The Zweigesque in Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

Home , Beware of Pity (novel), The Grand Budapest Hotel, The World of Yesterday

THE ZWEIGESQUE IN WES ANDERSON’S “THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL”

Malorie Spencer

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

August 2018

Committee:

Edgar Landgraf, Advisor

Kristie Foell ii

ABSTRACT

Edgar Landgraf, Advisor

This thesis examines the parallels between narrative structures, including frame narratives and narrative construction of identity, as well as poetic and thematic parallels that exist between the writings of Stefan Zweig and the Wes Anderson film, The Grand Budapest Hotel. These parallels are discussed in order to substantiate Anderson’s claim that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a zweigesque film despite the fact that it is not a direct film adaptation of any one Zweig work.

Anderson’s adaptations of zweigesque elements show that Zweig’s writings continue to be relevant today. These adaptations demonstrate the intricate ways in which narrative devices can be used to construct stories and reconstruct history. By drawing on thematic and stylistic elements of Zweig’s writings, Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel raises broader questions about both the necessity of narratives and their shortcomings in the construction of identity;

Anderson’s characters both rely on and challenge the ways identity is constructed through narrative.

This thesis shows how the zweigesque in Anderson’s film is able to challenge how history is viewed and how people conceptualize and relate to their continually changing notions of identity. iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my family for their encouragement throughout the process of writing this thesis. I am unable to express how important their kind and reassuring words have been to me. To my parents, specifically, I would like to express my gratitude for instilling in me a love of literature at a very early age.

My friends and colleagues are also deserving of much thanks for their willingness to put up with my passionate rants about my research and writing and for all of the help and reassurance they provided me when I was stressed out.

I would also like to thank my advisors, Dr. Edgar Landgraf and Dr. Kristie Foell, for their patient reading of endless drafts of this thesis and for their helpful critiques, suggestions, and feedback. Their belief in my abilities was crucial to my completion of this thesis.

Additionally, I would like to thank my wonderful high school German teachers, Frau

Kelly (Rostedt) Jessup and Frau Karen (DeBaldo) Greenwood, without whom I would have never been able to pursue an MA in German. iv

"...ich bin noch heute überzeugt, dass man ein ausgezeichneter Philosoph, Historiker, Philologe,

Jurist und was immer werden kann, ohne je eine Universität oder sogar ein Gymnasium besucht

zu haben…So praktisch, handlich und heilsam der akademische Betrieb für die

Durchschnittsbegabung sein mag, so entbehrlich scheint er mir für individuell produktive

Naturen, bei denen er sich sogar im Sinn einer Hemmung auszuwirken vermag."

- Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern 81-82 v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER I NARRATIVE STRUCTURES ...... 7

Frame Narratives ...... 9

Narrative Construction of Identity ...... 22

CHAPTER II POETIC AND THEMATIC ELEMENTS ...... 30

CONCLUSION ...... 49

WORKS CITED ...... 51 1

INTRODUCTION

The film The Grand Budapest Hotel, both written and directed by the acclaimed American filmmaker Wes Anderson, was released in the United States in March of 2014. Despite the fact that this was not a prime release date, the film was an enormous success (Crothers Dilley 52).

The Box Office earnings for the film were approximately $175 Million, and the film went on to be nominated for and win several awards including the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best

Motion Picture in the category of Musicals and Comedies. The film had a wide viewership, and was especially well-received among European audiences, winning numerous awards at various

European film festivals. Additionally, the soundtrack of the film, composed by the equally well- known and highly acclaimed composer Alexandre Desplat, received the 2014 Golden Globe

Award for best soundtrack. In addition to having a spectacular director, writer, and composer, the incredible cast list is also worth noting. A cast of talented actors is no guarantee of success, but at least with regard to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the long line-up of A-list actors certainly did not harm the film’s chances for success. Among the film’s cast are Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray

Abraham, Jude Law, Tilda Swinton, and Adrien Brody, just to name a few.

Notoriety and talent are helpful elements in the production of a successful film, but without a story to be told, there can be no film. Wes Anderson wrote the screenplay for The

Grand Budapest Hotel, a screenplay that is a literary work in its own right. Anderson is a talented writer and story-teller, but behind the idea for the film and the screenplay is excellent source material upon which he was able to build his own story. There is one particular literary 2 figure to whom Anderson attributes much of his inspiration for the film, but that important figure is not immediately mentioned.

Approximately ninety-three minutes after having first been drawn into the movie, the viewer is made privy to whose works provided the impulse for the film and resulted in the birth of such a stunningly captivating cinematographic work. As the yodeling of the soundtrack continues, the screen turns black and the words “Inspired by the Writings of Stefan Zweig” appear. But who is this Stefan Zweig fellow? Why is his name so unfamiliar despite the fact that his writings were the inspiration for a film as vivid and captivating as The Grand Budapest

Hotel?

Although most American viewers have probably not stumbled across the writings of this

Austrian Jew who lived from 1881 to 1942, Zweig was one of the most widely-read and extensively translated authors of his time. To assist curious viewers in filling in this gap in their knowledge of 20th century Austrian literature, Wes Anderson gathered English translations of the Stefan Zweig writings to which he attributes the greatest amount of significance for The

Grand Budapest Hotel, and they were published together in the collection entitled The Society of the Crossed Keys. This book is prefaced by an interview between Wes Anderson and George

Prochnik, the author of the biography The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the

World. In this interview Prochnik makes the following statement:

When I was first reading Zweig…I would ask very educated friends of mine in the

United States about him, and none of them knew who he was. Part of what really got me

to also write a book about him was the sense that his erasure was so violent. I came to

know slightly Zweig’s step niece…I remember at one point she told me that he would be

completely forgotten. (The Society of the Crossed Keys 21) 3

After hearing this, Anderson goes on to express his distress at the thought of what it would be like “to be erased in his mother tongue” (The Society of the Crossed Keys 21). The level to which Zweig was erased within the German-speaking world is slightly exaggerated by

Prochnik and Anderson, but there was certainly an attempt to erase Zweig. Having been deemed

“degenerate” like all other Jewish authors, books written by him were burned during the Nazi era. Despite the fact that it was well-received by the public, the Strauss opera Die schweigsame

Frau (The Silent Woman) for which Zweig wrote the libretto was banned by the Nazi Regime shortly after its premiere because Strauss insisted upon continuing to credit Zweig in the program as the librettist despite the fact that Zweig was a Jew (The Society of the Crossed Keys 21). An author as important as Zweig could not be completely erased from Austrian Literature, and his

Schachnovelle (Chess Story) is still commonly read in schools in the German-speaking world today. Additionally, there have been many German-language film adaptations of his works. The most recently-released film related to Zweig is the 2016 biographical film Vor der Morgenröte

(Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) by director Maria Schrader.

Stefan Zweig would, without a doubt, have remained an even stronger presence in the world of international literature had there not been such efforts to erase him, but thanks to the avid appreciation of many admirers, Stefan Zweig’s works were ultimately able to weather even the harshest efforts to eliminate him from literary history. Wes Anderson’s film The Grand

Budapest Hotel continues to expand that effort to restore and preserve Zweig’s writings for a worldwide audience. Anderson happened to stumble across the Stefan Zweig novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity) in a Paris bookstore (Crothers Dilley 52). That particular novel is an example of Zweig’s use of the frame narrative. Among the many topics and themes of

Ungeduld des Herzens that can also be found in The Grand Budapest Hotel are its tragic ending, 4 the prominence of the military, and the lavish lifestyle of the Kekesfalva family. The Kekesfalva family is of Hungarian descent, creating an association early on for Anderson between Zweig and Hungary and consequently, Budapest, the name that stands at the heart of the film. Thusly began Anderson’s further exploration into Zweig’s writings which ultimately inspired him to create a film that, seventy-two years after Zweig’s tragic suicide in exile in Petrópolis, Brazil, brings the vivid essence of many of Zweig’s works to life again.

Due to the fact that The Grand Budapest Hotel is not, in fact, a direct film adaptation of any one particular Zweig work, stating at the end of the film that Stefan Zweig’s writing served as inspiration for the film could be considered quite an audacious statement. That is exactly the issue that Paul Holdengräber raised in an interview with Wes Anderson at the New York Public

Library on February 27, 2014. In reference to crediting Zweig’s writings as inspiration for the film, Holdengräber said to Anderson, “I think this is an incredibly bold move on your part”

(“Wes Anderson on Stefan Zweig” 00:44-00:49). Anderson’s response was that The Grand

Budapest Hotel is “more like me trying to do a zweigesque thing” (“Wes Anderson on Stefan

Zweig” 01:41-01:47). Seeing Zweig’s works listed as a source of inspiration during the end credits of the film may come across as a surprise even to viewers who are familiar with Zweig, but upon viewing the film a second time with this source of inspiration in mind, the zweigesque characteristics should become clear to anyone who has done even the most basic reading of the

Zweig oeuvre. Claiming that the writings of Stefan Zweig served as inspiration for this film is, then, not audacious at all, and in this thesis, I will explore the features of The Grand Budapest

Hotel that make this Wes Anderson film zweigesque.

