When Gustave is framed for the murder of a wealthy dowager (Tilda Swinton), he and his recently befriended protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) embark on a quest for fortune and a priceless Renaissance painting amidst the backdrop of an encroaching fascist regime.

The Grand Budapest Hotel draws visually from Europe-set mid-century Hollywood films and the United States Library of Congress's photochrom print collection of alpine resorts.

[10] Other cast members included Larry Pine as Mr. Mosher, Milton Welsh as Franz Müller, Giselda Volodi as Serge's sister, Wolfram Nielacny as Herr Becker, Florian Lukas as Pinky, Karl Markovics as Wolf, Volker Michalowski as Günther, Neal Huff as Lieutenant, Bob Balaban as M. Martin, Fisher Stevens as M. Robin, Wallace Wolodarsky as M. Georges, Waris Ahluwalia as M. Dino, Jella Niemann as the young woman, and Lucas Hedges as a pump attendant.

He and the producers toured Budapest, small Italian spa towns, and the Czech resort Karlovy Vary before a final stop in Germany,[21] consulting hotel staff to develop an accurate idea of a real-life concierge's work.

[22] Anderson customarily employs a troupe of longtime collaborators—Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Jason Schwartzman have worked on one or more of his projects.

[30][32] Fiennes drew on several sources to shape his character's persona,[33] among them his triple role as Hungarian-Jewish men escaping fascist persecution in the István Szabó-directed drama Sunshine (1999), his brief stint as a young porter at Brown's Hotel in London,[34] and the experience reading The World of Yesterday.

[17][44] Filmmakers shot The Grand Budapest Hotel in ten weeks,[14] from January to March 2013 in eastern Germany,[45][46] where it qualified for a tax rebate financed by the German government's Federal Film Fund and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

[45][47][48] They also found Germany attractive because the production base was geographically confined, facilitating efficient logistics,[49] but the frigid weather and reduced daylight of early winter disrupted the shooting schedule, compounded by the slow film stock used for the camerawork.

For example, when a lantern drops to the basement from a hole in the cell floor in the Checkpoint Nineteen jailbreak scene, the filmmakers suspended the towercam upside-down, a setup which allowed the camera to descend to the ground.

[80] Dafoe's Jopling wore a Prada leather coat inspired by outerwear for military dispatch riders, adorned with custom silver knuckle pieces from jeweler Waris Ahluwalia (a close friend of Anderson's).

[83] Its score's classical roots make The Grand Budapest Hotel unique among Anderson-directed projects, forgoing the writer-director's usual practice of employing a selection of contemporary pop music.

[93] The Grand Budapest Hotel universe is envisioned with nostalgic yearning, where characters perpetuate the "illusion of a time where they don't belong",[90] the consequence of not so much the recapture of a vanished era than a romanticizing of the past.

[94][95][96] One theory among critics suggests "profound" subtext of the science of human memory within the film's nonlinear narrative structure,[97] whereas others saw The Grand Budapest Hotel as an introspection of Anderson's sensibilities both as a writer and as a director.

[101] The Atlantic's Norman L. Eisen, who is among the people listed in "Special Thanks" at the end of the film, called The Grand Budapest Hotel a cautionary tale of the consequences of the Holocaust, a story that examines Nazi motivations while traversing postwar European history through comedy.

[90][102] Gustave is underwhelmed by Zero but is increasingly empathetic to his newly hired mentee's plight in their subsequent exploits, united by their shared enthusiasm for the hotel—so much that he defends Zero against police thuggery and rewards his loyalty with his inheritance.

[90] The subject matter's emphasis of love, friendship, and the intertwining tales of nobility, dignity, and self-control, The New Yorker's Richard Brody argues, forms the "very soul of a moral politics that transcends accidents of circumstance and particular historical incidents".

[104] The unusual circumstance of the Gustave–Zero friendship seems to reflect an attachment to "an idea of historical and cultural belonging that they find ultimately to be best expressed through one another", and by proxy, the two men discover a fundamental kinship through their shared esteem of the Grand Budapest.

[112] One of their most significant marketing tactics, instructional videos detailing the creation of desserts mirroring Mendl's baked goods, used fan footage submitted to the producers for TV-commercial spots on cooking networks.

The discs include audio commentary from Anderson, Goldblum, producer Roman Coppola, and film critic Kent Jones; storyboard animatics, a behind-the-scenes documentary, video essays, and previously unaired cast and crew interviews.

[131] The Grand Budapest Hotel's expansion to other overseas markets continued toward the end of March, marked by significant releases in Sweden (first place, with $498,108), Spain (third, with $1 million), and South Korea (the country's biggest specialty film opening ever, with $622,109 from 162 cinemas).

[134] In the United States, The Grand Budapest Hotel opened to a $202,792-per theater average from a four-theater $811,166 overall gross, breaking the record for most robust live-action limited release previously held by Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012).

[135] Fading interest in films hoping to capitalize on Academy Awards prestige and its crossover appeal to younger, casual moviegoers were crucial to The Grand Budapest Hotel's early box office success.

[148][149] Occasionally, The Grand Budapest Hotel drew criticism for evading some of the harsh realities of the subject matter; according to a Vanity Fair reviewer, the film's devotion to a "kitschy adventure story that feels curiously weightless, at times even arbitrary" undermined any thoughtful moral.

[150] The comic treatment of a madcap adventure was cited among the strengths of the film,[151][152][153] though sometimes the fragmented storytelling approach was considered a flaw by some critics, such as The New Yorker's David Denby, for following a sequence of events that seemed to lack emotional continuity.

Journalists felt the ensemble brought The Grand Budapest Hotel ethos to life in comedic and dramatic moments,[148][154] particularly Ralph Fiennes,[155][156] whose performance was called "transformative" and "total perfection".

[148] On the other hand, characterization in The Grand Budapest Hotel drew varying responses from reviewers; Gustave, for example, was described as a man "of convincing feelings", "sweetly wistful",[148][158] but a protagonist lacking the depth of other prolific heroes in the Anderson canon, emblematic of a film that doesn't quite appear to fully flesh out the core cast of characters.

The site's critics consensus reads, "Typically stylish but deceptively thoughtful, The Grand Budapest Hotel finds Wes Anderson once again using ornate visual environments to explore deeply emotional ideas.

[162] A frontrunner had not emerged as the Academy Award nominations approached, partly as a result of a critical backlash against the season's biggest contenders, such as American Sniper, Selma and The Imitation Game.

[162] Fox Searchlight president Nancy Utley attributed the film's ascendancy to its months-long presence on multimedia home entertainment platforms, which lent greater viewing opportunity for Academy voters.

[165][166][167] Many viewed The Grand Budapest Hotel as Wes Anderson's magnum opus,[7] it appeared on professional rankings from BBC and IndieWire, based on retrospective appraisal, as one of the greatest films of the twenty-first century.