The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel
In a cemetery in the former nation of Zubrowka,[a] a young woman visits the shrine of a renowned writer, known simply as "Author", reading his most-cherished book: The Grand Budapest Hotel. The book, written in 1985, recounts his 1968 vacation at the once-grand, then-drab hotel. There, he meets its owner, Zero Moustafa, who at dinner tells his rags to riches story.
In 1932, Zero is the newly hired lobby boy at the prestigious Grand Budapest Hotel. Monsieur Gustave H., the hotel's fastidious concierge, seduces old, wealthy clients, including the 84-year-old dowager Madame D., with whom he has had a nearly two-decade affair. She mysteriously dies a month after her last hotel visit. Gustave and Zero visit Madame's Schloss Lutz estate, where they encounter surviving relatives for the reading of her will by her attorney Deputy Vilmos Kovacs. Kovacs announces a recent codicil to the will which bequeaths Boy with Apple, a priceless Renaissance painting, to Gustave. Madame D's son, Dmitri, is outraged and demands Gustave's arrest. Gustave and Zero leave, absconding with the painting, hiding it within the Grand Budapest.
Gustave is later arrested by Inspector Henckels under the suspicion of Madame D's murder. He befriends a gang during his imprisonment and provides them with pastry from Mendl's, a well known bakery. One day, one of Gustave's cellmates, Ludwig, tells Gustave and the rest of the prisoners about his deep knowledge of the prison and how to exploit its weaknesses to escape, namely via a storm-drain sewage system. Gustave is then convinced to join the prison break. Gustave has Zero place hammers, chisels and sawblades inside pastries made by Agatha, an apprentice baker at Mendl's and Zero's fiancée. Because the pastries from Mendl’s are well-known works of art, the guard who is in charge of checking outside foods for contraband is unable to bring himself to break open the pastries to check for content, enabling the pastries to pass through security check.
During the process of escaping, Gustave and the convicts stumble upon a group of guards secretly gambling during the night. Günther, one of the escape party, is able to kill them all with a shiv but loses his life in the process. In the end, the rest of the group manages to escape and disperse. When Zero and Gustave are reunited, they set out to prove Gustave's innocence with the assistance of a fraternity of concierges known as 'the Society of the Crossed Keys'. They learn that Madame D had a missing second will which would only take effect should she be murdered. Dmitri's hired assassin J. G. Jopling trails their whereabouts, murdering Kovacs, Madame D.'s butler Serge X, and Serge X's sister in his pursuit to kill Gustave. Following a chase, Zero pushes Jopling off a cliff to save Gustave, and the two men continue their escape from swarming Zubrowkan troops led by Henckels.
Gustave, Zero, and Agatha arrive back at the Grand Budapest to find it converted into a military headquarters following the outbreak of war. Agatha sneaks in to retrieve Boy with Apple, but is spotted with the painting by Dmitri. Gustave and Zero rush to save Agatha from harm as she flees from Dmitri. He shoots at them and initiates a melee with Zubrowkan troops, which Henckels stops. Agatha's attempt to escape leaves her and Zero hanging from a balcony before safely falling into the van of pastries in which they came.
Madame D's second will, making Gustave the beneficiary of her fortune, is found attached to the back of Boy with Apple; he succeeds her as owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, and becomes one of the wealthiest Zubrowkans. He travels by train with the now-wed Zero and Agatha to celebrate, before encountering hostile soldiers that destroy Zero's refugee documents. Gustave tries to fend off the soldiers but is killed. Zero inherits his fortune and maintains the Grand Budapest in memory of Agatha, who died of flu with their infant son.
The experiences are later fictionalised and incorporated into the Author's novel The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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