To do so I will examine various narratological, linguistic, thematic, and stylistic similarities between the writings of Stefan Zweig and the Wes Anderson film The Grand 5

Budapest Hotel. There are many similarities between Zweig and Anderson that contribute to their artistic compatibility, but at the same time, they are two unique artists. In writing and directing The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson was not, however, attempting to be Stefan

Zweig. It is important to note that the remark at the end of the film is not “Based on the Writings of Stefan Zweig.” “Inspired by” and not “based on” might seem like a slight difference in word choice that makes all the difference. The Grand Budapest Hotel is still undeniably a Wes

Anderson film that drew inspiration from Zweig. Anderson manages to intertwine many core elements of Zweig’s works with elements that are ever-present in all of Anderson’s films. He seeks to bring out the similarities between his artistic style and Zweig’s artistic style, but rather than merely creating a film adaptation of one of Zweig’s works, Anderson recognized the uniqueness of Zweig’s writings and instead sought to find inspiration in Zweig’s style of writing, thus creating a film that pays homage to Zweig while maintaining its own Wes Anderson uniqueness.

In Chapter One, I will discuss the narratological parallels between The Grand Budapest

Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig, paying particular attention to the writings to which Wes

Anderson specifically attributes inspiration for the film in the collection The Society of the

Crossed Keys. The first elements I will discuss are elements of intertextuality as outlined by the

French literary theorist Gérard Genette. This discussion will provide context for the subsequent discussion of how the use of frame narratives, autobiographical elements, and other narrative structures contribute to the construction of identity in Zweig’s writings and Anderson’s film.

This relationship is central to Zweig’s writings, and its adoption in The Grand Budapest Hotel confers a zweigesque style upon the film. 6

In Chapter Two, I will discuss the zweigesque poetic and thematic elements of the film.

Anderson’s strategic use of poetry throughout the film not only lends it a zweigesque nature by being reminiscent of Zweig’s oftentimes excessively poetic and flowery writing, but the actual content of these poems often alludes to Zweig himself and events in Zweig’s life as well. Other zweigesque elements that will be discussed in Chapter Two are the underlying themes of darkness and death that lie beneath the surface of a seemingly comic and “confectionary” story

(Zoller Seitz 9). This discussion of the zweigesque elements that Anderson uses in The Grand

Budapest Hotel will contribute to a greater understanding of why narrative is importance for individuals and, consequently, why a zweigesque narrative is appealing to audiences today.

CHAPTER I NARRATIVE STRUCTURES

Despite his structuralist leanings, Gérard Genette (June 7, 1930-May11, 2018) remains an important figure in the field of narratology. Genette distinguishes five forms of intertextuality, also referred to as transtextuality. Those five forms are a more selectively defined form of intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, hypertextuality, and architextuality. The extent to which The Grand Budapest Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig fit into these categories varies, but paratextuality and hypertextuality are the categories of intertextuality most pertinent to this discussion.

Briefly characterized, paratextuality refers to the elements that surround a text. For example, the title is part of the paratext of the main text of a book, the main text being the part of the text where the story itself is told. This particular type of paratext is categorized more specifically as part of the peritext. Also contained within the paratext is the epitext, which consists of outside texts such as interviews or reviews. The paratext is part of the context a reader may take into consideration when reading a main text.

Although the film The Grand Budapest Hotel is not a literary text, it has a dialog which is a text, and the film conveys a narrative, so the concepts of intertextuality can be applied to it just as well. Elements of the paratext of The Grand Budapest Hotel inform how the viewer perceives, interprets, and experiences the film. 8

One important part of the paratext of Anderson’s film is the statement “Inspired by the

Writings of Stefan Zweig” at the beginning of the end credits. This particular aspect of the paratext, specifically the peritext, enables readers familiar with Zweig to view the film with an eye for all that is zweigesque.

Another notable part of the paratext, specifically a part of the epitext is the book The

Society of the Crossed Keys. In addition to this book being prefaced with an interview about the film, this book contains a collection of the writings of Stefan Zweig to which Wes Anderson attributed inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel. This declaration provides readers with a more narrowed selection of writings from which to note parallels and potential sources of inspiration. The contents of this book serve to qualify the statement at the end of the film and further specify the context of the film itself.

The second element of transtextuality as defined by Genette most relevant to this particular discussion is hypertextuality. Hypertextuality refers to the interrelatedness of one text to at least one other separate and earlier text. In this instance, hypertextuality pertains to the interrelatedness of the screenplay of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the writings of Stefan Zweig that existed prior to the film’s creation. The film “transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends” the hypotext, the already existing texts of Stefan Zweig (Simandan1). That means that this relationship can exist even when a screenplay is not a direct adaptation of one particular literary work. The relationship between the hypertext and the hypotext does not have to be as strong as the relationship would be for a direct film adaptation because a “hypertext can be read either for its own individual value or in relation to its hypotext,” (Simandan). That is why the film can be

1 Voicu Mihnea Simandan primarily writes fiction novels, but his analysis and understanding of Genette’s discussion of intertextuality was integral to the writing of his intertextual study The Matrix and the Alice Books. 9 enjoyed and appreciated just as well by viewers who are completely unfamiliar with Zweig. No background information from his writings is integral to understanding the film; a knowledge of

Zweig’s works, however, provides a different contextual understanding of the film. Such knowledge just frames the film in a different way. The hypertextual link between Zweig’s texts and The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of the ways in which the zweigesque is able to manifest itself in the film.

Inspiration is an abstract concept, so it can be difficult to identify concrete examples of inspiration. Understanding the phrase “Inspired by the Writings of Stefan Zweig” as part of the paratext of The Grand Budapest Hotel and examining the book The Society of the Crossed Keys as a hypotext of the film provides a more concrete basis from which to analyze this inspiration.

The manifestations of this interrelatedness can be seen in the form of parallel structures and themes found in the writings of Stefan Zweig and Anderson’s film. These more concrete parallels can now be explored in more detail.

Frame Narratives

One particularly noteworthy similarity between the writings of Stefan Zweig and The Grand

Budapest Hotel is their usage of frame narratives. Although Zweig does not use frame narratives in all of his stories, their prevalence in his various works is above average and therefore a narrative feature often associated with him.

But what exactly is a frame narrative, and what purposes does it serve? The existence of a frame structure is not always immediately apparent in a story. All stories have some sort of narrator who tells the reader about a series of events, but the perspective from which a story is told can change, often by introducing a new narrator. A frame narrative is one method of story- 10 telling that introduces an additional narrative perspective. Because the layers of narrative with varying narrators exist within each other, the narrator of the innermost story exists as a non- narrating figure in outer narrative frames. Although frame narration often serves to delve deeper into the story, the direction of narration does not necessarily have to move continuously from an outer story to an inner story. In fact, the term frame narrative indicates that the frame exists all around the story it contains, and after the story within the frame has been told, the narration usually returns to the perspective of the outermost frame. This can also take place any time in the middle of the narration of the plot within the frame. The concept of a frame story can be compared to a set of M. C. Escher-like stairs being descended and ascended at will. Typically, a story starts and ends at the top of the stairs; it starts and ends on the same level of narration.

Frame narratives are closely linked to the genre of the novella. Some of the earliest examples of frame narratives include The Decameron and One Thousand and One Nights (Jäggi

12). The frame narrative started to become prominent in German-language literature in the 18th century, and the idea of the frame narrative was made known to German readers in 1795 in

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s text Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (Conversations of German Refugees) which is commonly recognized as the first German novella (Jäggi 11). The

German term for frame narrative, Rahmenerzählung, did not, however, immediately enter the

German lexicon. One of the earliest instances in which the word Einrahmung, which means

“framing,” was used with regard to this particular type of narrative structure was in a letter from

Brentano to Arnim in 1809. In 1914, the word Rahmenerzählung had finally been integrated into literary discourse adequately enough to be mentioned in that year’s edition of the Deutsches

Literaturlexikon (Jäggi 14). It was not yet given its own heading but was instead listed under the larger umbrella entry for novella (Jäggi 14). 11

In his extensive discussion of frame narratives, Andreas Jäggi identifies five factors typically used to define a frame narrative. The first factor is that the outer story is not an independent prose text. The second factor is that a preface, afterword, or other similar varieties of text cannot be counted as a narrative frame. Thirdly, the frame and the story contained within it must be told by different narrators. The fourth factor, although not consistently mentioned as a criterium of this type of narrative, is the oral aspect of the recounted inner story. And the fifth factor is the fact that the (two)layeredness must be a dominant structural element of the narrative.

This fifth factor differentiates frame narratives from epic poetry that begins with an epic invocation which is a sort of frame, but not a dominant structural element of the narrative (Jäggi

60-61).

By the time Stefan Zweig began his literary career, the frame narrative had had over a century to solidify itself in German-language literature. Zweig harnessed the dynamic storytelling components of the frame narrative to add depth and detail to many of his writings.

One particular example of Zweig’s usage of a frame narrative, an example that even contains an up and down movement between narrative frames, takes place in the 1927 novella

Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau (Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a

Woman), which is one of the Zweig stories that Anderson specifically mentioned as one of his sources of inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel (The Society of the Crossed Keys 23). The narrator of the story befriends a rather international group of strangers while staying in a guest house on the Riviera. The group gossips about another guest, a married mother, who suddenly ran off with a Frenchman. The narrator expresses an unexpectedly sympathetic and understanding view toward the woman’s actions. One of the gossipers, an English woman referred to as Mrs. C., is intrigued by the narrator’s reaction, and she asks him if he will come to 12 her room later; she has a story to get off her chest, a story she is comfortable telling him because of the unjudgmental views he had just expressed. The framed narrative describes a wild twenty- four hours some years earlier when Mrs. C. had ended up sleeping with a desperate, suicidal gambler in a hotel. Although her actions were the result of her doing everything she could to try to help him and prevent him from killing himself, she still felt incredibly guilty, and had refrained from ever telling anyone about the incident. Until she met the sympathetic stranger in the guest house, that is.

