Guide Mentor

Character Role Analysis

Gustave

Seriously: Has there ever been a better mentor than Gustave? We want him as our teacher, uncle, Jedi master, and our friend. (Too bad he's fictional and dead.)

From the very get-go we see him training Zero in the complex ways of lobby boy-ing. Zero receives precise instructions of specific tasks while also getting lessons on more general theory of lobby boy-dom:

" […] a lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy anticipates the client's needs before the needs are needed."

However, Gustave has much to teach Zero aside from hotel etiquette. As they journey from Lutz to Checkpoint 19 to the Zubrowka Alps, Gustave, through example, teaches Zero what it means to be an honest, polite, upstanding, genuine, man… or concierge, anyway.