Grand Budapest Hotel a Romp, Not a Masterpiece

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THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014)

Directed by Wes Anderson

Fox Searchlight, 100 minutes, R (because of totally innocent nudity, F-bombs, and paranoia!)

* * * *

Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, isn’t as funny as it’s billed, but it’s a delicious romp and perhaps Anderson’s best realized film to date. Even when its humor falls flat, it’s wildly inventive and off-kilter.

Set in the mythical Alpine nation of Zubrowka, Grand Budapest Hotel is essentially a caper film centering on the swishy Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), the concierge of an elegant hotel retreat/spa for fading European aristocracy and shady characters posing as genteel. The year is 1932, and M. Gustave is breaking in a new lobby boy, Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), an orphaned Indian lad in whom Gustave takes a shine. Are his intentions paternal, philanthropic, or sexual? It’s one of the film’s purposefully ambiguous questions; all we know for sure is that, though Gustave set offs gaydar a mile away, he definitely beds aging dowagers such as Madame D (Tilda Swinton). When she dies several days later and leaves an insipid but precious painting to M. Gustave, heirs led by thug son Dimitri (Adrien Brody channeling John Turtrurro) seeks to dispossess him.  On a whim, Gustave and Zero steal the painting. Thus begins a madcap set of misadventures in which baddies, including the psychotic Jopling (Willem Dafoe), try to frame Gustave for Madame D’s murder and briefly jail him before he, with Zero’s help, breaks out of prison. The subsequent chase takes Gustave and Zero across the Alps by ski, snow machine, auto, train, and other forms of conveyance. Gustave calls upon a secret network of other concierges to stay one step ahead, whilst Zero longs merely to survive and marry Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), a pastry chef’s daughter whose face is inexplicably marked by a stain in the shape of Mexico. Military police—led by Chief Hackels (Edward Norton)–also give chase against a backdrop in which war looms on the horizon. (The film is supposedly set in the Alps, but its politics seem a pastiche of the pre-World War One Balkans.)

From this you might deduce that the narrative is slight, and so it is. The film is really a series of offbeat sketches held together loosely by a (sometimes imposed) narrative. There are tasty cameos throughout (Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartman, Léa Seydoux) and the adjective ‘wacky’ probably best describes the movie’s tone. There is no attempt whatsoever at realism; many of the situations and hair-raising escapes are absurd, and the hotel and mountains are often represented as hand-tinted color cutouts. Anderson washes his film in those same washed out Instagram-like cartoonish colors—thereby adding to the notion that we are: (a) witnessing the fading of a way of life, and (b) you shouldn’t try to attach too much meaning to any of this. The film is also bookended by a prologue and epilogue held in the now seedy Grand Budapest Hotel, where a nerdy and reclusive young writer (Jude Law) seeks to prise the hotel’s story from its aging proprietor, none other than Zero–played by F. Murray Abraham, who looks about as Indian as a cannoli. Was the decision to cast Murray Anderson having us on one last time, or just sloppy filmmaking? You decide, but it is one of my reservations about the film.

The tone of Grand Budapest Hotel is evocative of Jean-Pierre Jeunet projects (Delicatessen, Amélie, City of Lost Children) but Anderson lacks Jeunet’s narrative talent and his understanding of irony. (Anderson often thinks that detached sarcasm is the same thing as irony.) I always enjoy Wes Anderson films; I’m yet to declare one a masterpiece. In some ways his is classic slacker filmmaking—offbeat and wild ideas that he thinks speak for themselves, even when they don’t. This film, like his others, is a mix of creative and conventional. The prison scenes, for example, are deliciously droll, but the chase sequences evoke the cheap jokes we saw decades ago in Pink Panther films. Nor does the omniscient narrator gambit rise to the level of innovative filmmaking. It’s convenient and nothing else.  

The Grand Budapest Hotel is, though, visually entertaining and choked full of clever background jokes you need to stay on your toes to see. (Pay attention to the newspapers that appear on screen!) Fiennes is a hoot as Monsieur Gustave and Edward Norton chews whatever scenery Fiennes leaves undigested. Ronan wafts through the movie as an odd butterfly–often wordlessly strange, but always beguiling. Overall it’s a very pleasant way to spend 100 minutes–just don’t expect a masterpiece; Wes Anderson still has some growing up to do.

Rob Weir

Postscript: Need more proof that the ratings system is a farce? This got an R for brief frontal nudity that’s no more naughty than an unruly school child, and I’ll bet that same kid drops more F-bombs as well. Titanic got a PG-13. Is that because Kate Winslet’s breasts are British and don’t count?

