'Grand Budapest Hotel's Zubrowka Has Inspiration

Considering Wes Anderson's mind-blowingly fantastical flights of fancy, it should be a surprise to no one that the director of The Grand Budapest Hotel has a veritable smorgasbord of additional materials and supplementals. Like this video from Vulture, which depicts the important historical information surrounding totally made up European country of Zubrowka. Utilizing the Author (Tom Wilkinson) from the film, a brief lecture is given on the tiny country's rise and progress during the film's historical center — a time when the world changed into two very distinct parts — old and new, natch.

It's all very Andersonian in nature: highlighting the film's central focus — a wildly jam-packed and growth-spurt-y year in the history of the world, where many things changed quickly and sometimes without warning — and giving a bit of context to the story he's telling through this fictional land. With his signature quirk and ethereal romanticism for the past, the clip grounds the otherwise grandiose scale of storytelling seen through tiny, intimate details and moments. Because, y'know, this time in history — for the historically fictionalized or otherwise — was neck-deep into the breakneck years of societal, governmental, and all the other -als of change we saw at the time. Anyone who's a fan of the auteur's work is sure to find a bit of joy in this. Besides! It also contains the lyrics to the Zubrowka national anthem: and who doesn't need that in their lives, eh?

And of course, this video is not for naught: it's all to support of The Society of the Crossed Keys, a new book of writings from the Austrian author Stefan Zweig (the man whose work and life inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel), picked special by Anderson himself. Does that many ever grow tired of his own abundance?

Image: 20th Century Fox