The Grand Budapest Hotel

I'm certain Anderson is getting better and funnier with every passing film. Really looking forward to this one.
 
Watched it today. Loved the character acting, script, colours, Wes Andersons camera direction (suitable only for a Wes Anderson film IMO) and.......

Loved that it was 4:3. It's like Wes Anderson (and I know he didn't set out with this intention), set out to say - you know what? the way a story is told through its execution is far more important than ANY OTHER FACTOR. Resolution? Aspect Ratio? Camera? Lens? Some shot were jaggy animation, some silly animation. Im so glad I watched this today, I think in future I'll be far better at concentrating on what I want to do than listening to the chatter.
 
Interesting. I liked everything about the movie except the aspect ratio. It was occasionally brilliant, but mostly it felt contrived and seemed to limit compositions.
 
cpc said:
I liked everything about the movie except the aspect ratio. It was occasionally brilliant, but mostly it felt contrived and seemed to limit compositions.
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I loved everything about the film, including the 4:3 ( or 1:1, it looked almost square ) aspect ratio which reminded me of all the Hasselblad advertising from the 60's and 70's, where they strongly pushed the square format as the ideal format for composition. Anderson built all his compositions around this "square" aspect ratio, which worked perfectly for me. CinemaScope 2.35 or even HD 16:9 would not have worked as well for these "square" composed shots.
 
Noel Evans said:
Loved that it was 4:3. It's like Wes Anderson (and I know he didn't set out with this intention), set out to say - you know what? the way a story is told through its execution is far more important than ANY OTHER FACTOR. Resolution? Aspect Ratio? Camera? Lens?
Click to expand...

I think the beauty part of it is that the aspect ratio changed between time periods, to reflect what the film standards were at the given moment. The bulk of the story takes place in 1932, which would be in the first days of the talkies when the optical strip shifted the 35mm aspect ratio to nearly 1:1, before film standards changed the exposure area of the film to return to a closer-to-4:3 image.
 
Saw this a couple weeks ago and loved it. I happened to catch Moonrise Kingdom the other night on HBO, and since it was a second viewing I was able to pay more attention to the filmmaking. The thing that both these films share is that the person at the center of the story dictates the feel and flow of the film. Moonrise Kingdom is from a child's perspective so the action, dialogue, and overall sensibility reflect that. Grand Budapest takes the 1930's and Gustav H's perspective to it's logical conclusion so framing in 4:3 is justified there. In the theater I was so involved in the story that I hardly noticed the aspect ratio. I expect it will be more noticeable on TV.
 
Would you believe that I watched this entire film and NEVER NOTICED the aspect ratio thing? I was completely engrossed and not thinking at all about tech specs. That's a great sign! I found it quite a bit darker than Anderson's previous work--even disturbing at times.
 
It's the composition specifically for 4:3 that does it. You don't feel like you're missing any information, which I remember being apparent to me even as a small child watching 1.85 or 2.35 compositions pan&scanned into 4:3 for VHS or TV presentation.

A 4:3 frame composed for 4:3 looks perfectly fine.
 
The wider aspect ratio was a response by Hollywood in the 50's to get people back into theaters. TV was draining revenue. The upside is films were using anamorphic lenses (to fit on existing 4:3 cameras) and people really liked the look. Just like 24p, it ended up being popular inspite of itself.
 
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