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste Continues to Haunt

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (2104)

Valerie Martin

Doubleday 978-0385533508, 306 pages

* * *

With the exception of the Flying Dutchman, the Mary Celeste is probably the most famous “ghost ship” of all time. Launched in 1861, the brigantine already had a long record of misfortune when Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah (“Sallie”), their two-year-old daughter Sophia, and an experienced crew of seven loaded a cargo of 1700 barrels of commercial alcohol in New York City and sailed for the Gibraltar Strait. On December 5, 1872, the abandoned ship was discovered adrift near the Azores. The cargo was nearly intact, the ship was fully provisioned, and aside from some water damage, the Mary Celeste was completely seaworthy. There was no sign of foul play, but one boat was missing, so what happened to her crew? Theories abound from the fanciful (sea monsters, giant water spouts, piracy, mass hysteria, an Atlantic earthquake) to the prosaic (alcohol fumes that forced abandonment). Every few years someone purports to have “solved” the mystery, but there’s enough margin for error that the legend lives on. References to the Mary Celeste show up everywhere–in Star Trek episodes, in sci-fi novels, in a Stephen King story, on film, and in various books, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s historically inaccurate J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement, which was serialized in Cornhill Magazine in 1884.   

Pardon the longwinded introduction, but many of these elements make their way into the Valerie Martin’s fictional treatment of the Mary Celeste. Hers is a mishmash of history, faux memoir, speculation, and invention. She mostly deals with real historical characters, though she manufactures dialogue, circumstances, and motives. The first third of the novel, though necessary, is confusing so hang on to the ship's rails. Martin introduces us to the blended Gibbs/Briggs family–one in which sisters and spouses are often also first cousins. The Briggs part of the clan suffered numerous losses at sea long before young Benjamin took command of the Mary Celeste. In fact, the book opens with an 1859 wreck off the North Carolina coast that drowns Benjamin’s aunt and her sea captain husband, a foreshadowing of Benjamin’s fate and a life-changing experience for Sallie’s 13-year-old younger sister, Hannah, who cares for the sickly one-year-old nephew left at home.

Spring forward 13 years. Hannah has disappeared, but Sallie is now Benjamin’s wife of three years and they (plus two-year-old Sophia) have sailed the world together. Martin cleverly connects their final voyage aboard the Mary Celeste and Victorian culture. The Mary Celeste cannot simply be an unsolved mystery within a culture as obsessed by the need to have a “good death” as that of American Victorians. The Civil War was both blood soaked and faith shaking in the sense that the bodies of many young men that died far from home were never identified or recovered. Spiritualism thrived after the war. How else would one know if Johnny died a good death if he didn’t come marching home? Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, and séance leaders such as Cora Scott and the Fox sisters thrived during the late 19^th century, especially among the middle classes that often became patrons for favored mediums. Martin asks us to consider an intriguing question. We know that most of those purporting to commune with the dead were as crooked as a snake on hot macadam, but does this mean all were fakes? Can we allow for the possibility that some people are more spiritually attuned than others, even if such individuals can’t articulate fully what or how they apprehend? Your answer to that question will determine what you think of frail spiritualist Violet Petra and of Phoebe Grant, the reporter who seeks to unmask her and ends up befriending her.

Among those believing in Spiritualism and (maybe) in Ms. Petra is Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle–who really was a Spiritualist–populates the novel first through contact with those who took umbrage with his mistelling of the Mary Celeste story, and again as an examiner of Violet Petra. In Martin’s book, Doyle is a bourgeois boor far removed from Sherlock Holmes’ intuitive skills or Doctor Watson’s charm. But can he, Petra, Grant, or anyone else unravel the Mary Celeste mystery?

Martin’s novel is ambitious–often overly so–and one certainly takes a risk when assigning fictional events and thoughts to well-known historical people. When this novel works best, Martin conjures images plucked from Tennyson, Melville, Stephenson, and Conrad; when she misfires, the novel drags under the weight of contrivance and turgid prose. Mostly it works because the central mystery continues to intrigue more than 140 years after the fact. Does Martin solve that mystery? It would be wrong of me to say.

