Color

We enter Zubrowka. It's white (like the snow), gray (like the tombstones and the leafless trees), and brown (like the apartment buildings that surround the cemetery). We see three men, dressed in black, and a girl, dressed in a brown coat and hat. Everything about this Zubrowka is solemn and subdued, everything except for a bright pink book.

Quickly, we leave this Zubrowka and enter two others. Both the interior of the Author's study—in 1985—and the interior of the aging Budapest Hotel—in 1968—are full of yellows and browns. The color palette is less dull, but it's not exactly more interesting or alive. It has a homely air; it's worn but inviting. These colors match the subdued friendliness of the older Mustafa.

Finally, we're thrown into our final setting: 1932. The Grand Budapest Hotel is at the height of its glory. The Hotel itself is full of pinks and whites. The outfits of the Hotel staff are a deep, rich purple, highlighted with red. These colors speak not only to the affluence of the hotel and its patrons (dig that royal purple), but also to a general sense of warmth and vibrancy.

Blocking

Vocab time: Blocking refers to the positioning and movement of actors on a stage or set. Wes Anderson is a well-known blocking maestro, so let's take a look at a few examples.

While the Author "st[ands] conferring, elbow-to-elbow" with M. Jean, we get an unusual image: Both characters are talking to one another, but they're facing the camera at the same time (it's almost like they're acting on a stage). This type of blocking has become a Wes Anderson trope of sorts; you'll find that in many of his movies the characters are engaging with the audience even more than with each other.

Then there's an opposite sort of blocking found throughout the film, where two characters face each other directly. The center between them is exactly at the center of the screen and the background appears almost flat behind them. We see this blocking with Mustafa and the Author dining together, Madame D. and Gustave dining in the Budapest, Gustave and Zero in the dining car, and Zero and Agatha on the merry-go-round.

This is also a Wes Anderson trope—in fact, some critics have asked the question "why can't Wes Anderson characters move diagonally?"

Models

Is a giant building or landmark too large to fully build? Easy-peasy: Just make a small one and make it seem big by manipulating the viewers' perspective.

However, Anderson and his designers had more in mind than the illusion of scale as they created their models. We're not fooled for an instant—we don't believe that we're seeing the real thing. Anderson's models instead create an aesthetic, an aesthetic that permeates the film through the ski lifts and ski chase and the colonnade funicular.

The function of this aesthetic is hard to pinpoint or describe, other than by saying "Wow. That looks super Wes Anderson-y." Perhaps it's to give the story a sense of surrealism. Maybe it's to make the film into a bit of a fable. Maybe it's to provide a bit of levity in what is actually a pretty harrowing war story.

Whatever it is, it's certainly fitting. After all, cinema models are kind of like the Grand Budapest itself: a relic from another age that still retains a boatload of charm.