(3558) How The Grand Budapest Hotel Uses Colour To Tell a Story – YouTube
Reading about mise-en-scene drastically changed my second viewing of The Grand Budapest Hotel. In the past, I brushed off Wes Anderson’s unique style as simply aesthetics, not completely understanding the importance of mise-en-scene. Now after a deeper look into what many consider Anderson’s magnum opus, I have learned about the essentiality of the coloring within these uniquely created movies. Specifically, the theming of nostalgia in The Grand Budapest Hotel, goes hand-in-hand with the coloring of the overall narrative. This idea of nostalgia and storytelling is explained explicitly in the video above. The video details the fact that the opening scene is gray and monotonous for a certain purpose…to mirror the actual universe of the viewer. It is only when reality get turned to stories and then to memories does more and more color get imbued. In the 1980s (the period that the intro scene takes place in) there is little color variety whatsoever, just focusing on the bland white, gray, and brown aspects of the scene.
The second layer of the story takes place in the 1960s, even though this era of the story is still largely depressing, color is imbued to the story through the morose orange in the hotel and yellow trees outside. This increase of color, as the video explains, can be attributed towards the theming of storytelling and nostalgia within The Grand Budapest Hotel. The original author that writes the book about the hotel is still recalling a story that he experienced over 20 years ago. It is simply human nature to romanticize and associate past memories in the positive, even if they weren’t.
This idea is even further supported with the 1930s version of the hotel, the third and final layer that is narrated to the viewer by Zero.
In just a 30-year timespan, the entire coloring of both the hotel and its surroundings have completely changed from a colorful and vibrant landscape to a dull, orange, and dying environment. Overall, I find a great argument from the video above regarding the theme of nostalgia and facades within The Grand Budapest Hotel. Instances of facades such as Gustave living through a false existence as a cultured savant, Zero hiding his traumatic past through acting as a silent lobby boy, or the film hiding its fascist subplot to focus on trivial matters like the painting “Boy with Apple” are all examples in accordance with the facade theming. The hotel and surrounding environment didn’t magically change in 30 years, it is a purposeful addition to the mise-en-scene to demonstrate the idea that we romanticize the past.
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