Rob Weir  

Nistha Raj Debut is Sensational

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NISTHA RAJ

Exit 1

Self-Released

* * * *

If you mixed the lonesome fiddle sounds of Mark O’Connor with the sweeping majesty of Alasdair Fraser, and the classical precision of Yehudi Menuhin, you’d still be a few elements short of Nistha Raj. Transpose some of Wu Man’s pipa and Anoushka Shankar’s sitar for violin, add Christylez Bacon’s human beatbox artistry, and filter it through Hindustani traditions and you still come up short. You’d also need to add some tabla, cello, guitar, bass, harmonium, and piano. All of this adds up to a stunning debut release from Ms. Raj, who spent much of her youth in Houston and is classically trained in both Western and Hindustani violin. This is an album of many moods, beginning with “Shivranjnai,” a reworked raga that sounds like Exit I might have been somewhere in Appalachia. Or is it on the road “From China to India,” her meeting-of-cultures masala that’s part Tibetan, part Chinese, and part Hindustani? Perhaps it’s the ingress to an innovative jazz club where an alto saxophone blares, as we hear in “Jayanthi,” or somewhere in Serbia (“Adje Jano”). And just when you think Raj is overcome by wanderlust, she bends her violin notes to emulate the sitar and muse upon traditional alaps and ragas (“Gravity” and “Alibi”). Hell’s bells––she even plays her instrument while sitting cross-legged on the floor. Expected only the unexpected! Rob Weir

Check her out: http://nistharaj.com/galleries/#prettyPhoto/0/

Debra Cowan's Among Friends: A Night at the Folk Club

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DEBRA COWAN

Among Friends

Muzzy Music MHM812

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Here’s a CD that worth ordering online (dcowan@DebraCowan.com). The life of an independent folk musician is such a peripatetic one that performers delight in those tour stops that welcomed you like a family member. One of Massachusetts-based singer Debra Cowan’s favorite haunts is the Bacca Pipes Folk Club in West Yorkshire, England. Back in 2012 she decided to make a homespun live album, Among Friends, which she mostly sells just at her shows and online. For those unfamiliar with the concept, folk clubs once proliferated though, alas, they are increasingly rare these days. Think a organized version of a house concert in that they book entire seasons rather than one-off events, but they have the same intimacy as house concerts. That is to say, performers generally play before dozens rather than multitudes and those in attendance are hardcore devotees of acoustic music.

Among Friends is typical of folk club offerings––a few well known traditional songs (“Darlin’ Corey,” “Star in the East”), a few covers, lots of audience participation, and easy interaction between performers and spectators. Cowan has a big voice––one that can make you quake without instrumentation. Her take on “Darlin’ Corey” is one of my favorites of that old chestnut. We also hear her being a bit silly on her piratical cover of Jerry Bryant’s “The Dreadnaught Mutiny,” and in prodding the audience into a faux opera refrain on “Good Fish Chowder.” One of the crucial elements of cultivating a home away from home is knowing what’s important to locals. West Yorkshire was once a British mining and industrial center and retains strong working-class identity. There are several fine labor songs on this collection, including covers of two John O’Connor songs––“A Cold Day in November” and “Carpal Tunnel.” Two other standouts are “The Great Fast Food Strike,” the inspiring tale of how six Ohio McDonald’s workers stood up to the tyrannical clown who managed their shop; and “Dad’s Dinner Pail,” a nostalgic remembrance of shop culture.

Call this one a small gem––one as unpretentious as, well, a well-established folk club filled with locals that cherish a pleasant night of song.  --Rob Weir

War Horse, the Play: Imagination Trumps CGI

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Joey the 'Horse'

I’ve just had a glorious and magical evening. After getting shut out of the play War Horse in both New York and London, I finally caught it in a local cinema, courtesy of a National Theater Live broadcast from London. Viewing an NT Live! production in an American cinema isn’t as good as strolling the South Bank of the Thames before taking in a show, but it’s cheaper and the view is better. But that’s not what has me juiced about seeing War Horse.

The play is touching, sweet, and moving–a sort of My Friend Flicka adapted for the trenches of World War One. A cynic make say that the narrative is a bit ‘thin,’ and so it is, but it’s a different kind of storytelling. It’s the kind that lives in the imagination and asks viewers to fill in the blanks in ways that films, video games, and CGI effects sometimes fail to engage both brain and heart. For those who think maybe we’ve become too slick for our own good, the play proves that the simple done well triumphs detached sophistication. Think I exaggerate? Director Nick Stafford did something very few have done: he kicked Stephen Spielberg’s butt.

