Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,635
Written 1/31/15
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Buy it... if you loved Alexandre Desplat's totally irreverent
treatment of European musical stereotypes in the film and are willing to
chance an encounter with that hilariously insane parody music on
album.
Avoid it... if you believe you may have the genetic predisposition
towards a mental disorder, because this score's album could
substantially accelerate the development of any brain disease.
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| Desplat |
The Grand Budapest Hotel: (Alexandre Desplat) You
can count on writer and director Wes Anderson to conjure some of the
most bizarre, hairbrained comedies in the movie industry, and 2014's
The Grand Budapest Hotel is no less a frenzied character study.
Set in the fictitious European alpine country of Zubrowka during the
1930's (with portions set in the 1960's and 1980's), the plot tells of a
convoluted collection of characters fighting over wealth, prestige, and
the fate of the titular hotel, with all the awkward interactions and
deaths you would come to expect from a caper and farce worthy of the
kind of supporting cast that Anderson assembles for the project (you
have to see the full cast list to really appreciate it). The carefree
attitude and genuinely funny characters of this murder mystery, along
with the pilfering of countless stereotypes of European culture,
catapulted The Grand Budapest Hotel to endless acclaim from
critics and numerous major nominations from awards bodies, not to
mention a substantial fiscal return confirming the viability of
Anderson's wacky sense of humor. With so many characters tearing through
this blast of an ensemble cast story, as well as the indistinct setting
of the hotel itself, the music for the film must not have been something
really all that intuitive at the outset. And yet, Anderson turned to his
now regular collaborator, Alexandre Desplat, to search out and destroy
all decency that any European musical stereotype might have had. Desplat
was in the midst of a fantastic range of production in 2014 that took
him from grandiose adventure to introspective thriller within the same
year, and there may be some temptation for film music collectors to look
towards the just preceding The Monuments Men for some guidance
regarding The Grand Budapest Hotel. That would be a colossal
mistake, because the latter score is truly unlike anything film music
has heard in years, more than justifying the score's nominations for a
BAFTA and Academy Award. Desplat clearly withheld nothing in his attempt
to annihilate any Central European "sound" he could get a hold of,
yielding a score that is so overwhelmingly saturated with every
stereotypical instrumental tone from the region that the result is truly
mind-boggling. Such shameless outrage is instantly memorable in both the
best and worst of ways, failing to recall many connections to past film
music (outside of some vintage Ennio Morricone Western tones when
there's travel involved in a cue) but retaining so many basic mannerisms
of Desplat himself that you can easily place it in his own career.
Whether you like it or not, forgetting it will present
immense challenges. Desplat's approach to
The Grand Budapest
Hotel was this: take a small orchestral ensemble and augment it with
a ridiculous quantity of specialty instruments from the region,
including sometimes overblown numbers of balalaikas, cimbaloms, organs,
Alpen horns, zithers, Gregorian chanters, and yodelers. Add more
generic, but equally odd whistlers, glockenspiels, tambourines, tolling
chimes, solo bassoons, beefy low brass, prominent timpani, an incessant
snare, and a variety of other contributors of sonic uniqueness
(including almost anything you can think of that can by plucked or
precisely struck) and you have a palette that perfectly suits the wacky
notion that there was this comical place called Zubrowka. More important
than the instrumentation is the rhythmic flare typical to Desplat's
writing, these prancing rhythms the single defining key of this work. It
doesn't matter if there's a deep moment of reflection or a senseless
killing on screen, Desplat will tap away at this score's urgent
underlying rhythm. This connective tissue of the music joins with
Desplat's main theme for the work for endless repetition of the same
general pacing and progressions. Maintaining just one major theme for
the whole film is wise (could you imagine how messy a complicated
leitmotif attempt would have been?) and Desplat smartly takes that idea
and its rhythmic base and simply alters its instrumentation and demeanor
to represent each character. To say that the result is schizophrenic is
tempting, but you'd be amazed how the maintenance of the same theme
really forgives the instrumental wildness. It could make you insane,
however, on album, and that's where this score suffers from most of its
problems. The nature of the comedy requires that each silly cue be short
and succinct, so you'll risk some whiplash trying to follow the main
theme through its incarnations. You do get some consistency in the
travel cues, "Daylight Express to Lutz" and "Night Train to Nebelsbad"
(the Morricone connections), and the monastery-related and subsequent
war cues that grow out of the travel version of the theme in "Canto at
Gabelmeister's Peak" and "A Troops Barracks (Requiem for The Grand
Budapest)." These cues are a bit longer, and you could find some lasting
enjoyment from these and the choral, vaguely Nino Rota-like death
variant of the theme in "A Prayer for Madame D" and "The Family Desgoffe
Und Taxis." Mixed into the album's presentation are several source
pieces that fit nicely with Desplat's original material. Overall, this
smirk-inducing score has much to love and much to loathe, and it is the
type of work that really has to be appreciated in context to avoid
possible acceleration of any mental disorders you might be predisposed
to having.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: ***
Bias Check:
For Alexandre Desplat reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.41
(in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.22
(in 16,610 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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