Alexandre Desplat

Alexandre Desplat, French composer and previous Wes Anderson collaborator on Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom not only composed the score for The Grand Budapest Hotel, he also won an Oscar for it.

And we think that Oscar is 100% deserved.

Desplat had the difficult task of creating an authentic, cultural sound to aid in forming the rich history of a fictional country. If you don’t trust the Oscar’s panel, go ahead and get lost in the balalaikas, cimbaloms, and alphorns of Zubrowka, and judge it for yourself.

And no, unlike Zubrowka, these are not fictional instruments…although they might not take place in your standard symphony.

But put them altogether along with tracks from Vitaly Gnutov, Öse Schuppel, and Siegfried Behrend with performances from the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra and you’ve got an entirely unique—but still very central European—sound for the film. Take the film's first track "S'Rothe Zauerli," (Zauerli being the name for the yodeling-type singing).

The film—and the score—has many somber moments as well. Darker moments of humanity and war also come through in the score with pieces like "Daylight Express to Lutz."

But the score doesn’t just set the mood for Zubrowka; it does the same for our characters as well. As noted in this NPR piece, many of the characters have their own musical motif that follows them around the film. For Gustave it’s all about the mandolins, which, as Desplat states in the interview, provides a solemnity for Gustave who, although a bit eccentric, takes himself and his job very seriously.

For Jopling it’s a more ominous piece with some Gregorian choir chanting that, like Jopling’s character, isn’t always supposed to be taken seriously.

Zero also gets a theme, co-titled "The War," which is also solemn, but a bit more subtle than the other larger-than-life characters of the film.

Plus, the whole soundtrack maintains that authentic Zubrowkan sound…if there were such a thing.