September 9: Influence

            I found that this week’s assignment was an enjoyable task of viewing the work of two great artists. I had the pleasure of watching the Grand Budapest Hotel for the first time. It is a movie that I’ve been meaning to watch for some time now, and I’m glad that I finally watched it. I greatly enjoyed the film, and can see how the works of Stephen Zweig influenced Anderson’s film.

            Despite the lengthy and widely optional amount of reading for this week, I read sections of Zweig’s Journey into the Past, Beware of Pity and Post Office Girl. Journey into the Past began with an introduction of Zweig by Andre Aciman. I found this to be vital in my understanding of Zweig’s work and of him as a person.

            The introduction describes Zweig’s background- coming from a wealthy Viennese Jewish family and moved to England prior to the war. Distressed by the war, in Europe, he moved to the US and lastly to Brazil. To me it feels like he tried pushing himself away from the war as far as possible. This reminded me of the film Woman in Gold, for it’s similarity of the Viennese Jewish family being forced out of their home by Nazi Germany. Having this background knowledge because of Woman in Gold helped me to understand what Vienna was like during that time, how that relates to Zweig, and how Anderson incorporated that into his film. In Anderson’s GBH, the fictional military group greatly resembles the Nazi takeover of Vienna. After the soldiers harass zero and M. Gustave on the train, Gustave says to Zero something along the lines that, “there is still faint glimmers of hope/civilization left in this barbaric slaughter house that was once known as humanity.” Anderson was greatly inspired by Zweig’s writings because many of his pieces contain the element of war. Like with GBH, Zweig’s writings, Post office girl and Beware of Pity both contain the element of war.

            In Beware of Pity introduction is very similar to opening of the movie. It reminded me of how similar James Franco’s short story was as similar to the film Palo Alto.  In the introduction of Beware of Pity, the narrator, a novelist is in a run-down, out of fashion restaurant where a man catches his attention. A waiter asks the novelist if he knows who the man is, in which he tells him he is a man of great importance, a military hero. The hero recognizes the author, and they later meet to talk over dinner. This is the basis of Anderson’s tale, with minor details of the beginning changed. In Anderson’s film, the author is perhaps Zweig. And Zero and Agatha are the couple in love, as opposed to Anton and Edith from Beware of Pity. Both Anderson’s and Zweig’s work contain compelling unusual characters, elements of young love, the effect of war, pre war Europe, a train, a shabby hotel, an author, and a man with a story.