The Grand Budapest Hotel, a grand romp in a long-gone Europe

IT did seem the four Oscars awarded to The Grand Budapest Hotel were compensation for not awarding it best film.

Ralph Fiennes in a scene from The Grand Budapest Hotel.

IT might seem churlish, but it did seem the four Oscars awarded to The Grand Budapest Hotel (Sunday, 6.45pm, Masterpiece) at the recent Academy Awards — for costume, make-up, score and production design — were overcompensation for not awarding it best film.

That is not to take away from any of those deserving elements. It is simply to say that there is an obvious trend for films about actors, acting and filmmaking — Birdman, Argo, The Artist — winning the most prestigious categories, being topics likely to appeal to the academy but arguably less so to the cinema-going public.

Grand Budapest is the rollicking tale of a hotel concierge who teams up with his protege to escape a murder charge and safeguard an invaluable inheritance, against a backdrop of cultural entropy and looming war.

Director Wes Anderson has delivered his most vividly drawn characters since 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums (Thursday, 2.05pm, Masterpiece). Ralph Fiennes is magnificent as Monsieur Gustave, a complex and contradictory figure: simultaneously urbane and profane, chivalrous yet inexplicably attracted to rich, elderly ladies.

I am partial to the evocative central European setting of the film (I search the TV guide for Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth on a near-weekly basis), even if it’s a fictional one, and mostly filmed in Germany. We all have our biases.

The only way to describe the movie Frank (Friday, 5.05pm, Premiere) is weird but worth it.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, who also made the excellent but comparatively sane 2012 film What Richard Did, it tells the story of Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a wannabe musician who joins a band led by Frank (Michael Fassbender), a musical genius who insists on wearing a papier-mache head at all times. After months of rehearsal in Ireland and booking a performance at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the band begins to fracture from the tension between being authentic or popular.

In a climactic scene, theremin-player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) stabs Jon in the leg while he helplessly yells their safe word “chinchilla”, to prevent him from persuading Frank to lighten up their repertoire. Jon uploads a video of the whole event to social media, which naturally goes viral. “Wayward,” says one viewer. Indeed.

The film explores the impulse to control or even destroy our heroes, the shallowness of social media, and the idea that great suffering inspires great art — all thought-provoking topics.

Finally, in another examination of suffering for the sake of art, we have the excellent ballet documentary First Position (Thursday, 10.25am, Masterpiece). It follows six young dancers preparing for a competition, all hoping to gain entry to elite programs, schools and scholarships. I haven’t been able to watch a performance of ballet since without thinking about it.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (M)

4 stars

Sunday, 6.45pm, Masterpiece

First Position (G)

3.5 stars

Thursday, 10.25am, Masterpiece

Frank (MA15+)

3.5 stars

Friday, 5.05m, Premiere