The Darjeeling Limited

**

10/29/07
by Scott Cupper

Francis…………………..Owen Wilson
Peter……………………..Adrien Brody
Jack………………………Jason Schwartzman
Brendan………………….Wallace Wolodarsky
Rita………………………Amara Karan
Alice……………………..Camilla Rutherford
Patricia…………………..Anjelica Huston
The Businessman..……… Bill Murray

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr. 31 min.


There are a lot of people who love Wes Anderson. I appreciate that he has a distinct style, but I feel the praise he receives from some is a little much. I like Rushmore a lot. That was released in 1998. Now here’s The Darjeeling Limited nearly 10 years later. Its camerawork is even more self-indulgent, the acting even more mannered, and the characters are still trying to grow up. I expect filmmakers to mature but I feel that Wes Anderson might actually be regressing.

The Darjeeling Limited of the title is a train in India. Francis (Owen Wilson) has invited his brothers to join him on the train. They haven’t seen each other or spoken in a while. When Peter (Adrien Brody) arrives, he asks Francis what happened to his face. Indeed. Francis looks like an elephant that got his ears and nose done, bandages wrapped around his head. He was involved in a motorcycle accident and landed face first.

This experience was the impetus for the journey. I mentioned that they haven’t seen each other in a while, since their father’s funeral a year ago to be exact. Which they nearly missed. And their mother didn’t attend. Because she’s disappeared. As expected for a Wes Anderson movie, issues abound. But this trip is going to bring them together. At least, this is Francis’s hope and he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure it happens including dictating rules for them like saying yes to everything, no matter what and having Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky) onboard making laminated itineraries.

Peter is skeptical, but we learn that’s pretty much par for the course. He’s been in a long-term relationship with Alice (Camilla Rutherford) and is going to have a child with her but just isn’t sure about it. Why? Couldn’t say. The youngest, Jack (Jason Schwartzman), is at the whim of the others and the world. Sex with the stewardess presents itself, and he obliges. But he hacks into this ex-girlfriend’s voicemail whenever a phone presents itself.

Francis has plotted a course visiting as many holy places as possible. I will credit Wes Anderson with making India a character. He and his co-writers Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman toured India beforehand and the research is evident.

The movie is at odds against itself. One night, the brothers have a heart-to-heart-to-heart around a campfire. The moment inspires them to participate in a spiritual ceremony that Francis learned about. They all go to different corners of the screen and come back and find that only Francis did it correctly. It’s an amusing moment, but one that deflates the emotion that came before. This type of humor only works when the characters are laughing, too. Not just us.

This is indicative of the movie as a whole. Wes Anderson’s style has become so pervasive that it is what the movie is about. Every moment of pathos is undercut like this with humor or exaggerated color or a too-symmetrical shot. The movie is as emotionally stunted as the characters. Mr. Anderson has his actors be so unaffected by anything we’re not really sure when anything happens. Maybe that’s why when there finally is enlightenment, we are informed that it has happened with slow motion and a hip soundtrack blaring. Catharsis replaced with Hollywood magic.

I don’t know. There’s a lot about the movie that may reveal itself on multiple viewings. The movie is rife with symbolism; the most obvious is the father’s luggage that they cart through India. And I’m sure there are plenty of Wes Anderson apologists who would be ready and more than willing to explain it to me. How having the movie avoid emotion like the characters creates a subjective experience. But I couldn’t help feel that Wes Anderson and his actors like these characters and wanted me to like them, too. And if the movie fails at that, well, I’m not on board.

Note: The weekend after I saw The Darjeeling Limited, the short film Hotel Chevalier, which acts as a prologue, was being run before the film. That is why I made no mention of it here.