The Grand Budapest Hotel, in theaters today, has garnered extremely positive reviews from critics, with Andrew O'Hehir at Salon calling it his "most serious, most tragic" work yet. But are audiences reading too much into Anderson's films?
In a new Q&A for Interview, Lorraine Cwelich asks Anderson about the "loss of innocence" theme that seems to span across his films. His response is a bit disheartening:
Usually I don't think about these movies thematically. I like to just think about making an experience for somebody... I don't really want to put my own thoughts about it out there, and I don't want to define or interpret the story, because I want it to have enough abstraction or be unconscious, like life. [Interview]
If you're planning on seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel this weekend, perhaps focus your attention more on the beauty of Anderson's production and less on reading too much into the story.
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Later in the interview, Cwelich also asks Anderson what he would have done if he weren't a filmmaker, and Anderson says that at one point, he "wanted to be an architect." In his mind, though, that's not inconsistent with his current role — he's the architect, so to speak, behind the whimsical spectacles that define his films.
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