Following a Passion

I’m lucky to work in the hospitality, tourism, event venue, and service industries. As you can imagine, it’s a kind of work that makes for good stories.

From long hours to exacting detail, from exhausting physical labor to perfunctory cheerfulness, from demanding guests to bizarre leaders and staff, those of us who work in hospitality may wonder at our chosen field in moments of exhaustion and bitterness, but something draws us back and keeps us hooked. This line of work can be deeply satisfying and very fun.

Those of us who are obsessed with great service may even spend our downtime studying and being entertained by the field we love.

Here is a collection of the best films to celebrate hospitality, from hotels, to trains, to ships, to restaurants.

Hotels and Resorts

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 

This charming film makes me think about starting over in life, whether in your twenties or in your golden years. Whether at home or as an expat, hotel living has its allure, especially in the community it builds.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

This sequal has a different flavor, with dance songs and a big wedding–and a more business intrigue. The struggle of a young man to keep his family business, the need for investors, and a desire to please critics all ring true in the film and in real life.

Fawlty Towers (series)

This British comedy series highlights the challenges of running a hotel, made hilarious by the boneheaded behavior of its owner and proprietor, Basil Fawlty. In a series of mishaps, all operations get turned on their heads, from mixing up guest rooms to introducing an overly pretentious gourmet night. This series should be required viewing for anyone who works in hospitality. John Cleese, Connie Booth, Prunella Scales, and Andrew Sachs write the book on comedy, and although this series began in the mid-1970s, the scenarios still ring true and the delivery remains just plain fun.  

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson’s take on a hotel is not only a shining achievement of film, it also plays on stereotypes of hospitality, from concierge, to valet, to staff meals, to wealthy patrons, to town baker. The hotel takes the fore, but other locations throughout the film get Wes Anderson’s signature treatment and illustrate hospitality under unusual circumstances (like during war and in jail).

The Shining

This iconic film still captures the imagination of living in a hotel, from the fantastic bar scenes, to the intricate garden maze, to the hollow sound of a Big Wheels trike rolling from tile to carpet. The eeriness of having a big resort all to oneself exacerbates a  man’s inner turmoil of having too much and being not enough. A writer’s retreat leads to a grisly transformation, a quiet mountain respite turns into a bloody nightmare, and a place of luxury becomes a grim and chilling horror.

Restaurants

Burnt

Films that feature chefs really play to the pressure, and Burnt adds a deep dose of charm and pathos. Rather than the quiet nurture of hosting human beings, this film illustrates the other side of hospitality, a performative aspect, the desire to delight and amaze guests, the feeling that an ever-raising bar and infinitely rising exceptionalism is the tower we must climb to remain relevant.

Chef

A brilliant bout of passion, ingenuity, and independence. This star-studded fiction film became a precursor to a non-fiction docu-series a few years later, demonstrating the cast’s love for the topic. Jon Favreau doing what he loves makes great viewing.

Delicious

This period film in French shows innovation at a pivotal moment (a country on the verge of revolution). Social change and business innovation come together. Bonus: a woman breaks gender norms by apprenticing in a man’s kitchen, and she helps to innovate the business, forming the front-of-house strategy for her mentor’s back-of-house operation.

Since many hospitality owners are entrepreneurs, here’s an exceptional piece full of nuance and surprise, as well as lush visuals of country French food and tablescapes–super-dreamy.

Hundred-Foot Journey 

I fell in love with this charming film. The idyllic French countryside setting, the mash-up of cultures, and the touching love stories make this a winner. Hellen Mirren’s kitchen feels intimidating and welcoming, just out of reach and right at home.

The Menu

A sophisticated thriller that feels more like an art film. On one level, The Menu is about fine dining, elevated experiences, and devotion gone wrong. But on other levels, this film speaks to class, power, service, pretense, luxury, basic needs, extraordinary theater, nourishment, depravity, sustenance, violence, and identity. Shall we question our humanity? Yes, Chef!

Ships

Arctic Void

This quirky, low-budget, indie film has unusual charm. From tourists on a boat, to survivalists in an apartment complex, this film makes me want to hit the water, board a ship, see snowy wonders, go for the chill, and get lost in a remote European hotel.

Death on the Nile

I’m a sucker for Hercule Poirot films, and this one delivers lushness and mystery. Do deck chairs get rocked around on a luxury ship cruising the Nile?

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Easily a favorite film, combining the nostalgia of Jaques Cousteau with the wonder of Wes Anderson, the sense of place aboard ship and in land-based hotels takes audiences on a rare journey, from making discoveries, reinventing relationships, and renewing a career, to burying our best and somehow continuing on.

The Odyssey 

This film covers the original nuclear Cousteau family, and it was not endorsed by the Cousteau family or foundation. What it lacks in insider influence and support it makes up for in dishing the dirt on a series of personalities and an enterprise that has had an undeniable global impact and a complicated legacy.

I grew up watching Jaques Cousteau films, part of my family’s dinner routine some nights, and I have a deep fondness for those entertaining documentaries, even as I recognize that our awareness and sensibilities have changed.

