Page - 119 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

119 5 From Grand Hotels to Tiny Treasures: Wes Anderson and the Ruin Porn Worlds of Yesterday “Mr. Moustafa: To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it — but, I will say: he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace! (Pause.) Are you going up?” —Dilley (2017, 197) “Spitzmaus [shrew]: 1) A small insectivorous mammal resembling a mouse, with a long, pointed snout and tiny eyes; 2) A bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman” —Lexico Upon its release in 2014, Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Ho- tel appeared as “nothing if not a nostalgic, loving, and almost perversely fastidious recreation of a phantom Habsburg Em- pire” (Isenberg 2014, 72). This view was primed by Anderson’s acknowledgement of the influence of Stefan Zweig’s writings on his vision for the film. Focus on Zweig’s connections to Vienna, and not the Budapest of the title, led to the film being read as unveiling “not only a primal urge suited for diagnosis by Dr.