{"id":145,"date":"2025-09-09T16:37:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T16:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/?p=145"},"modified":"2025-09-11T16:19:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:19:03","slug":"wes-andersons-grand-budapest-hotel-and-our-loyalty-to-all-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/2025\/09\/09\/wes-andersons-grand-budapest-hotel-and-our-loyalty-to-all-we-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel and our loyalty to “all we know”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before I say anything remotely analytical about this movie, I wanted to note that this is one of the most visually appealing films of all time. On par with some of my favorite movies to just look at like Under the Skin(2013), 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968), and Drive (2011), Wes Anderson’s use of painting-like imagery with the background compressed against the foreground makes this a simply stunning movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the movie, I feel like Wes Anderson was screaming at me that this film is about loyalty. But although there is the obvious loyal relationship between Zero and Gustave, the theme extends far past an individual’s loyalty for another. I think this film is really trying to communicate how as individuals, we tend to be ferociously loyal to the things that have always been; the constants in our lives. We see this every day in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, 89% of teens from Democratic households also vote for Democratic candidates (81% for Republican households). I believe that this is not actually about the values of the child, but about an individual’s loyalty to their parent’s values, since that is all they have known since birth. Wes Anderson throws this theme in our face throughout Grand Budapest Hotel. Introduced early in the film, Zero is alone. When asked whether he has a family, he replies with ‘none’. Immediately, Gustave is a father figure. Whether he likes it or not, Gustave is in a position of instructional and literal power over Zero, causing Zero to latch on almost instantaneously. I don’t believe that this is because Zero respects Gustave (Gustave is a deeply flawed and sometimes ridiculous person), rather that Gustave and the values he stands for becomes literally the only thing in Zero’s life, and therefore the only thing he has to learn from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, this theme of loyalty extends past Zero’s relationship to Gustave. Gustave himself is a character literally defined by his loyalty. All we ever know about his character is his mastery of the concierge arts. For all the audience knows, this is all Gustave has been, and all he ever will be. His loyalty is not only to the women he takes care of and the young men he takes under his wing, but the literal act of being a concierge. In prison of all places, Gustave brings a cart around from cell to cell handing out soup. He won’t ever stop being a concierge because he literally can’t. Like Zero’s relationship to him, Gustave can’t give up being a concierge because it is actually the only thing he knows. Again, towards the end, when the hotel is crawling with policemen looking for him and a psycho killer trying to take his life, Gustave enters the Grand Budapest Hotel disguised as a bakery delivery man. It is possible to look at this from the perspective of his loyalty to Zero and Zero’s relationship to Agatha, but I think Wes Anderson intended this to be a representation of Gustave’s inability to part with the hotel. The hotel is his life, and he would rather die than be apart from the only thing he has ever known. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is not a film about love or belonging, but instead about humans’ loyalty and almost obsession with retaining constants in our lives. Zero, even in his old age and the Grand Budapest’s failure, is fiercely loyal to it and Gustave. My one question about this film is: Does Wes Anderson hate Zero and Gustave for being so loyal, eventually killing one of them and dooming the other to eternal loneliness? Or does he actually respect and value their obsessions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I say anything remotely analytical about this movie, I wanted to note that this is one of the most visually appealing films of all time. On par with some of my favorite movies to just look at like Under the Skin(2013), 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968), and Drive (2011), Wes Anderson’s use of painting-like imagery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9777,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-viewer","category-week-3-9-89-10-mise-en-scene"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9777"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/introtofilm2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}