The Grand Budapest Hotel – the latest film by Wes Anderson
This is not a proper film review but I will say I really enjoyed the film. How I even came to see it was a complete coincidence, as I had never seen a Wes Anderson film before.
Here is the official trailer if you haven’t seen it yet:
At one of the bus stops that I frequent, is a small community cinema. Several weeks ago I started to notice this movie poster with a large pink hotel on it. I couldn’t get this image out of my mind… I quickly went to imdb to see the rating and discovered it was quite high. I don’t like to watch trailers or read/know too much about a film before I see it (it gets my expectations up too high) and so I only watched the first 2-3 minutes of the trailer just to get an idea of the tone and mood of the film.
With that done, I decided that I had to see it. That big pink hotel was calling my name…
I admit I found the beginning rather slow and almost boring but it really picked up speed and got better and better as time wore on. I was fascinated by the era and historical context, the geography and landscape, the characters, the costumes, the colours (oh my, the colours!) and more… but one of the things I loved most was this amazing dessert known as the ‘courtesan au chocolat’, created by the fictitious patisserie, Mendl’s.
After seeing the film it was now no longer the pink hotel which occupied my mind but this scrumptious dessert! Oh how I wish I could buy it somewhere or try to make it myself. However, as I live in a tiny inner city apartment without a decent kitchen, this is impossible. I went onto instagram and was filled with many mouthwatering pictures of courtesans that others had created…
My mind went into overdrive… I couldn’t get all the images and colours from this film out of my mind. I felt my creative juices flowing and I had this sudden urge to CREATE! But what? Of course! If many people are making this delicious dessert, surely they love the film too and want a piece of the Mendl’s creation.. and so using my existing tools and skills I set out to re-create the Mendl’s box which was featured in the film…
It looks so simple like it would take you only a few minutes to draw, right? Wrong! It took me about 7 hours to design the whole thing. The first part was drawing all those curvy lines. And I only drew half (since the whole thing is a mirror image, in keeping with Wes’ love of symmetrical design). I drew the design in Illustrator and it was easy to cheat and just draw the lines and stroke them in various thicknesses, but I wanted the flowy calligraphic look so each line actually has different thicknesses through the line, exactly like the real one. The time it took also included me going through hundreds of fonts to find one that was similar and then tweak it so it looked close to the real one. With the design done, now was time to create the template, turning a 2D object into a 3D one.
I hand drew a template roughly on paper, and cut it out (also very roughly) just to see how it fit together and where the tabs should go and how big they should be. Then I drew this into Illustrator, realising that the box could be no larger than 6cm if it were to fit on a sheet of A4 (or US letter) sized paper.
There was a bit of fiddling around and then I remembered when I bought a cupcake that came in a box there was a lining on the bottom to hold the cupcake securely (so it doesn’t move around when being transported). So now I had to design this as well.
I was finally happy with the design but I didn’t think such a tiny box could house many things so I set about to create a large one, more accurately portraying the one in the film. I realised that I had to split the template up into two sheets, which again required more testing.
With that done… it was time to work on something else.
I didn’t realise how huge this task would be but it’s taken me over 30 hours to draw the pink hotel poster! Even though many of the windows are copy and paste jobs, they are not all the same, and even though it seems that everything is symmetrical, it is not. Getting the placement of everything particularly the shadows was very time consuming, but I was enjoying it so much I didn’t even realise I was working into 1 or 2am in the morning.
I know you came here for the facts about the film so here they are!
Welcome to Zubrowka!
Where is Zubrowka ?
Zubrowka is a Central European country located somewhere around Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria.
To find out more, enrol in the Akademie of Zubrowka (it’s free!) and study their short online course. It’s a visual case study of Social, Political, and Cultural upheaval. You can find the secret Mendl’s Courtesan au chocolat recipe there too! It was a best seller according to surveys done in 1929.
After you’ve finished studying at the Akademie, check out the website of the Zubrowka film commission. It was established in 1922. Read more about it, check out the top 5 reasons to film there and see exclusive clips from The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Where is Nebelsbad?
Nebelsbad is a spa town located in central Zubrowka. It is one of the oldest towns in Zubrowka.
Where are the filming locations?