Mrs. C, the narrator of the story contained within the frame story finds it necessary on multiple occasions to pause during her narration when she reaches particularly embarrassing or distressing events in the plot. The narrator of the outermost frame narrative then takes up the mantle of narration once more to provide commentary and an attempted explanation as to why the old British woman, the narrator of the story within the frame, had to bring her narration to an abrupt halt. He describes things such as her behavior, her facial expressions, and the changes in her voice. Interruptions like this that temporarily bring the reader back into the outer frame of the narrative are typical for frame narratives for the very reason that they can be used to provide outside descriptions (Jäggi 84).

Details like these provide the reader with a greater understanding of the old woman and provide the reader with at least some idea of the feelings she might have, feelings she might not have acknowledged in her own narration due to the fact that they were triggered by actions that lay outside the boundaries of social and cultural norms. The altered perspective of narration works against the potential unreliability of the British woman as the narrator. This change in narrator also enables the frame narrator to share thoughts that at this instance Mrs. C., the British woman, would not have been privy to. He says that “Mrs. C. hielt wieder inne und stand 13 plötzlich auf. Die Stimme schien ihr nicht mehr zu gehören…es war mir peinlich, die alte Dame in ihrer Erregung zu beobachten” (“Mrs. C. paused again and stood up suddenly. Her voice no longer seemed to belong to her…it was uncomfortable for me to watch the old woman in her agitation.”; Zweig, Vierundzwanzig Stunden2).

This is an example of variable focalizations as defined by Gérard Genette. Focalization refers to how much information the narrator offers in relation to how much characters within the story know. When the narrator tells more than a character within the story knows, this is zero focalization. When the narrator tells just as much as a character knows, this is called internal focalization. The third type of focalization is external focalization and refers to when the narrator does not tell as much as a character knows (Genette 132). With variable focalizations, the type of focalization undergoes alterations, and therefore the level and type of information conveyed to the reader changes. The focalization of a story naturally undergoes an alteration when the narrative frame changes because the narrator and the figure whose perspective is being narrated changes. This change in frames and focalizations are narrative devices that Anderson and Zweig use in order to strategically tell their stories in captivating, suspense-building ways.

The type of focalization used within a narrative frame allows information to remain hidden or be revealed to the reader or viewer, build suspense or relieve tension, constructively create confusion or convey understanding. When this control over access to information is used well, the reader or viewer eagerly allows him or herself to be pulled into a story that comes across as fast-paced. In a biography about Zweig, his writing style is described as having a rapid tempo because he knew how to concentrate on the most essential elements in order to make the dramatic contours of the plot visible, and variable focalizations contribute to that idea of

2 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by Malorie Spencer. 14 visibility (Müller 84). As far as the narration in The Grand Budapest Hotel is concerned, it is an

“active, dynamic narration” that supplies additional information that cannot be gotten just by watching the film and not listening to the dialog (Zoller Seitz 177).

On many occasions throughout The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson uses narrative frames like the ones Zweig was so fond of using, but the alteration in focalization used to transition into the innermost story told in The Grand Budapest Hotel is particularly zweigesque due to how similar it is to the alteration in narrative frames used in Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau. Like Mrs. C. in Zweig’s novella, the character from The Grand Budapest

Hotel, Mr. Moustafa, is brought out of his account of past events by a sudden surge of overwhelming emotions. He says, “You see I never speak of Agatha, because even at the thought of her name I’m unable to control my emotions” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 45:33-

45:41). At this point in his narration, mention of Mr. Moustafa’s dearly beloved Agatha can no longer be avoided since her cleverness was indispensable to M. Gustave’s escape from prison.

Mr. Moustafa must take a moment to compose himself in order to be able to carry on with his narration.

As in Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau, the step back into the narrative of the most immediate frame calls for commentary from the narrator of that frame, the young writer. He states “at this point in the story, the old man fell silent and pushed aside his saddle of lamb. His eyes went blank as two stones. I could see he was in distress. (The Grand Budapest

Hotel 45:11-45:22). This narrator’s insights express things that would not have been evident from Mr. Moustafa’s perspective.

Anderson expressed his appreciation for the frame narrative by stating, “I loved the way

Zweig often sets the stage for his stories by having the narrator meet a mysterious figure who 15 goes on to tell him the whole novel” (Crothers Dilley 20). Anderson exaggerates this zweigesque use of frame narratives in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the film contains not just one additional frame of narrative, but three, for a total of four different, temporally separate levels of narration.

The previously-mentioned factors that characterize frame narratives within literature also apply to frame narratives used in films, but the visual aspect of films adds an additional method of narration; the images on the screen help to narrate the story, but without words. Although no words are spoken, the outermost frame of The Grand Budapest Hotel can still be considered a layer of narrative. This visual narration where the camera eye plays the role of the narrator is no less powerful than a spoken narrative and frames the inner story just as clearly, perhaps even more clearly than could have been done with words. Anderson’s film also challenges Jäggi’s specification that there must be separate narrators for each frame. The narrators of the second and third frame are technically both the so-called “author,” but in addition to the fact that their lives are separated temporally by 17 years, the fact that they are played by two different actors marks them as distinctly different characters. They could perhaps be viewed as the same character if they remained the narrating and narrated self, but the younger narrator takes over the first person narrative perspective and becomes his own narrating self.

The Grand Budapest Hotel begins with a “narrator” walking through a snowy cemetery.

This narrator is a young girl who lives in some indeterminate year somewhere “on the farthest eastern boundary of the European continent” in “the former Republic of Zubrowka” which was apparently “once the seat of a great empire” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 00:39). She is carrying a book as she goes to visit the statue of a beloved but unnamed author where she hangs a set of keys to add to the abundant number of keys that are already hanging there. The plaque on the 16 statue reads “In Memory of Our National Treasure” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 01:19). She turns the book over to the back cover where a photo of the author can be seen, the very same author whose statue she is visiting.

It is relevant to note that this statue bears a stark – and very likely quite intentional – resemblance to the statue of Stefan Zweig that can be found on the Kapuzinerberg in Salzburg,

Austria today. Stefan Zweig lived on the Kapuzinerberg for a time, and the statue is located on the other side of the Stefan-Zweig-Weg, a mountain path, directly across from his former residence, Kapuzinerberg 5. In addition to this commemoration of him on the Kapuzinerberg,

Stolpersteine,3 have also been installed on the path next to the front gate of his former home.

The statue-visiting girl’s actions serve to narrate the outermost frame story of the film, but the film does not dwell long on her. As soon as the viewer has been imparted with the necessary information about the author, the close-up of his face brings the viewer into the second frame of narrative as the photo of his face is replaced with a close-up of his actual face as he sits at his writing desk in his office.

This scene takes place in 1985, a fact that is made vividly clear by the décor of the office: brightly colored and boldly patterned curtains and wallpaper, an abundance of simple wooden furniture, an electric typewriter, and a rotary-dial phone. Despite the fact that the author portrayed here is quite reminiscent of Stefan Zweig, it is highly unlikely that Stefan Zweig would have lived to see the year 1985 even if he had not met an early death in 1942 when he committed

3 Directly translated, Stolpersteine are “stumbling stones” which are small metal plaques that stick up from the pavement in front of the place where a victim of the Nazi regime formerly lived, and the thought behind them is that the victims will not be forgotten because upon stumbling over them, people will take a moment to think about the lives lost. Upon the stones in front of Zweig’s former residence are engraved the names of him and the family members that lived in that house with him along with their birth dates and an acknowledgement of the fact that they were forced to flee their home because of the Nazi regime. 17 suicide with his second wife. This author looks to be in his mid-sixties, so just a little older than

Stefan Zweig was when he died. The book fragment Rausch der Verwandlung (The Post Office

Girl), was published posthumously from Zweig’s estate in 1982. This is an interesting hypertextual element because it can be viewed as Stefan Zweig undergoing a sort of poetic rebirth through the publication of this book fragment, a rebirth that is portrayed in the film.

Anderson uses this time frame in The Grand Budapest Hotel and the portrayal of the author to play with the idea of Stefan Zweig suddenly existing once more in the 1980s; he has hardly changed despite the number of years that have elapsed since he had last put pen to paper, but he is also brand new for a more modern audience in the 1980s.

“Once the public knows you’re a writer, they bring the characters and events to you, and as long as you maintain your ability to look and to carefully listen, these stories will continue to…seek you out over your lifetime” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 2:01-2:27). This is how the author sitting at his writing desk in his office begins to tell about one particular instance where a story came to him. The dialog that follows is especially interesting, not with regard to what is said, but with regard to how it is said. It is another example of how seamlessly one narrative transitions into the next. The dialog is initially spoken by the old author in 1985 played by Tom

Wilkinson, but in the transition from one sentence to the next, the voice of Jude Law suddenly replaces Wilkinson’s voice. “Suddenly” describes merely the immediacy of the transition and is not meant to imply that the change is jolting or abrupt. In fact, the opposite is true, and the transition is made even less conspicuous by the fact that neither actor can be seen during this transition. Rather, the image shown on screen is a miniature of a funicular ascending to a hotel,

The Grand Budapest Hotel. 18

This new narrator is actually just a younger version of the older author; he is the author as he existed in 1968. He is vacationing in the town of Nebelsbad in the Alps. The first two frame narratives lasted in total only approximately three minutes, so as this third story begins to stretch past that length of time, one might begin to think that the final, most interior narrative has been reached, especially since the existence of two frame narratives in a film is already a rare occurrence. But anyone, like Anderson, who has taken note of the fact that Zweig likes to have

“the narrator meet a mysterious figure who goes on to tell him the whole novel” may be clever enough to think otherwise (Crothers Dilley 20). The young author notes “I noticed a new presence in our company. A small, elderly man, smartly dressed, with an exceptionally lively, intelligent face and an immediately perceptible air of sadness” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 4:22-

4:34). This figure is furnished with just enough mystery to be a potential candidate for the narrator of yet another, deeper layer of narration.

