The Grand Budapest Hotel is to Wes Anderson as Inglorious Basterds is to Quentin Tarantino. Both films confront and revise devastating history and stories in a hopeful, invigorating way and suggest that the power of stories creates a heritage and a life that go beyond blood, borders, time and tyranny. The Grand Budapest Hotel suggests that while individuals are destroyed in the winepress of war ultimately good will survive and win because the memory will live on. Anderson hasn’t been in such fine form since Rushmore. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the closest that Ralph Fiennes will get to comedy, and thank God that Fiennes was the star and not Johnny Depp. The Grand Budapest Hotel is all style and art without losing the gravitas and gray, mournful pallor that hangs over every scene. If you don’t like Anderson’s fastidious and meticulous style, keep moving, but it isn’t too twee or special. If the world were a fair place, it would be second only to Snowpiercer in 2014.