The Fantasy World of The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel projects an unmistakable sense of unreality or fantasy without the presence of any magical or fantastic content. Its film world thrives on artificiality and distance from the reality of our world and there are no obvious scenes or episodes in the film that are visibly marked as fantastic phenomena, nor are fantastic phenomena inherent in the premise of the film or otherwise integral to the story. Instead, The Grand Budapest Hotel uses various formal and narrative devices throughout the film to disrupt audience expectations compared to what they would encounter in a conventional narrative film. Cumulatively, these disruptions tend to create a sense of unreality or fantasy in the film. In addition, the explicit portrayal of “unknown authorship” in the film provides both a critique of the concept of film authorship and an explanation for why the contemporary use of auteur theory to analyze the work of Anderson and other directors makes it difficult for critics and scholars to fully appreciate Anderson’s accomplishments in this film. I conclude that the underlying message of the film is that the medium of film may be losing its capacity to help viewers distinguish between reality and fantasy.