In this film, the underwater and arctic scenes definitely make me want to go work on an expeditionary cruise line, something I wouldn’t necessarily be attracted to without the small-ship, science-toting, curiosity-pursuing quality of a boutique expedition. Here is a complex look at my childhood hero and the environmental docu-tainment O.G., Jaques Couteau.

Triangle of Sadness

This is a stunning film with shocking, breathtaking, slow-moving scenes. The whole film made me uncomfortable, even as I delighted in it. It wrestles with big ideas in a completely accessible way, full of candy-shop visuals and salacious drama. What is privilege? What is power? What is beauty? What is loyalty? When do we trade those roles? What is right side up, and what is upside down? This film poses all these questions and more. If you don’t care to ponder, don’t worry; it’s still entertaining.

Trains

The Darjeeling Limited

When it comes to hospitality and trains, this has to be a top pick. Rita gets hailed as “Sweet Lime,” and passengers get ejected over a venomous carry-on.

I thought about the monastery scenes as I recently visited Tara Mandala, a mountaintop Buddhist retreat center on a breezy 8,000-foot Colorado mountain. What took the mother there? And what compelled her sons to visit? When are we lost, and who is ever found?

This film has darkly comedic moments, and really touching ones, too. There’s one village scene that makes me cry every time. But when I think of the film, I smile; the wry humor striking first.

The score is super-catchy, one I love listening to over and over again, whether I’m in a breezy car or scrubbing toilets.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Another lush Kenneth Branagh film, Agatha Christie’s mystery unfolds amid a splendid conglomeration of characters, aboard a stunning luxury sleeper train. From a doctor to a princess, from a count to a butler, privilege and service come together to form the fabulous mash-up that is hospitality and survival, aboard an abode that is itself a mode of travel, a train.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

An older rendition of this Agatha Christie tale stands apart, with a different take on the story and a fantastic cast of entirely different illustrious actors. The story stands with both tellings, and each telling is unique and masterful enough to warrant its own watching. Who serves whom? No matter our role, perhaps we all take an equal share of responsibility in the end.

Snowpiercer

More sensation than substance, still, Snowpiercer raises questions about class, privilege, and power. Its shifting locales from one car to the next, complete changes in scenery aboard the same fantastic train, illustrate how highly constructed our ideas of comfort and aesthetics are.

There’s something for everyone in the setting, from prohibition-era lounge, to illustrious light-filled cathedral-like windows, to industrial prison-like cars. Life aboard a train takes a new meaning for passengers who never mean to leave it, whose survival depends on its perpetual run. When home is travel, and the folks at the back head to the front, what happens?

Airports and Flight

Up in the Air

This film question the idea of home, belonging, and a meaninful life, as it charts travelers who spend a lot of time on planes, in airports, and up in the air.

The Terminal

This film follows a guy who literally gets stuck in an airport–indefinitely. If you’ve ever spent hours or days longer than you thought in an airport, you will relate to the feeling–and the fear of permanent displacement.

Finding hacks for survival in an aiport and ways of making it a long-term abode bring a smile to anyone who’s been too long in flight, who’s traveled too much, or who knows the feeling of living out of a suitcase–literally.

Wes Anderson Films

Wes Anderson’s films touch on hospitality and service in both subtle and splashy ways. A distinct sense of place mixes with the action of setting up a residence (from hanging pictures, to pitching a tent, to navigating a resort). Anderson’s films mix luxury and ruin, internally and externally, from tennis stars to aquatic documentarians, from writers to film stars, from mansions to jail cells. Characters become lost and found, each place harboring and rejecting the characters themselves and the connections between them.

The Grand Budapest Hotel may be the most obvious. But every Wes Anderson film includes elements of service, from a visor-wearing front desk clerk, to Herr Mendl’s coveted baking, to the Society of the Crossed Keys. From Pagoda in The Royal Tenenbaums, to Rita in The Darjeeling Limited, to Nescaffier in The French Dispatch, those in service get a particular spotlight.

Each film plays on elements of service, elevating chefs, concierges, and bakers, and frustrating the most privileged and renowned. Each film plays on hospitality in different locales, in a brownstone in The Royal Tenanbaums, aboard a ship in The Life Aquatic, on a train in The Darjeeling Limited, at camp in Moonrise Kingdom, in prison in The French Dispatch, and even underground in The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Each film sets up a residence, usually with a cutaway set and cozy lighting, in a way that creates a sense of belonging and discord within an environment, the strangeness of travel and the familiarity of home.

Wes Anderson colorfully illustrates where we reside physically, intellectually, and emotionally. He asks what is survival and what is luxury. He upends assumptions about who follows and who leads, who’s in charge, and where it all goes.

I have yet to see a Wes Anderson film I didn’t like.

In his films, Wes Anderson invites us in, curates a space, hosts a gathering, and tells us stories. He takes us out there and deep within. His films speak exactly to what we call tourism and hospitality.

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