#Take your hands off my lobby boy movie#
One of the most memorable plots in the movie is the scene in the train where Monsieur Gustave and Zero were asked to show their papers to the police and Zero was asked outside the carriage. And even the struggles he faced, he encountered with grace.Ī scene from the film. Here we observe the inevitable and helpless nature of European decadence in a tiny individual struggling to bring back the past’s values and glories: an appreciation for fine arts, cordiality in human relations, unconditional defense of equality, and a humanitarian approach towards migrant workers. Ironically enough, in an age of war and cultural decadence, Monsieur Gustave’s outmoded and precious quality happened to have the biggest impact on a newcomer to Europe, and little effect on generations born in that very culture. After that, he was largely influenced by Monsieur Gustave’s manners and philosophies. This simple unequivocal respect won Zero the job he had wished for.
“Who wouldn’t? It’s the Grand Budapest, Sir. How could this migrant walk into such a grandiose hotel, asking for a job, despite his distinctively unimpressive background? So Monsieur Gustave asked why Zero wanted to work as a lobby boy.
The element of motivation was something that Monsieur Gustave appreciated, or at the least was curious about. He does, however, understand that this boy comes from a completely different background given the limited social opportunities he received. Certainly until this point, Monsieur Gustave still sees nothing particular in this little immigrant boy with a less-than-desirable profile. And when he was asked about his family situation, he echoed, with a hint of restrained grief, “zero”. Indeed, trivial and frivolous work experiences without decent training in hotel management were nowhere near Monsieur Gustave’s standards. Zero first arrived at the Grand Budapest looking for a job and presenting a rather modest CV, or what Monsieur Gustave, the hotel devoted concierge, referred to as “zero”. That is why I want to talk about Zero the lobby boy, a witness to the decay of European heritage and glory. The movie’s setting highlights the glory of Europe’s culture back then, but the tone of the movie indicates its dying.
We see a migrant fleeing from war and seeking new hope in a more stable and developed world, a hotel concierge (effectively the person running the hotel) with a grace that did not seem to belong to his time, the rest of the crowd, among which are the forces that made Zero’s new life unnecessarily hard and humiliating, as well as obscenely rich, yet depressed people. It depicts a rather dramatic and comic narrative, but in the end one realizes that such was the reality of those times. In fact, the entire plot of the movie is anything but ordinary. While the the film does not narrate the story of an average migrant worker, it is still interesting to take a look at him in this context. I thought of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ when the topic of migrants’ lives and rights came up as the theme of the Spring 2015 issue of The Paris Globalist.
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