As I’m sure you know, in 2011 Spielberg brought War Horse to the screen. It was neither a hit nor a bomb. The movie cost $70 million to make and it covered costs in the U.S. market–just barely; it ranks a mere 22^nd (of 27) on the Spielberg movie moneymaking machine. The play War Horse made more on American stages than Spielberg on the screen. The London numbers are astronomical–as are those in Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney, Dublin, and Berlin. In addition, they play generates millions more though NT Live broadcasts. Now consider that there are roughly 260 professional theaters in the entire of the United States and over 40,000 movie screens. Spielberg’s film may have made marginally more money through foreign and DVD releases, but if you break it down by revenue-per-venue, Stafford creamed him.

How did a guy working with a bare stage, a revolving turntable, some sticks, a swath of torn sheet, a slide projector, and puppets trump the king of movie fantasy? Simple: Stafford beat him at his own game. Spielberg told us the story; Stafford made us feel it. Spielberg showed us; Stafford asked us to dream. Spielberg gave us stunning detailed visuals; Stafford gave us bare bone essentials and invited us to imagine. The play’s ‘horses’ are little more than thin metal rods and gears held together by cable and covered in strips of leather. As many as six puppeteers at a time work the ‘horses,’ some partially visual inside the exoskeletons and others in plain view manipulating the puppets. Except, soon, we don’t see them at all. In our mind’s eye chestnut red “Joey” and midnight black “Topsoil” are mighty steeds. There is a moment in the play in which Joey is an awkward colt being trained by teenaged Albert. As he is being galloped around and around in a circle, the colt puppet frame vanishes and Albert is astride a stallion. The audience gasped. Game, set, and match to Stafford.

But I have not come to bury Stephen Spielberg–rather to praise flights of fancy. We live in an information age, but we sometimes take this too literally. Too much information can overwhelm; it can also blunt creativity, fantasy, and thought. Sometimes we confuse images with imagery. Like him or not, Stephen Spielberg is a master storyteller, but at least in this case, he gave us too many pictures and left too little to the imagination.

I was exhilarated when I left War Horse. I felt that sense of wonderment that was so strong when I was a boy and (alas!) is under exercised by most adults, me included. I experienced the rapture that comes from actively engaging in a story rather than passively receiving it. It was–magic. All hail the wizards, shanachies, tellers of tall tales, wordsmiths, raconteurs, fabulists, poets, actors, minstrels, sleight-of-hand con men, and other casters of cantrips who amuse us, but also have the power to make us muse.  Rob Weir

A New Matt and Shannon Heaton for St. Patrick's Day

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MATT and SHANNON HEATON

Tell You in Earnest

www.mattandshannonheaton.com

* * * ½

Just in time for St. Paddy’s Day–a new CD by Matt and Shannon Heaton. This Boston-based duo is best known for their spirited instrumental duets–Matt on various guitars and bouzouki, and Shannon on flute and accordion. This time, though, they dust off their vocal chops on a tight ten-track release themed on conversations between men and women. It opens with “Cruel Salt Sea,” a delightful variant of “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight” (Child Ballad # 4) in which the rogue is the victim, not the maiden. Okay so the lady goes down with her paramour in “Demon Lover,” but most of the dialogues between the sexes are less harrowing than these two. In fact, the Heatons have impressively assembled songs in which women tend to fare better than men. If you think that’s an easy task, sample some old ballad texts and get back to me. Poor Johnny ends up love struck and alone in “Lovely Annie,” William returns to Nancy in “Mantle of Green,” and soldier Ted comes home to his mother, “Mrs. McGrath,” albeit missing his legs.

These song titles may sound familiar to you. Indeed, most are centuries’ old. But one of the release’s small surprises is that most of the arrangements are less familiar. Another is the vocal work. Shannon usually stands before the microphone with her flute; if you’ve not heard her sing much, you will be pleasantly surprised by her warm and melodious tones. Matt also takes a few leads. He lacks Shannon’s range, but his light tenor voice offers contrast–always important for a duo album. The one misstep, in my view, was the decision to rearrange Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightening” as if it might be a recent Irish ballad. This song screams out of for grit, attitude, and insouciance, not a smooth rendition. and especially not one in which the guitar plays, so to speak, second fiddle. But nine out of ten will get you an A- and that’s pretty darn good. And I bet there’s one thing on this album you’ve never heard: the Thai ballad “Mon Rak Dawk Kam Tai” arranged for cello and electric guitar. Okay, it’s not a St. Patrick’s Day selection, but wash down your curry with a Guinness and you’ll be fine.