The young author inquires as to who this figure might be, and soon discovers that he is none other than Mr. Moustafa, the owner of The Grand Budapest. Later, in the thermal baths, the young author finally has the opportunity to speak with Mr. Moustafa and ask how it is that he came to be the owner of such a renowned hotel. Mr. Moustafa invites the author to dine with him, and there he begins to tell his story. And so begins the final narrative, the main plot of the film, a plot with so many characters, twists, and turns that a summary is necessary.

It all begins with M. Gustave, the remarkably adept concierge of the famous Grand

Budapest Hotel. One of M. Gustave’s many admiring guests, Madame D, tells him that she has a bad feeling about traveling as she leaves the hotel to head back to her home, Schloss Lutz, but

M. Gustave tells her not to worry. 19

Soon afterward, the new lobby-boy-in-training, Zero Moustafa, brings M. Gustave a newspaper bearing breaking news: Madame D. has been murdered! (And tanks are on the border.) M. Gustave decides that he needs to go to Madame D’s home immediately, and he brings Zero along to assist him.

The train they take to Schloss Lutz is stopped for a military inspection at the border, and due to a disagreement about Zero’s right to travel with only migratory status, M. Gustave gets into a brawl with the military officers. This issue is resolved with the arrival of the high-ranking officer, Henckels, son of previous guests at the Grand Budapest, who grants Zero a temporary travel permit as a favor for the well-liked M. Gustave.

The two hotel employees are then able to travel on to Schloss Lutz where Deputy Kovacs reads Madame D’s last will and testimony in which the painting Boy with Apple is bequeathed to

M. Gustave. Madame D’s son, Dmitri, raises objections to this bequest, and knowing that it will be difficult to get the item that has been bequeathed to him from the greedy hands of Dmitri, M.

Gustave steals the painting with the help of Schloss Lutz employee, Serge X, who surreptitiously sticks an envelope labeled “Confidential” into the frame of the painting.

Upon returning to the Grand Budapest, M. Gustave is arrested, not on charges of theft, but rather because he has been accused of murdering Madame D. With the help of his beloved

Agatha who works at Mendl’s Bakery, Zero conjures up a plan to rescue M. Gustave by smuggling digging tools hidden in baked goods into the jail. Meanwhile, an employee of Dmitri named Jopling kills Deputy Kovacs and Serge X’s sister for interfering with the hunt for M.

Gustave. Jopling catches up with M. Gustave, Zero, and Serge X at a monastery on a mountain and murders Serge X who happens to be the only witness to the creation of Madame D’s second 20 will, a will written in the event that she was murdered. Then there is a chase down the mountain, and Jopling is pushed off of it and dies.

Back at the Grand Budapest, now converted into a military headquarters due to the war,

Agatha manages to keep Boy with Apple away from Dmitri, and in the end, the second will is discovered in its frame. Madame D. has bequeathed all of her wealth and possessions to M.

Gustave, not just Boy with Apple. This seems like a happy ending, but other sad incidents that will be mentioned later prevent that from being the case. As it turns out, things like love, friendship, and freedom are more important than wealth in ensuring a person’s happiness, and those are things that cannot be purchased back with any amount of money once they have been taken away.

Due to the fact that this story has four layers, it can be classified as a

Schachtelrahmenerzählung, the German word for a narrative with multi-level framing (Jäggi 62). A

Schachtel is a box which is a fitting metaphorical term because the structure of the narrative resembles a box within a box within a box within a box (see Fig. 1). A comparison used in English- Fig. 1. Frame narrative diagram for The Grand Budapest Hotel language analysis of the film is the analogy to a

“Russian-nesting-doll” (Zoller Seitz 182). A story could theoretically utilize an infinite number of boxes within boxes, but narratives with more than two layers are rare (Jäggi 72). As helpful as this box metaphor can be in visualizing the multi-frame narrative of The Grand Budapest

Hotel, this metaphor falls short in its ability to represent the movement back and forth between 21 layers of narrative. Fig. 2 is a diagram, similar to the diagrams used by Andreas Jäggi in his extensive analysis of frame narratives, that illustrates the various frames of the narrative using boxes of varying lengths to represent the approximate proportional relationships of the film runtime spent in each narrative frame (see Fig. 2). This diagram is able to more clearly represent the movement between layers of narrative.

Fig. 2. Frame Narrative diagram for The Grand Budapest Hotel

One particular cinematographic element of note is the fact that the aspect ratio for each narrative frame is different (Crothers Dilley 190). This provides a visual indicator of the level of narrative, an indicator that makes it easier for the viewer to distinguish between the narrative frames; the changes between narrative frames generally occur so seamlessly that they can be very easy to miss. The aspect ratio of the outermost frame is 1.85:1, which is a more modern aspect ratio (Crothers Dilley 190). The frame ratio for the narrative that takes place in 1985 is also 1.85:1, but the frame has a slightly smaller height and width which creates a visual distinction between the two time periods similar to the distinction that would be made by using two different aspect ratios (Zoller Seitz 246). The narrative that takes place in 1968 is filmed with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, an aspect ratio commonly used in films in the 1960s (Crothers

Dilley 190). And the core story that takes place in 1932 has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 which was also the typical aspect ratio of films from that era (Crothers Dilley 190). Just as each story is framed by another story that provides it with a deeper context, each story is contextualized and framed by its own visual aspect ratio as well. 22

In addition to narrative frames and the framing of shots by the aspect ratio, there are various other instances where other forms of frames are used in the film, some more metaphorical and some more concrete. Not only are scenes framed by the outer perimeter of the screen, but windows and doors are used frequently to frame characters visually within scenes.

The central object of interest within the film is a painting contained within a vitally important physical frame into which is tucked the final version of Madame D’s last will and testament. M.

Gustave is even framed for the murder of Madame D. and sent to jail. The ubiquity of frames is practically impossible to overlook (“Movies with Mikey” 08:19-08:51).

Narrative Construction of Identity

Anderson also invokes Zweig in his use of autobiographical narrative. Stefan Zweig’s autobiography is called Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday). He begins his autobiography with the statement, “Ich habe meiner Person niemals so viel Wichtigkeit beigemessen, dass es mich verlockt hätte, anderen die Geschichten meines Lebens zu erzählen”

(“I have never attributed enough importance to myself that I would have been tempted to tell others the story of my life.”; Die Welt von Gestern 5). Despite questioning the importance of his own life and is relevance to others in this sentence, this is how he begins to recount the story of his own life, his autobiography.

This hesitation and doubt about whether or not his life was worthy enough source material for an autobiography has caused his autobiography to be described often as being

“impersonal” or “super-personal” (Barbancho Galdós 109). Zweig tends to use a more documentary-like writing style than is typical for an autobiography. This outside perspective mirrors the style of the biographies he had previously written as well as his works of pure fiction. 23

Even in autobiographies, however, the narrator and the protagonist are not the same.

The Stefan Zweig who writes Die Welt von Gestern in the early 1940s is a completely different person than the Stefan Zweig whose life is being described in his autobiography. There is a self- reflective element that distinguishes his narrating self from his narrated self, and a description of a person can never be a complete, exact representation of that person.

Narration is essential to the construction of identity. The prevalence of narrative frames in Zweig’s writings and in The Grand Budapest Hotel necessitates the presence of many narrators, lots of narration, and, followingly, the construction of the identities of the various narrators.

Michael Bamberg identifies three “dilemmas” that arise in any attempt to construct identity through narrative (Bamberg 132)4. The first of these dilemmas concerns the assumption of sameness when surrounded by constant change. In his autobiography, Stefan Zweig makes it clear that this is a dilemma that struck him particularly harshly. His autobiographical narration focuses on the rapid change that took place in society when his beloved world of security suddenly vanished. Zweig’s nostalgic narration indicates that this change brought him great distress and was so much of a dilemma that he was ultimately unable to cope with it. This is also a severe dilemma for Mr. Moustafa in The Grand Budapest Hotel, although not quite to the extent to which it posed a problem for Zweig. Mr. Moustafa’s narration is full of a deep sadness.

He chooses to go on living, but all happiness has vanished from him because the changing times took the source of his happiness from him when his beloved Agatha died at a young age. One

4 In his article “Identity and Narration,” Michael Bamberg discusses how identity is constructed through narratives. His discussion of both the necessity and shortcomings of narratives aids in understanding how and why both Zweig and Anderson construct characters’ identities through narrative and the challenges they face in doing so. 24 side of the dilemma is the partial sense of feeling that one has not changed in the same way as the world has changed, but the other side of this dilemma comes from not acknowledging the change that necessarily occurs in an individual over time, especially in the face of trauma.

Traumatic incidents like the loss of one’s way of life or the loss of a loved one fundamentally change who a person is and how they view themselves and their surroundings, so the sameness that narratives tend to suggest between “I” and “he” is problematic.

