Hotel E (1992)

Hotel E

Hotel E was released in 1992, just after the re-establishment of the Estonian Republic after fifty years of Soviet occupation. The film explores Pärn’s impressions of the changing relationship and mentality of both Eastern and Western Europe during this period. The film is divided into three parts: “Introduction No. 1, The Legend of the Traitor”; “Introduction No. 2, The Legend of the Redeemer”; and “Epilogue, The American Dream”. Strangely, the epilogue makes up the bulk of this 29-minute film.  The first two segments, “The Legend of the Traitor” and “The Legend of the Redeemer”, introduce the protagonist, who appears to be a traveller. In the first segment, it depicts the bleakness of the East and the burden of this world on the traveller. The animation itself is grey and bland. The second segment shows the Western Europeans in their own habitat. The animation is colourful with panoramic backgrounds. The characters depicted are smiling and passing wine glasses around.  When the traveller appears they fill his cup and sit at a banquet table together, depicting the unity of Europe and their welcoming of the East into their fold.
“The American Dream” is a lengthy segment that depicts Pärn’s impressions of the western way of life and the rigors of living in the East. /---/
In some ways Hotel E seems to be a warning to the East that the “American Dream” is no better than what they had before. The protagonist at the end, while no longer faceless, seems just as unhappy with his similar but different regime of mechanized cup lifting.
Shawn Pinchbeck.
The Animated Films of Priit Pärn. Metro Cinema Publications Number Two, March, 2005, lk 17.

Fat Chicks and Imbeciles: the films of Priit Pärn

In 1992, the year after Estonia became independent, Pärn completed Hotel E, a bitter and sometimes myopic critique of the hypocrisy of both the East and the West. While the East represses art and language, he contends, the West, for all its freedom, lacks art and language and, with that, individuality. Playing with stereotypes, Pärn paints the East as a dark, gray world while filling the West with bright colours and friendly, smiling faces. Beneath this pop art sugarcoating, he seems to be saying, the West is a culture of sterility and illusion. No one does anything, no ones says anything, yet everything is “just great.”  
“I had been traveling a lot between East and West,” says Pärn. “I was between two systems. This is my own story up to a certain point. This is not a film about two systems, about East and West; for me it is a story about this person.” While Estonia’s independence afforded Pärn more freedom, it came with a price: “In the Soviet time everything which was not permitted was forbidden. So there were an endless number of restrictions that were political, but just insane. Now all the limits are connected with money. The final result is very often the same as before, sometimes worse.”
A major weakness in Hotel E is Pärn’s criticism of the West, and Americans in particular. He lumps Americans into a group of staid, hollow shells who have nothing to do and nothing to say. Now, yes, Pärn is exaggerating Western lifestyle to a degree in cautioning Estonian and Soviet viewers not to be too hopeful about the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Still, Pärn’s caricature of the West is extreme and relentless. In doing so, he ends up mirroring the perceived hateful and superficial tendencies attitudes of Americans.
Robinson, C. (2005). Fat Chicks and Imbeciles: the films of Priit Pärn. Metro Cinema Publications Number Two, March, lk 6-7.

Mari Laaniste. Reflections of Self and Surrounding Circumstances in Priit Pärn's Films The Triangle and Hotel E
62-96; > Summary 93-96 <
This article discusses two films by the famous Estonian drawn animation auteur Priit Pärn: The Triangle (Kolmnurk, 1982) and Hotel E (Hotell E, 1992). The first dissects typical Soviet gender roles within intimate relationships, seen from an ironic, decidedly postmodern angle. The other is a reflection of the shock and identity crisis brought about by the fall of the Iron Curtain. By comparing the two, I am trying to point out the enormity of the paradigmatic shift reflected in them; the complete change of perspective that arrives with the acknowledgement of the new, postsocialist situation.

Andreas Trossek. The Death of Dark Animation in Europe: Priit Pärn's Hotel E
97-123; > Summary 120-123 <
This article examines how the trend toward more socio-critical, 'dark' or artistically pretentious films, which developed in the Soviet Union more generally during the years of Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension to power, essentially culminated and also came to an end in Estonian animation with Priit Pärn's animated film Hotel E (1992). The article is based on a specific case study, an analysis of the film and the surrounding events, first by endeavouring to map out the broader historical and cultural context around Hotel E, and secondly by demonstrating the fact that the film can be viewed as the finale of many cultural processes that had been unleashed earlier: in the film, criticism of the powers-that-be of the late or 'mature' socialism, which was typical of the former Eastern Europe, is combined with the longing for the always virtually perceived West.

Kirjandusteaduslikke Uurimusi / Studies on Art and Architecture, http://ktu.artun.ee/13_eng_currentissue.html (16.05.2014).