“THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL”
Adam Stockhausen (Production Design); Anna Pinnock (Set Decoration)
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” and Wes Anderson are the definition of Production Design. Every frame of Anderson’s films are like a painting, with rich, extraordinary colors, intricate attention to detail, and a quality so unique it’s impossible not to know you’re watching one of Anderson’s films. Almost all the establishing footage in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is of miniatures. Elaborate models built of the prison, the mountaintop monastery, and of the hotel itself, in several iterations show Anderson and his team of production designers at their best. Having seen the model of the hotel in person, let me just say, it is not quite that miniature. But to imagine the detail that went into making just the model and the fact that it then lands on the cover of the film shows you just how much that model embodies the work that Anderson creates. Production Design, among many things, is Wes Anderson’s forte and it is on full display in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” apparent in every room, every set, every object in the film.
What’s its competition? With nine nominations, it would almost be an insult to Wes Anderson if he did not at least take home a few awards. Of those nominations, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” deserves Best Production Design most of all, because the film is the epitome of Production Design. “The Imitation Game” and “Mr. Turner” us Production Design in practical, period pieces while “Interstellar” and “Into The Woods” mess around with blends of reality and fantasy/science fiction. To that end, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” mixes everything from period piece, to fantasy, to a genre all its own. Comparing frames between films, there is no way any of these films could stack up to the work done by Anderson and for that, it should have the win. Adam Stockhausen was nominated last year for his work on “12 Years A Slave” while this is Anna Pinnock’s fifth nomination, including also being nominated for her work this year on “Into The Woods”.
// Produced by Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales, and Jeremy Dawson // Directed by Wes Anderson //
// Dated Viewed: Sunday, January 25th, 2015 // BLU-RAY // 33 films – 29 days //