The second dilemma mentioned by Bamberg is the dilemma of uniqueness versus sameness. All individuals are unique, but at the same time, the word “individual” suggests a universal sameness. The uniting and universal humanness of all individuals poses a simultaneous, contradictory, and confusing sameness in the face of being unique. The value of narratives in Western societies since the 18th century has hinged upon the belief in the uniqueness and singularity of a person. Stefan Zweig’s autobiography not only focuses on the singularity typical of narratives, but also on his inherent human sameness.

The universality of humanity is something that Stefan Zweig embraced whole-heartedly.

He dreamed of seeing a united Europe, and he was fascinated by people he had the privilege of meeting from all cultures and countries around the world. Yet despite this, there were aspects of his individuality that were so discordant with the rest of humanity that he felt incompatible with the world’s changed society. Many of the characters he wrote about feel this same incompatibility with the rest of the world, and this causes them to have severe internal conflicts that often result in fits of distressed passion. For example, the woman mentioned in the outer frame story of Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau seems at first to lead a modest, married life, but she also possessed some kind of latent desire that made her different from the rest of society, and it ultimately came to fruition in the form of running off with a 25

Frenchman. In Rausch der Verwandlung, the main character did not realize the extent of her unhappiness living the normal life expected of her until she was able to temporarily go live a life of luxury. After the extent of her unhappiness was made aware to her, she was driven to a wild plot that would enable her to return to the kind of life that made her feel special and unique. This desire to feel unique and special can be found in The Grand Budapest Hotel with the love affairs that M. Gustave has. All of the women with whom he has affairs seek to be unique by being

“rich, old, insecure, vain, superficial, blonde, needy,” but these are things that end up making them all essentially the same (The Grand Budapest Hotel 15:10-15:20). The real dilemma that arises from this contradiction between individuality and sameness comes from the realization that to find one’s own individuality by breaking social norms has, itself, become a social norm.

The third dilemma that Bamberg highlights is the dilemma of agency (Bamberg 133).

There are two directions involved in agency, one being the ability of an individual to assert his or her identity by influencing the surrounding world, and the other being the way that the surrounding world has power over individuals and the identities they create for themselves.

Identity construction is not something over which individuals have complete control despite the fact that they do have some agency in the world. Being labeled as a Jew is the way in which this power that the world has on identity is most apparent in Stefan Zweig’s life. This aspect of his assigned identity placed limitations on him, on what he was permitted to do, and even on how he perceived his surroundings and himself. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, Zero’s ability to construct his own identity was also limited by the labels given to him by the society in which he lived. As an immigrant, he was restricted by things ranging from stereotypes against him to being required to fill out additional paperwork just to travel where he wanted to go. Society also limited his agency by using his educational and work experience as factors to define him. 26

Outside pressures like these are part of the push and pull with which individuals must negotiate as they constantly change how they construct their own identities. Narratives tend to exaggerate the control individuals have over their narratively-created constructions of identity, when often that control is an illusion.

Bamberg notes that identities are contradictory, often created within the framework of institutions, and “situated within a broader socio-historical context” (Bamberg 133). For example, Stefan Zweig’s position as an upper-class Jewish writer growing up in turn-of-the- century Vienna is the context from which he creates his own identity in his autobiography. It is also a context that, in addition to the imagined institutions and societal structures Zweig makes up in his works of fiction, aids in the construction of the identities of the characters he invents and writes about. But Anderson and Zweig’s often fantastic and exaggerated narratives challenge these assumptions about agency and identity. Their narrators are able to tell gripping stories despite refusing to adhere to the outside forces of reality. This demonstrates that the narrators’ authorial control is not completely illusory; they have enough power and agency to be able to shape and bend reality and the reality of their own identities in their narratives.

In his discussion on “Identity and Narration,” Bamberg discusses how people try to construct their own identities by assigning a narrative plot to their lives even though such a plot does not exist (Bamberg 136). Projecting a narrative structure onto an actual human life necessitates that additional meaning and interrelatedness is ascribed to events. Creating plots is an essential and expected aspect of fictional stories, and as an author of many fictional stories,

Stefan Zweig has a particularly strong tendency to ascribe a narrative plot to his own life as if it were one of his fictional stories. Throughout his autobiography, he constantly makes statements about how one particular moment resulted in something of vital importance to the world. This 27 tendency can be found all throughout his writing, not just in his autobiography. For example, the book Sternstunden der Menschheit (Decisive Moments in History) is one example where this tendency is already made obvious by the mere title of the book.

Zweig was a storyteller, and in creating stories, he expressed the ways in which he attributed meaning to various aspects of life, but it is important to consider “whether life really has the purpose and meaningfulness that narrative theorists” and writers of narratives

“metaphorically attempt to attribute to it” (Bamberg 138). Narrativization and its utilization of schemata is a “response to the threat of a discontinuous and seemingly meaningless life.”

(Bamberg 136). Although this method of ascribing meaning to life can temporarily be helpful, its constructedness means that it can fall apart, and if it falls apart, that can have devastating consequences.

That is not to say that “seeing life as storied” cannot be useful (Bamberg 136). In fact,

Bamberg argues that narration is necessary in the process of overcoming human identity dilemmas. The danger seems to arise when a life is viewed so much like a story that it becomes overly optimistic, and by both building and reducing the complexities of a life through narrativization, all kinds of expectations that inform an individual’s views and values are created, but they are expectations that are easily disappointed. This potential weakness of narrativization becomes evident in the differing worldviews of M. Gustave and Mr. Moustafa. M. Gustave prevents himself from falling prey to such incredible disappointment by balancing his optimism with a healthy amount of cynicism and refusal to ascribe too much value to narrativization. For example, although he would like to ascribe a schematic story-like significance to his job as a concierge, he recognizes that doing so would be a self-deceiving fabrication: “You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as 28 humanity. Indeed, that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant…oh fuck it”

(The Grand Budapest Hotel 22:41-22:56). The film ends with Mr. Moustafa’s contrasting optimistic affirmation of what M. Gustave would have liked to believe, and he states that “he was one of them,” that M. Gustave was one of the remaining glimmers of civilization (The

Grand Budapest Hotel 1:30:40-1:30:42). This glimmer of hope was not fatal for Mr. Moustafa, however. This line gives this dark movie as much of a happy ending as is possible given the other events of the film. Much of Stefan Zweig’s life was dark like The Grand Budapest Hotel, and he describes that darkness in his autobiography, but like Mr. Moustafa, he too tries to maintain a glimmer of hope. The last sentence of Die Welt von Gestern is “Aber jeder Schatten ist im letzten doch auch Kind des Lichts, und nur wer Helles und Dunkles, Krieg und Frieden,

Aufstieg und Niedergang erfahren, nur der hat wahrhaft gelebt” (“But every shadow is ultimately also a child of the light, and only whoever has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, advancement and downfall, only that person has truly lived.”; Die Welt von Gestern 342). Zweig tries to see the good in the bad and tries to understand why he had to suffer how he suffered. His remaining glimmer of hope stems from his belief that plot-like causality exists in his life as well.

Unfortunately, he was no mere character in a film like Mr. Moustafa.

In addition to using plots as a way of constructing identity, another element that Bamberg discusses where narrative is relevant for identity construction is the element of performance.

Although we typically think of narrative as being written, narrative existed even before humans could write. The performative aspect of narration that can be seen in spoken conversations in day-to-day life can also be seen and observed in characters in a film. The characters’ identity is not only dependent upon what they say, but also upon how they say it. This element of identity construction is less pronounced in Stefan Zweig’s written autobiography, but the film The Grand 29

Budapest Hotel slyly seeks to capture a semblance of this part of Stefan Zweig’s identity by using several characters to represent various aspects of him in the film. No one character is intended to represent Zweig, but Zweig can be seen through the performative identity construction of many of the characters (Zoller Seitz 21). This allows for the viewer to see bits and pieces of Zweig through more than just written words, and the often-contradictory natures of these various characters show that the identity of an individual is also contradictory and more complex than attempts at representing one’s identity in a simple narrative are able to do justice to.

The Grand Budapest Hotel has many storybook elements, many unrealistic elements, but so do autobiographies. Fictionalization does not, however, necessarily reduce the realness of a story that is being told. Only through narrativization – which is inherently fictionalized – can people create and challenge their sense of identity. Additionally, fictionalization has the potential to express very complex events and relationships and, in doing so, is able to represent a more real reality. By using the complex layering of various narrative frames, Zweig’s writings and The Grand Budapest Hotel are able to show the contradictions that exist in the world and the absurdity of idealizing the past

CHAPTER II POETIC AND THEMATIC ELEMENTS

“The World of Yesterday could be an alternate title for The Grand Budapest Hotel” (Zoller

Seitz 186). But even the actual title of the film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has a similar historical link to the city that stands at the heart of Zweig’s autobiography. Die Welt von

Gestern or The World of Yesterday, revolves around Vienna, the capital city of Austria. Vienna was not, however, the only capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the empire into which

Stefan Zweig was born. There were two capitals, and the other one was Budapest. Vienna and

Budapest were sister cities, parallel seats of a once great empire. That being said, they were by no means the same. Hungary maintained its own culture and some of its own unique ways of governing. Hungary had more independence from Austria than other regions of the empire.