Rob Weir  

PS--The album won't be officially released until April 5, but you can order it now and hear bits of it on the Heatons' Website. 

Soft Pick II: Yankees to Top AL East

Jeter to Go Out with Glory?

The only thing that would surprise me about the American League East would be if the Blue Jays won it. I don’t think the Orioles can either, but I really don’t see a clear favorite among the Red Sox, Rays, and Yankees. Each has big uncertainties and the division is so competitive that 88 victories might be enough.

The Red Sox won the World Series last year, when the experts picked them to finish last. This year they’re picked to win. Uh oh. No matter who you root for, you have to love the scrappy Pedroia, the affable Ortiz, and the blue-collar ethos of Victorino. There are, however, looming questions. Bogaerts may be the shortstop of the future, but when does that begin? Which Middlebrooks shows up, the formerly promising guy, or the recent disappointing one? Can Bradley replace Ellsbury? Will Grady Sizemore ever again be healthy? Can Napoli stay hale? Gomes, Nava, Uehara–go-to guys, or career years in 2013? Is Pierzynski the kind of poison they jettisoned after 2012?  Lester and Buchholtz head a talented staff, though I’ve never been sold on Lackey and I wonder how much Peavy has left. Lots of arms at Pawtucket, but until they perform in Boston, they are as useful as an untested postulate.

The Rays are who they always are–great pitchers heading a makeshift lineup. Price, Cobb, Archer, Moore, and Hellickson (currently injured) make up the deepest staff in baseball. If healthy, Balfour gives them a for-real closer. Beyond this, the Rays need to pray that Myers is all he’s cracked up to be, that Longoria isn’t hurt again, and that Zobrist and Loney duplicate 2013, because the rest of these guys couldn’t get hits in heavy traffic. As usual, I think the Rays will be good, but about $30 million in payroll short of being great.

The Yankees? I honestly have no idea. They had nothing last year except Cano and still won 85 games. Are they 5 or 6 games better with McCann, Ellsbury, Beltrán, and Tanaka, but not Cano? The answer begins and ends with the DL–as in avoiding it. If Texeira, Jeter, Roberts, and Sabathia stay healthy and Pineda is back from surgery, the Yankees could shock experts and go to the World Series. Soriano still has pop in his bat, Gardner runs like a deer, Kelly Johnson is usefully versatile, Tanaka has to better than Hughes, and I’m not worried about Robertson replacing Mo Rivera. Watch the DL. If the Yankees don’t dominate it, they might steal the AL East. And you know Derek Jeter will leave nothing on the table in his swan song year.

Two years ago the Orioles were on the cusp. Management let the moment slip away and it doesn’t appear that adding powered-by-steroids Cruz or the enigmatic arm of Jimenéz is enough. The O’s do have a stacked outfield in Jones, Markakis, Reinhold, and Cruz. Machado es muy machista, and Wieters is good (though not as good as advertised). Will Hardy and Davis duplicate 2013? The Orioles can definitely hit, but can they pitch? Not so much. Chen, Tillman, Britton, Norris, and Jimenéz could star in a new reality show titled Surviving on Promise. Their best arm might be Miquel González. I see the O’s on the wrong end of too many 9-6 games.

Speaking of unfulfilled promise, I’ve officially given up on the Blue Jays. Okay, they can hit: Bautista, Encarnacion. Reyes (if healthy), Rasmus, Lind…. They also strike out more than a pimply 14-year-old attending a senior high dance. Signing post-‘roids Melky Cabrera was an expensive mistake and Lawrie looks like a bust. Alas, that’s true of their hurlers as well. Drabek was supposed to make Toronto forget about Halladay; he has, but only because Halladay retired! Morrow has morphed into To-Morrow, and Happ into Happless. I still like Buerhle, but as a 4-5 guy, not an ace. Dickey is 39, was mediocre last year, and trading him after his 2012 Cy Young now looks like one of the Mets’ shrewder moves.

Predictions:

1. Yankees: Despite the holes, this looks like a much better team–if healthy. If not… call ‘em the   Tankees and push ‘em to fourth.

2. Red Sox: I simply don’t believe winning a World Series is entirely a matter of luck.

3. Rays: I’ve said it about the Rays for several years: You can’t win it all on the cheap.

4. Orioles: Which is why the Orioles will again be also-rans. Still…

5. Jays: Spending a lot of money doesn’t count if you spend it poorly. And you just don’t win in the AL East with a Walmart pitching staff.