Stating its themes in the course of the dialogue, the film seems more an uncertain if quite ambitious tonal exercise in the intangible nature of sorrow than either a comedy or a drama. Balancing farcical moment, tragic incident and in the end championing transgressive love, The Hotel New Hampshire manages both a sense of fragile immediacy and the inevitability of irony. All events thus turn out to have bitter consequences as happiness is mostly denied these characters, eccentrics who must stick together in the face of what is the real enemy of humanity – despair. Director Richardson seems to imply that life is cruelest to its eccentrics because they are aware of this, although the film is really at a loss to define any standard of convention from which to compare behavior. Indeed, what there emerges of “normality” is vile, mean and cruel when not indifferent. It is no wonder that the family seems forever in a game of losing and finding itself, forever chasing a dream that is finally fleetingly attainable. Although the respective hotels are achieved, the ambition to find the one true Hotel New Hampshire seems akin to pursuing a kind of New England El Dorado – the impossible dream. Indeed, despite the comedic touches, this is a sad and depressing film, although the despair is neatly used to validate the transgressive triumph between Lowe and Foster. Every moment seems important, but like in dreams, the ultimate meaning is elusive.
The film develops a bitter, cynical sense of irony throughout. However, the final stages seem rushed, packed with incident but losing the tonal assurance of much of the first half and glossing over narrative developments in a kind of uncontrollably elliptical structure. Thus, the film gives the impression that finally it has slipped out of Richardson’s grasp and he is left with incidents in search of coherence. This protracted, episodic descent ultimately sinks the film. Nevertheless, as a piece of bitter whimsy, a vision of life’s perhaps inevitable disappointment and the burden of dreams, The Hotel New Hampshire is a genuine oddment to be treasured for its better moments. Befittingly, much of the film concerns intangible emotions and the imperative to somehow express them in relation to place and in the process make them tangible. Amusingly, the dog, metaphorically named Sorrow, is stuffed and continues to affect the family’s lives in unusual ways: they cannot ever be fully rid of it and their test becomes one of emotional endurance, to not surrender to the despair and melancholy madness that surrounds them. Although the main characters are eccentric, the film is remarkable for the way it makes them seem almost normal, and the world around them the true abnormality – no wonder that in their world the forbidden and the dream is all that is left bar despair. In so charting their fleeting triumph, the film endorses them. read more