Is The Grand Budapest Hotel a war film in disguise?

On the one hand, we would hate to make a strict allegory out of anything Wes Anderson made. On the other hand…well, there is a war, and it must be important.

The war certainly isn't in the spotlight of the movie, but it keeps finding ways to creep into the plot. When Zero and Gustave are stopped for the first time in the barley field, the text tells us this is the "closing of the frontier." What "frontier" they're speaking of is unclear, but we know these soldiers are military personnel and the stop has something to do with the war.

Later, as Gustave muses about what do to with Boy with Apple, he says, "something about those lunatic foot-soldiers on the express... This could be a tricky war and a long dry spell in the hotel trade." Again the war comes up, although it's mentioned in a passing comment that reminds the audience that Zubrowka is, in fact, at war, and that even the haven of the Grand Budapest might not be immune to its impact.

Then, as Gustave and Zero make their return to the Budapest after ridding themselves of Jopling, Mustafa tells us,

"The war began at midnight. Pffeifelstad fell by lunch under heavy shelling, and 10 battalions surged across the long western border. High-command advanced to Nebelsbad."

Suddenly, all sorts of soldiers have infiltrated Gustave's sanctuary and he can't stand it:

"I'd rather not bear witness to such blasphemy…The Grand Budapest has become a troops' barracks. I shall never cross its threshold again in my lifetime."

These troops are members of the ZZ squad, whose insignia looks creepily similar to the SS insignia (check out our analysis of Checkpoint 19 for more info on this), and the suggestion is that the war Zubrowka has entered is WWII. This is grim for a whole slew of historical reasons… but Wes Anderson doesn't pull back from satirizing the idiocy of war even as he condemns its insanity.

Just take a gander at the firefight inside the Budapest's sixth floor—that's clearly a mockery of the senseless violence of war. Dmitri starts shooting at Gustave and Zero and shortly we see all of the soldiers being quartered in the hotel pop out of their rooms with their guns at the ready.

No one—aside from our main characters—knows why anybody is shooting, but they join in all the same, simply shooting at the people across the hall who appear to be shooting at them. It's pure, futile, uber-stupid, and senseless mayhem.

Anderson's razor-sharp WWII satire actually begins earlier in the film, when Zero picks up a newspaper and stares at it in astonishment. We get a full shot of the paper and the camera zooms into the enormously block lettered title, "WILL THERE BE WAR?"

Then we pan down to a much smaller subsection of the paper where we see "Dowager Countess Found Dead in Boudoir," with an unflattering picture of Madame D. This shows us the initial reaction to the war: The characters are trying their hardest to drown out the noise of the oncoming bloodbath and focus instead on the smaller matters at hand.