Page - 121 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

121 from grand Hotels to tiny treasures arc of this one also shows how Anderson’s encounter with a cari- catured version of one aspect of Vienna’s international reputa- tion led to him, too, being given the chance to reflect on some of the presuppositions of his own artistic practice and to learn how an historical orientation to contemporary cultural practic- es in the city has the potential to help one refocus, and build on forward-looking aspects of the past rather than remain fixated on and fixed in glorified, destructive pasts. The problem of pasts and their material remnants is something that is underscored in the final section of the chapter, which returns to the grand hotels in and around Vienna and compares how they, like Görlitz and Detroit, are having to respond to the challenges of our contem- porary conjuncture. While not thus far having to traffic in ruin porn per se, their substantial infrastructure and its histories are making it difficult for these localities to imagine socially equita- ble futures for themselves. Budapest, Görlitz, Detroit The Grand Budapest Hotel could not have been more aptly named. “[S]et mostly in the 1930s in the fictitious republic of Zubrowka, an alpine land of snowy peaks, cable cars, cham- ois, ski runs and isolated mountaintop monasteries” (Firebrace 2014, 66), the convoluted story follows the adventures of a flam- boyant hotel concierge, played with great zest by Ralph Fiennes, through the eyes of the wide-eyed, foreign lobby boy whom he trains and who becomes his devotee, played as a youth by Tony Revolori and by F. Murray Abraham as an older man. The lay- ers of history these adventures delve back into — from 1985 to 1965 to 1932 — are unambiguously Eastern European, and each is shot in a film format typical of the time: “1985 at 1.85 […]; 1965 at a widescreen 2.40:1; and the bulk of the film 1.37:1, the tradi- tional format for movies shot in the 1930s and 1940s” (Firebrace 2014, 68). Critics have pointed out that “the dates provided ap- of the nation’s guilt and which in turn could bring about the population’s final redemption” (Elsaesser, cited in Cooke and Homewood 2011, 11).