Category Prediction

If you have not seen The Grand Budapest Hotel, go see it now. It is incredibly clever, gorgeous, quirky, and in my opinion Wes Anderson’s best film to date. It is also in my opinion Alexander Desplat’s best score to date, which brings us to our usual question: What makes the score so good? First we will take a look at the setting and the film’s basic premises, and then we will discuss how Desplat reacted to them. Read on…

Welcome to Zubrowka

Since first impressions are always the most powerful ones, let’s take a look at the film’s very beginning. A slide reads:

“On the farthest eastern boundary of the European continent:

The former Republic of
ZUBROWKA

Once the seat of an Empire”

Kind of like the good old “Once upon a time in a land far, far away,” right? Only that “a land far, far aw...