The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)

**½
USA

Various quirky misadventures befall Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody playing depressed brothers on a quirky spiritual quest aboard a quirky, lumbering locomotive traversing the cleanest parts of India. It's ironic that moving out of an oppressively art directed studio has resulted in Wes Anderson's first thoroughly airless picture. The trouble isn't in the rigid visual composition, cutesy humour or self-consciously hipster soundtrack so much as it is in the hollowness of the protagonists. Their crises feel cursory. They only serve to accentuate the artifice of the whole venture. Anjelica Huston pops up towards the end and breathes some life into the story, but it's too little too late.

The Darjeeling Limited

Comedy is tragedy seen from a distance. So why does Wes Anderson shoot most of his comedies in close-up? Critics have complained that he’s obsessed with style as a director, that there’s no heart to his movies… everything’s arch. But people wouldn’t love movies likeRushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums if they were only window-dressing. It’s true enough that Anderson has an eye for composition, but it’s the heart of his movies that draws people in. The Darjeeling Limited is beautiful to look at, full of wit and wry, subtle humour, but again (and, as always) you’ll fall for it because it’s a funny/sad movie. Adjectives, like tragedy, come closer when Wes Anderson is in the director’s chair.

Darjeeling is about three brothers: Jason Schwartzman, Adrian Brody and Luke Wilson. They have lost their father and each is, in his own way, finding it hard to cope. Luke Wilson invites his siblings on a holiday to India, hoping they can re-connect over the course of a long train journey. Wilson (heavily bandaged for most of the movie) has recently been involved in a motorcycle accident; Brody is about to become a father and Schwartzman is being tormented by an ex-girlfriend. India is meant to provide the answers to their woes.

The movie starts with a short film set in a Paris hotel-room. Jason Schwartzman, looking suave, has sex with Natalie Portman. The scene is erotic, if a little detached. Schwartzman, the quintessential Anderson hero, is angry at Portman for leaving him (we’re never told her reasons). She wants a friendship where they can occasionally have sex. He’s still in love. They are both rich, jaded, J.D. Salinger-types who could easily lose our sympathies – yet they don’t. Instead, we feel their need for each other and the great, unbridgeable gap between them. They’re fakes, but they act sincerely.

Luke Wilson and Adrian Brody are also playing not-quite real people. Even as Wilson describes the motorcycle accident that spurred him to reunite the brothers, he does so so eloquently that his speech sits perched between heartbreak and spoof (not that we don’t feel the heartbreak, but – still). Brody is tetchy and fretful for most of the movie, easily the most circumspect of the three brothers, but still capable of saying and doing unexpected things. He would probably be the only brother you could meet in the real world, but he’s also the man who buys a poisonous snake and takes it on a train.

India, as Darjeeling envisions it, is a place where every Indian speaks with a British accent, and as such is not to be confused with the real India. It’s more a place where Americans can go that isn’t hostile, familiar or part of the United States. It’s there to shelter Brody, Wilson and Schwartzman. Sure, there’s a lot of talk of “spirituality”, in that way that people talk when they aren’t serious about religion, but Anderson doesn’t want to make a movie about the India of ashrams and spiritual awakenings, he just wants to show his characters another way of life, to help them break free of their money-coddled melancholy.

The Darjeeling Limited is about what Rushmore, Tenenbaums and every Wes Anderson movie is about: it’s about family. Anderson doesn’t see family in exactly Waltons-terms, but he does see it as the last best hope for people who might otherwise sever all ties with the world. As thorny and as fractious as familial relations may be, they’re simply so necessary that (in Anderson’s view) to do without is to be done for. His is a cutesy movie-world only on the surface; it’s well-dressed to hide something rather than to cover nothing up. If you’ve ever felt tired of the world, if you’ve ever been lonely… The Darjeeling Limiteddoesn’t for one moment seem false – it’s just a funny way of telling a sad, sad story.

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Moon Minis - The Darjeeling Limited

Standard Wes Anderson fare that relies on three men (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Jason Shwartzman) to carry the story of estranged brothers setting out on a spiritual journey in India. Practical familial tensions set in as the brothers travel with each other, which is Anderson at his best but also his most comfortable and tried.

Darjeeling may have all the requisite parts of an Andersonian film, but it lacks the bite, wit, and humor that his other films carry. Instead, think of the film as a slower, plodding Royal Tenenbaums, but without the bits of satire and crisp cuts that make that film such a pleasure to watch.

There are strengths to the film, such as a tense scene where the brothers attempt to rescue Indian kids from a capsized raft; emotional and surprising, it has a kick that the rest of the movie hasn't received, making the majority of the film stand out more because of its lack of the aforementioned quality.

Darjeeling is artsy, its camerawork inspired and savvy, but it resembles wading through a marsh, or in this case, running after a train like in the metaphor-heavy ending sequence of the film: one can see the train, can attempt to get closer to it, but ultimately it lies just out of reach. Nice to look back on, but not as entertaining to watch as to explore the themes Anderson presents.

Last updated: 2010-01-17 04:09:14 by user01

The Darjeeling Limited

Three brothers who haven’t seen each other since their father’s funeral a year ago set forth to India on a spiritual voyage. Francis (Owen Wilson), the eldest as well as the organiser, has a hidden agenda of hoping to reunite with their estranged mother while his clueless brothers, Peter and Jack, reluctantly follow along. The dysfunctional brotherhood is put to test as they argue, disagree, and fight on a train named “The Darjeeling Limited” across the country.

The Darjeeling Limited is delightful. It is funny and smart, the best combination for a movie. The story flows so fine that I didn’t try to guess how the story is going to be, I let myself immerse in it. Furthermore, albeit brief duration of 91 minutes, the pace of the movie is perfect. Nothing is rushed nor dragged. Sometimes I feel that a movie which last less than 100 minutes is a rip off but this is definitely not one of it. In particular, I like how the Whitman brothers finally get on track in their divine journey when they try to save three local kids from drowning. I believe, in a foreign land, true enlightenment comes when one starts to encounter the life of a local, not just looming around as tourist.

When picking a movie to watch, I like to choose something to suit my emotion at that moment. However, this is one movie you could watch anytime at all. It has a deep meaning, yet the story is told in a calm manner. There’s no need to fill up your tummy before watching but if you do, it’s fine also.

If you couldn’t decide on a movie, you might wanna consider watching this.

Mel says: 8/10

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