This parallelism is reflected in the relationship between The Grand Budapest Hotel and Die Welt von Gestern. There are parallels between the film and the book because they both portray a world of yesterday, but they portray different worlds. Illustrating the same Vienna that is described in Zweig’s autobiography is not something that The Grand Budapest Hotel strives to do, but there are parallels and links that tie the two works together despite their differences. We see an empire that has reached its zenith, the brightest point before fading into darkness. There is glamour and wealth in excess that hides more dimly lit layers of society that are bleak and lacking in privilege. The governments change as war wreaks havoc on what was presumed to be an everlasting world of security and generally prevailing peace. 31

The parallelism extends into what we might call zweigesque linguistic elements that

Anderson’s script adopts. Wes Anderson is credited as the sole writer of the script, but without ever actually quoting Zweig, Anderson references Zweig with his style of writing: overly flowery prose, superlatives, romanticized poetry, insertion of foreign words, and excerpts from other authors.

One word that has been used repeatedly to describe The Grand Budapest Hotel is the word “confectionary” (Zoller Seitz 9). This analogy may at first seem to be somewhat uncreative, a mere overextension of the sweet treats from Mendl’s bakery used metonymically to stand for the essence of the whole film, but the metaphor does have some value, specifically as it relates to the film’s script. Associated with the word confectionary are words like sweet – perhaps even sickly sweet – or artificial. The word confectionary also connotes elements of artistry and careful craft. Sometimes the dialog of The Grand Budapest Hotel is overly flowery, like the blossoms of icing on a cake. When there is too much icing, however, the sweetness becomes overwhelming just as flowery words can come across as being too much and too pompous or stilted. Because overly flowery writing diverges too much from the way people typically communicate with one another in their daily lives, it can easily come across as artificial and overwhelming. Stefan Zweig’s writing style and the script of The Grand Budapest Hotel are both situated precariously on the edge of excessive sweetness. For some, the sweetness is still enjoyable, and for others, the sweetness is too much.

One grammatical element found in practically all of Stefan Zweig’s writings is his use of superlatives. In his great proclivity to take everything to extremes, he describes people and things as being the best or the most or the worst or the least, writes never and ever and no one and all, and praises the people he likes as if they were the best people to ever exist. Superlatives, 32 however, represent a peak upon which only one person or one thing can stand. For this reason, this overuse of superlatives and extremes can begin to diminish the meaning of what Zweig describes. A critical reader will question how everything can possibly be so exceptional, and the response to that inquisitiveness is that not everything is deserving of such praise or conversely, disdain. This (over)use of superlatives is nonetheless a Zweig trademark and can alternately be viewed merely as an expression of his character in general, of his tendency to go about things in an all or nothing way. Similar fits of extreme passion are something that characterize a great number of characters in his writings, both his original characters and his fictionalized representations and interpretations of real people (Müller 75). Being overwhelmed by passion is an excellent catalyst for a captivating plot, and it is something that is fittingly expressed with superlatives and extremes. Perceptions and descriptions are subjective, and exaggeration is a manifestation of this subjectivity at the level of internal focalization.

Exaggeration can also be observed in the behaviors of the characters in The Grand

Budapest Hotel. There is no lack of passionate characters and characters that are themselves extremes. Through passion and a lifetime of dedicated work, M. Gustave became an impeccably excellent concierge, a model in his line of work. His passion extends beyond his career to his passionate relations with older women, his loyalty to l’air de panache perfume, and his great love of romantic poetry. Zero follows M. Gustave’s passionate example with such enthusiasm that he becomes just as good at his job as a lobby boy as M. Gustave ever was. Additionally, the love between Zero and Agatha is also one filled with innocent, yet devoted passion. Zero’s love of

Agatha is so great that it does not fade at all even after she has been dead for many years.

Agatha is also incredibly passionate, not only with regard to her love for Zero, but also with regard to her dedication to her work and to helping M. Gustave and Zero. The Author is a no 33 less passionate character. He seeks solitude in the hope of recovering from “scribe’s fever” because he urgently wants to be able to return to his beloved work. Over the years, his passion enables him to make contributions to the literature of Zubrowka that are so remarkable that he is viewed as a national treasure. These are just a few of the many important figures in The Grand

Budapest Hotel.

More remarkable than the sheer number of characters in the film, however, is the fact that no one character can truly be viewed as the main character. Every figure is characterized to such an extreme that each one maintains a unique individuality and is very difficult to forget. Even the more minor characters are developed so vividly that they are certain to make a distinct impact on the viewers of the film. As Bamberg notes, identity is created in seeking to be different in the face of recognizing one’s own sameness to others. Each character has traits, very exaggerated traits, that make him or her unique. Being characterized by extremes is the main thing that contributes to this unforgettableness, and that is a truly zweigesque feature.

Another notable feature of Zweig’s writing style is its poetic nature, a quality that characterizes his prose. At the beginning of his writing career, Zweig wrote poetry. Some of his favorite writers and career role models early on were also poets. The sound of words plays a distinct role in poetry, and that is something that Zweig brings into his prose to a great extent.

Many passages of Die Welt von Gestern are laden with expressive descriptions saturated in metaphors. For example, one passage reads, “Herrlich war diese tonische Welt von Kraft, die von allen Küsten Europas gegen unsere Herzen schlug. Aber was uns beglückte, war, ohne daß wir es ahnten, zugleich Gefahr. Der Sturm von Stolz und Zuversicht, der damals Europa

überbrauste, trug auch Wolken mit sich” (Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern 159). The alliterations and consonance within this passage serve to emphasize the overall harshness of meaning that is 34 also expressed in words like Kraft (force), schlug (pounded), Gefahr (danger), and überbrauste

(roared over). As the script of The Grand Budapest Hotel is read aloud, the actors can highlight these zweigesque poetic elements through the carefully contemplated delivery of their lines.

The poetic nature of Zweig’s writing – and accordingly Anderson’s zweigesque screenplay – plays a concrete role in the film since actual poems are used throughout it, mostly recited by M. Gustave, a great admirer and connoisseur of romantic poetry. The first instance of the use of poetry in the film is when M. Gustave recites a few lines to Madame D. in an attempt to alleviate the inexplicably extreme travel anxiety she is experiencing right before leaving the hotel to go back to her home at Schloss Lutz:

While questing once in noble wood of gray, medieval pine,

I came upon a tomb, rain-slick’d, rubbed-cool, ethereal,

Its inscription long-vanished,

Yet still within its melancholy fissures… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 10:44-10:57)

Madame D. does not want M. Gustave to recite poetry to her, and she manages to get him to stop his recitation prematurely by asking him to go light a candle for her in the sacristy of

Santa Maria. She needs candle light and the reassuring hope that religious rituals can bring, so her annoyance with M. Gustave’s poem is particularly understandable due to its dark, foreboding nature. The wooded location described in the poem is dark and old like Schloss Lutz, and through the reference to a tomb, this darkness is linked to death. This serves to foreshadow

Madame D’s own murder upon returning to that place of foreboding darkness.

M. Gustave shares his love of poetry again later in the film with more uninterested listeners. He is known for adding poetry, often quite lengthy poems, to the sermons he gives 35 while the hungry staff of the Grand Budapest devours meals during their short breaks. This is an example of one such poem:

The painter’s brush touched the inchoate face

By ends of nimble bristles,

And with their blush of first color,

Rendered her lifeless cheek living. (The Grand Budapest Hotel 16:11-16:21)

Anderson also brings characters to life with the vibrant colors of his films, characters whose models had existed previously only in the form of black letters on white paper in the works of Stefan Zweig. Additionally, the poem can be read from a more erotic perspective where “blush of first color” is taken to mean a sexual awakening. Such an interpretation would be considered zweigesque because of how prevalent themes of women’s sexuality are throughout

Zweig’s works. Many of the main characters in his writings are women who feel guilty after giving in to their sexuality or even upon merely acknowledging the fact that they have sexual desires.

M. Gustave resembles Stefan Zweig in many ways, and the next poem encountered in the film highlights one of those similarities (Zoller Seitz 21). M. Gustave’s decision to recite the following lines demonstrates an aspect of his personality that tends to be impractical in a fast- paced world of war and cruel people, namely a love for beauty and beautiful words. Zero wants to know what the painting Boy with Apple looks like, and M. Gustave responds by saying:

E’en the most gifted bard’s rhyme

can only sing but to the lack of her and all she isn’t.

His tongue doth… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 29:29-29:36) 36

Zero reminds M. Gustave of the impracticality of his poetic tendencies and asks if they could just merely go look at the painting instead of attempting to express the inexpressible, albeit in a very eloquent way.

Despite the impracticality of reciting poetry in that particular instance, Zero keeps up the tradition mentioned earlier of reading poetry during meals at the Grand Budapest even while M.

Gustave is incarcerated. Zero, however, kindly allows the staff to begin eating while he reads the poem that M. Gustave has sent to him because it has an excessive 46 stanzas, another example of Wes Anderson’s use of exaggeration:

A moist, black ash dampens the filth of a dung-dark rat’s nest

And mingles with the thick scent of wood-rot

While the lark song of a guttersnipe… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 41:13-41:21)

This poem consists mostly of dark, unpleasant themes, but rather than listening to such unpleasantness, the staff of The Grand Budapest would much rather ignore the poem and go about the far more satisfying and far more necessary business of eating. This situation mirrors a similar phenomenon within the broader society illustrated in The Grand Budapest Hotel and the society in which Stefan Zweig lived, the society that lived in a so-called “Welt der Sicherheit”

(“world of security”; Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern 10). These societies did not want to pay any attention to the turning political tides that were growing darker each day. There were day-to-day things that were either more entertaining or requiring more immediate attention that prevented them or at least distracted them from the looming darkness closing in on their safe, happy world.

