime!

-Miranda