(edited: In Nov 2014 I made a filming locations Google maps found here)
According to this post (and a few others), the interior shots were all taken at the GrandHotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic. What that article does not say is that the exterior was based upon another hotel, The Hotel Bristol Palace also in Karlovy Vary. Of course most of us know that they did not film there nor did they build a replica of it. What they did was build a scale model of the pink hotel (which was photographed for the movie poster) and they only built the entrance of the hotel in life size.
Interiors: GrandHotel Pupp
Exterior: Hotel Bristol Palace
It looks exactly like the one on the movie poster!! er.. shouldn’t that be the other way around? :D (the smaller hotel since there are 2 versions of it floating around on various movie posters).
(photos: all from the two official hotel websites)
The deer on a small mountain thing featured on the left of the movie poster also exists in Karlovy Vary.
(photo: Flickr/mrlederhosen)
The lobby/entrance area of the hotel
These scenes were filmed inside a former department store, the Görlitz Warenhaus Department Store in Görlitz, Germany.
This is what it looked like in its former glory. (photo: Wikipedia). See this post for what it looks like now, empty.
Mendl’s Pâtisserie
Ahhh… my favourite! These scenes were filmed in Pfunds Molkerie in Dresden, Germany. How amazingly beautiful does it look? It looks like a Marie Antoinette world…
(photo: 20th Century Fox.)
(photo: belocal)
Checkpoint 19: Osterstein Castle in Zwickau, Germany
To be honest I didn’t take much notice of this location while watching the film. This castle was used as a nazi prison camp during WWII.
(photo: Wikipedia)
Observatory on top of the snowy mountain: Sphinx Observatory in Kleine Scheledegg, Switzerland
Cool! One of the filming locations is located in my (new) home town. And to think I was passing through Bern only a month ago, not far away from Jungfraujoch, where this observatory is located. How stunning does it look in this photo? And to think that it also exists in reality! It has an altitude of 3571m and you need to take a funicular to get up there.
(photo: Matt Lauer)
Museum: Zwinger Museum in Dresden, Germany
I don’t remember clearly this scene but it was filmed in the Zwinger Art Museum in Germany.
(photo: Wikipedia)
You can see this blogpost at LocationsHub for many more beautiful photos (and descriptions) of the filming locations.
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(NB: I haven’t mentioned the director, Wes Anderson, nor any of the actors/actresses because there are plenty of articles about them online already. Below, I have mentioned the lesser known people who contributed to this film in some way).
Meet Stefan Zweig
1881-1942
(photo: Wikipedia)
OK so you won’t be able to meet him, since he passed away in 1942 but he is a Viennese writer (who was famous in the 1920s-1930s, the era that most of the film was set in). Apparently he inspired Wes Anderson in writing this film. There are some really interesting articles online where you can read more about him and his literary works and how exactly Wes incorporated them into his film…
- NPR radio (in audio form too!)
- Dazed Digital
- The Daily Beast
Meet Annie Atkins
(photo: the prowlster)
I had never heard of this name before but upon doing research about this film (having been blown away by the imagery), I discovered Ms Atkins. A 34 year old from Dublin, she is incredibly talented. She calls herself a graphic designer for film. She designed all the graphic design used in the film (most of which you probably wouldn’t even notice as it flashes by so quickly). She designed the passports, the posters, the letters, the signage, the banknotes and more… but who could forget the Mendl’s pink cube boxes and of course that darling pink notebook featured at the very beginning of the film.
These are the three best interviews I found with her. What an amazing talent and a super cool job!
Meet Michael Taylor
‘
(photos: Michael Taylor, 20th Century Fox)
62 year old British portrait artist, Mr Taylor is the painter behind the famous “Boy with Apple” portrait painting. He was commissioned to paint this darling painting. In the film it is painted by ” Johannes Van Hoytl“. Ed Monro, a blond ballet dancer, was the boy who posed for the portrait.
Great articles:
How to make a Mendl’s ‘Courtesan au chocolat’ (religieuse/choux/profiterole/cake)
Here is the official video by the people who made the film, 20th Century Fox / Searchlight pictures
Official (secret!) Courtesan au chocolat recipe. Detailed here
(animated image: Fox Searchlight)
You can see more animated gifs at the Buzzfeed post here.
et Voilà! :)