Zero aspires to be as good at his job as M. Gustave, and so he seeks to emulate him in as many ways as possible. Throughout the film, Zero composes his own poetry, often reciting his compositions to M. Gustave who generally thinks very highly of what Zero has written. He even 37 praises Zero, which is a sign of true appreciation from a character as brutally honest as M.

Gustave. Upon rescuing M. Gustave from prison, Zero begins reciting an original poem. He is cut short, however, by an alarm signaling the detection of M. Gustave’s absence from jail:

’Twas first light when I saw her face upon the heath,

And hence did I return, day-by-day, entranced,

Tho’ vinegar did brine my heart,

Never… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 1:02:16-1:02:26)

All of Zero’s family members were killed and Zero was forced to flee his own country.

Incidents like that are like a bitter vinegar that would surely saturate the heart, but the line of the poem begins with the word “tho’,” which indicates a contradiction, presumably having to do with the ability to love despite the vinegar of life. This is a poem about love, written and recited by a young man who is madly in love, and it is cut short just as the love between Zero and

Agatha is cut short. There was also much vinegar in Stefan Zweig’s life, but there was love in his life as well; his second wife was with him until the very end when she took her own life at the same time he took his.

Another poem is interrupted in the scene at the observatory of the monastery on the mountain where M. Gustave is suddenly struck by poetic inspiration:

’Tis oft’-remarked, no single, falling-flake

Does any other in its pure and perfect form…

(The Grand Budapest Hotel 1:13:49-1:13:54)

This recitation is cut short by the monk who informs him and Zero that they need to make another abrupt departure. M. Gustave’s poem is cut short just like his life. Stefan Zweig cut his 38 own life short, leaving behind more than merely an unfinished poem; he left behind larger unfinished works, such as the novel Rausch der Verwandlung.

The trend of cutting poems short prevents them from becoming tedious and maintains the fast pace of the movie. Their incompleteness does not, however, diminish their meaning. In fact, their open-endedness gives the viewer more freedom of interpretation because the exact intent or direction of the poem is usually not yet clearly established before it is cut off.

A love of poetry spreads from one character to the next, from M. Gustave to Zero, and from Zero to Agatha. Zero gives his beloved Agatha a copy of Romantic Poetry, Volume I, a recommendation from M. Gustave. He already has his very own copy. The note he writes to her in the book is even a sort of short blank verse poem:

For my dearest, darling, treasured, cherished Agatha,

whom I worship.

With respect, adoration, admiration,

kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love

from Z to A. (The Grand Budapest Hotel 46:40-46:51)

This quote is particularly interesting to analyze when considering who actually wrote those words. That would be, of course, Wes Anderson. The story of The Grand Budapest Hotel attains its final form thanks to Anderson, whose name could be abbreviated even further merely as “A.” And where did the story start? With some of the core themes and stylistic elements that lie at the heart of Zweig’s works, whose name could be abbreviated simply as “Z.” From Z to A sounds odd because speakers of the English language are used to hearing from A to Z, but there are many things about the film that are backwards, such as going backwards in time as the layers of the story are peeled back. Additionally, the ambiguity of single letters enables them to 39 represent not only something given by Zero to Agatha, but something given by Zweig to

Anderson as well. Just as Zero gave Agatha a book, Zweig also gave his ideas to Anderson in the form of a book, many books, in fact.

The end of the film features two additional poems recited by M. Gustave that reflect his sense of the end drawing nearer. The first is one that he recites hanging off of the cliff, fearing for his life as Jopling lingers over him. Stefan Zweig sought solace in writing toward the end of his life, and that is when he wrote two of his most famous and successful works: Die Welt von

Gestern and Schachnovelle. M. Gustave also seeks solace in literature at what he believes to be the end of his life:

“If this do be me end, farewell!”

cried the wounded piper-boy

whilst the muskets cracked

and the yeomen roared “hoorah!”

and the ramparts fell.

“Methinks me breathes me last,

me fears,” he said… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 1:19:24-1:19:38)

Thanks to Zero, M. Gustave’s life does not end there, though, and he lives on to recite one more poem before the film ends. His last poem seems to be an original composition due to how exactly it fits into the context of what is going on. The Grand Budapest Hotel has been converted into a military headquarters, and M. Gustave mournfully says:

The beginning of the end

of the end of the beginning has begun.

A sad finale played off-key 40

on a broken-down saloon piano

in the outskirts of a forgotten ghost town.

[Interceding dialog]

Never again shall I… (The Grand Budapest Hotel 1:21:51-1:22:13)

Just as for Stefan Zweig, the war means the end for M. Gustave. The melancholy tone of this poem shows that he is losing all hope. M. Gustave believes that he will never again cross the threshold of the place that has become his home, The Grand Budapest. Believing that he would never be able to go back to his home in Austria meant the end for Stefan Zweig.

Hope lives on for a little while longer in Agatha, though, and she later demonstrates her growing interest in poetry by reciting a poem about M. Gustave and Zero:

Whence came these two radiant, celestial brothers,

United, for an instant,

as they crossed the stratosphere of our starry window?

One from the East and one from the West. (The Grand Budapest Hotel 1:28:54-1:29:07)

The theme of hope for unity, peace, and cooperation between cultures and throughout the world that is expressed in this poem is also one that was near and dear to Stefan Zweig. It is a hope that he held onto until the very end. Notably, Agatha is able to recite this poem in its entirety, and it is followed by a brief, peaceful moment of praise and admiration from M.

Gustave and Zero, a rare occurrence in this film of otherwise perpetual motion.

All of the poetry used in the film is original, but Anderson crafted the poems in such a way that they capture the essence of well-known poetry. They leave viewers thinking, “Where have I heard that before?” The answer is nowhere, but just as the film quotes Zweig without quoting Zweig, the poems quote various poets without actually quoting any poets. That is 41 particularly fitting because it allows the world of Zubrowka to remain separate from the historical past of the real world. The poetry is a mere imitation of existing poetry. Using real poems would seem out of place because the creators of those poems do not exist in the world of

Zubrowka.

Zweig was known for quoting other authors within his own works (Matuschek). His autobiography begins with part of a Goethe poem, the title of which is not actually indicated in his autobiography:

Still und ruhig auferzogen

Wirft man uns auf einmal in die Welt,

Und umspülen hunderttausend Wogen,

Alles reizt uns, mancherlei gefällt,

Mancherlei verdrießt uns und von Stund zu Stunden

Schwankt das leicht unruhige Gefühl,

Wir empfinden, und was wir empfunden

Spült hinweg das bunte Weltgefühl. (Die Welt von Gestern 10)

Rear’d in silence, calmly, knowing nought [sic.],

On the world we suddenly are thrown;

Hundred thousand billows round us sport;

All things charm us – many please alone,

Many grieve us, and as hour on hour is stealing,

To and fro our restless natures sway;

First we feel, and then we find each feeling 42

By the changeful world-stream borne away. (Goethe)

This excerpt which introduces the first chapter of Die Welt von Gestern, “Die Welt der

Sicherheit” (“The World of Security”), is part of the poem called “An Lottchen.” Stefan Zweig’s second wife’s name was Lotte, and although her name is never explicitly mentioned in his autobiography, this poem is like a secret dedication to her, a secret to which only the well-read who know the poem’s title even though it is not indicated are privy (Matuschek).

This is, however, not the only uncited quote that can be found throughout the writings of

Stefan Zweig. The words of other various authors snuck their way into his works (Matuschek).

Zweig quotes others; Anderson creates his own “quotes.” This element of quotation or quotation-like writing enriches the writing of both writers.

Zweig was well-read and possessed an extremely large library, a collection that was in fact so extensive that it was spread throughout all of the different homes he inhabited: Salzburg,

Vienna, Bath. He was unfortunately unable to bring very many of his books with him to exile in

Brazil. In addition to his love of books and reading, Zweig also translated many books, a process that due to its slow and tedious nature, is certain to stamp many quotable passages on to a translator’s memory. Experience as a translator makes it clear that there are words and concepts that are not entirely translatable. There are some thoughts that can only be properly expressed in the original language of their conception. Many of Zweig’s works contain short passages and individual words that remain untranslated or expressed by Zweig in a language other than

German. Most commonly, these are passages or words in French or English, two of the languages that Zweig translated most extensively, and Latin, a language that is commonly learned in schools, especially in primarily Catholic countries, like Austria, and has the added benefit of serving as a good basis for learning other foreign languages. When none of the 43 languages in which Zweig could communicate sufficed for him to express his thoughts, he is also known to have opted for neologism.

The zweigesque tendency to occasionally use foreign words is also something that

Anderson employed in the screenplay for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Because the original language of the film is English, foreign words in the film naturally take the form of German,

French, and Latin rather than English, French, and Latin, as is the case in Zweig’s writings.

Many geographic locations are given foreign names, but foreign words are used in other manners throughout the film as well. M. Gustave’s favorite perfume – l’air de panache – would not have the same essence without the Frenchness of its name. The connotation of the phrase

“gespannt wie ein Flitzebogen” hinges on it being said in German because the actual audible sound of the phrase contributes to the humorously exaggerated Germanic vibe the film seeks to project in the scene when the phrase is utilized – a few seconds before, a man wearing

Lederhosen and other accoutrements of traditional Alpine Tracht had been seen accompanied by a rather large St. Bernard (The Grand Budapest Hotel 6:17-6:19).

The maid at Schloss Lutz speaks entirely in French rather than in English with a French accent. The fact that M. Gustave can understand her demonstrates that he also knows French.

Many of the other characters have non-native accents when speaking English, but Zero, the immigrant, does not. His lack of an accent indicates that despite having an outward appearance that marks him as an immigrant in a place like Zubrowka, he has made an effort to integrate himself into the society where he was forced to seek refuge. A person’s native language and culture affect how that person perceives and is perceived by speakers of other languages from other cultures. By integrating himself into the language of his land of refuge, Zero attempts to 44 construct an identity for himself that is able to overcome the potential problems of transcultural understanding that are associated with language.

In addition to the linguistic elements just mentioned, Zweig’s writings are also characterized by many thematic elements that Anderson integrated into The Grand Budapest

Hotel to make the film zweigesque.

Despite the beauty of Stefan Zweig’s somewhat flowery writing that implies a degree of hope and optimism, there is always an underlying theme of darkness and death in Zweig’s writing. This shadowy depth is also an element that Anderson vividly captures in The Grand

Budapest Hotel. The world that Stefan Zweig saw or at least wanted to see was full of color and opulence. It was a secure, care-free world of extravagance. He, like many of the characters he created, lived, for a time, a privileged and blissful life. But it is not as if the darker elements of reality had simply ceased to exist. Darkness lurked beneath the surface, but out of sight and out of mind.

With the onset of the First World War, the grim tension and evil that had been silently growing burst through the veil of security that had temporarily been able to screen off and protect the happy, well-to-do classes. Although bright colors and symmetrically-constructed shots lend The Grand Budapest Hotel a similar air of perfect security and happiness, darkness tinges the screen as well. Sometimes this darkness takes the form of actual visual elements: darkly-lit shots, dark clothing, scenes shot in black and white. Sometimes it is thematic: gruesome violence, cemeteries and funerals, mementos of death. Sometimes the darkness is in the dialog: harsh cursing in the midst of otherwise polite conversations, nonchalant references to serious subjects, an abundance of understated black humor. 45

The onset of a darker layer of the narrative – and the great desire to continue to ignore it – becomes clearest in the film when, despite appearing as a newspaper headline that could not possibly be overlooked, M. Gustave and Zero choose to pay no heed to the news that there are tanks on the border. All that matters to them is the gossip and scandal of high society. Madame

D. is dead, and nothing else is of any interest to them. Her death, however, shows that even the most luxurious lives can be brought to a sudden, grim halt. Her seemingly perfect life was not as secure as it may have appeared to be.

One particularly notable visual element that underlines the darkness of the film are the shadowy scenes. The scenes within the outer three frames of the narrative are, for the most part, light and bright. Within the innermost story, however, darkness begins to contrast the light. The

Grand Budapest Hotel is brightly-colored, but outside of that luxurious dream-world, the character’s surroundings often become tinged with shadow. Madame D’s home, Schloss Lutz is dark and gloomy like the shroud of death that covers her. Jopling meanders down dark alleys to pay a visit to Serge X’s sister. M. Gustave’s escape from prison takes place under the cover of darkness, and the scenes in which M. Gustave and Zero make their way back to The Grand

Budapest with the assistance of The Society of the Crossed Keys are also not well-lit.

In addition to dark settings, many of the characters don black clothing. This often matches their identities as stereotypically evil characters, even though the real reason many of the characters are wearing black is because they are in mourning since Madame D. has just died.

Her scheming son Dmitri wears a long black robe, and his three witch-like sisters also wear odd costumes of black that cover them from head to toe. Jopling, the prototypical bad guy, wears a black leather jacket, which is not the most fitting apparel for a funeral, but it is a fitting outward representation of him as a character. The second stage of more brutal military officers also wear 46 a black uniform as opposed to the gray uniform of the initially friendly Henckels. In contrast to these wearers of black, Serge X’s sister is also clad completely in black. Rather than this marking her as an evil character, it serves as a symbol of the dark fate that awaits her. A character’s appearance and clothing affect how viewers perceive the character’s identity.

Almost the entire film is shot in color, but toward the end, there is one scene that is shot in black and white. Mr. Moustafa’s voice is heard narrating much of this scene. It takes place on a train at the start of the so-called Lutz Blitz when The Independent State of Zubrowka ceases to exist, and this scene is the “prelude to Gustave’s offscreen death” (Zoller Seitz 147). But when

Mr. Moustafa actually says, “In the end they shot him,” the film is back to being in color (The

Grand Budapest Hotel 1:30:55-1:30:57). This black and white scene marks the turning point where there is no longer any hope that the world could go on existing in its previous state of fantastic charm and security.

The film may often seem playful, but it contains a whole lot of violence. This violence is something that snuck up on Anderson as he was writing the screenplay. He stated, “the movie’s also a little bloodier than I expected it to be. I didn’t notice during the writing of it how many limbs are getting chopped off, how many knives and guns are being used” (Zoller Seitz 182).

This violence is not like typical Hollywood violence with huge explosions and automatic weapons. It is a quieter violence that leaves the viewer time to contemplate it rather than being overwhelmed and numbed by it. That is what gives it a greater shock factor and allows the true darkness of death and violence to really sink in.

M. Gustave and Zero are beaten up on the train. Several brutal punches are thrown after the reading of Madame D’s will. Serge X’s sister’s decapitated head is shown in a basket.

Deputy Kovacs’ poor innocent cat is thrown out of the window to its death, and later Jopling 47 slams a door shut on Deputy Kovacs’ fingers and they are all sliced off. During the escape from prison, there is a gruesome knife fight that ends in a draw. The viewer learns from Mr. Moustafa that M. Gustave was shot and killed in the end, but that incident of violence isn’t actually shown on screen.

Darkness and death lie in the details as well. The film begins in a cemetery at a statue commemorating a dead author. The central plot of the film revolves around a death and a Last

Will and Testament. There is a painting of a mammoth in the author’s office that foreshadows the extinction of an entire way of life in Zubrowka. The theme of hunting and dead animals is quite prevalent in Schloss Lutz.

Because the screenplay is lyrical and light most of the time, harsh swearing jolts the viewer out of the lull of elegantly and politely crafted dialog. Death is approached in a nonchalant way that turns it into a source of black humor. For example, the man choking in the lobby of the 1960s Grand Budapest Hotel should not be funny – he could actually die – but the fact that the incident is merely referred to as a “parenthetical, domestic drama” makes it laughable (The Grand Budapest Hotel 5:50-5:53). Attempting to make light of death makes death’s seriousness all the more apparent. It is zweigesque to attempt to make light of death, and

Zweig’s primary method of doing so was his use of eloquent, often optimistic prose.

One of Zweig’s darkest themes was suicide, but there are surprisingly no suicides in The

Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson instead uses the collective gravity of many other dark events.

Suicide plays a role in Zweig’s works Der Stern über dem Walde, Die Gouvernante, Episode am

Genfer See, Der Amokläufer, Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau, Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, Ungeduld des Herzens, and Rausch der Verwandlung, just to name a few 48 examples (Müller 131). Had Zweig been able to write the end of his own autobiography, it would have ended the same way as all of those stories.

CONCLUSION In choosing to create a zweigesque film in 2014, Anderson shows that many of the issues thematized in Zweig’s writings from the first half of the twentieth century are still important to our society today. The fact that Anderson’s film was successful, not only in his home country of the United States of America, but around the world as well, demonstrates that the themes of his film are universally relevant. As one of the most extensively-translated and widely-read authors of his time, Zweig’s works were also beloved by a worldwide audience. Although he was technically an Austrian, Stefan Zweig was a citizen of the world, and the insights he shares through the characters in his writings and within his own autobiography can be appreciated by people from all countries and cultures.

Stefan Zweig’s life and his writings are marked by an “immediately perceptible air of sadness” (The Grand Budapest Hotel 4:31-4:34). He personally experienced two of world history’s most brutal and devastating wars, was forced to flee his home and seek exile in Brazil, and committed suicide after becoming thoroughly exhausted by years of wandering about the world without having a real home to which he could return. Even at the time of his death, however, he still had hope that sometime in the future the rest of humanity would be able to have a life worth living again. In his suicide note, Zweig wrote that he hoped that his friends would be able to see the new dawn of peace that comes after the long, dark night of war (Declaracão).

In the quirky, brightly-colored film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, there is an underlying sadness that mourns the evil in the world, but despite that sadness, the film still leaves behind a 50 small glimmer of hope for a better future. Life goes on after the tragedy of the innermost narrative, and the hope for a brighter future is passed on from one generation to the next through literature. Anderson passes on the legacy of Zweig’s literature to yet another generation through the storytelling in his zweigesque film.

Through storytelling, characters are able to address the difficult dilemmas associated with identity. Identity is a concept with which individuals have always struggled and it remains a struggle of contemporary times. Due to the personal and first-hand nature of both his own autobiography and even the non-autobiographical narratives he wrote, Stefan Zweig inevitably had to deal with and address the various dilemmas of identity in his writings.

Wes Anderson uses a zweigesque narrative to incorporate these dilemmas of identity into the heart of the story told in The Grand Budapest Hotel as well. Even though our lives are not stories like the ones told in The Grand Budapest Hotel or in the writings of Stefan Zweig,

“seeing life as storied” can help us to overcome human identity dilemmas (Bamberg 136). This way of seeing life makes the plight of being human and the dilemmas of identity a little easier to cope with. 51

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