The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited (***)

I kind of feel like I'm going to look back at this review at some point and wish I scored it higher, because Wes Anderson movies seem to grow on me the more I see them, but then again, who knows? The Darjeeling Limited is, indeed, the most recent film from auteur Wes Anderson, and unmistakably so. Anderson wastes no time reminding everyone of his off-beat style from the very beginning of the film, by actually beginning with a 10-15 minute "short film", dubbed "Hotel Chevalier", which is only later made clear to be in the continuity with the "main" Darjeeling Limited film. The short film is somewhat bizarre, introducing us to Jason Schwartzman's character Jack Whitman living in a surreal looking hotel room when he is suddenly visited by his once girlfriend, played by Natalie Portman. This scene/film/whatever runs for 13 minutes, contains almost no dialog, and adds almost nothing that I can discern to the main film that makes it worth it. I appreciate Wes Anderson's off-beat style, but in this case the whole venture of this short film is just awkward and detracts from the rest of the movie more than benefits it.

After the "Hotel Chevalier" segment, The Darjeeling Limited itself begins and quickly establishes that its less avant-garde and easier to digest than the aforementioned opening. At the same, it still is unmistakably Wes Anderson. The film's title refers to the train of the same name on which the three main characters spend much of the movie. Like the Belefonte, Steve Zissou's ship from The Life Aquatic, the Darjeeling seems sort of otherworldly in its design, and takes on a life of its own as Anderson pans from room to room. The central characters in the story are the Whitman brothers-- Francis, Peter, and Jack-- played by Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman respectively. The relationship between the three brothers has been strained ever since the death of their father, and a trip on the Darjeeling through India is Francis's plan to reconcile the brothers, hoping they'll have some sort of spiritual revelation along the way. Each of the brothers seems to possess a fatal flaw: Francis is too controlling (orders for his two brothers in the dinner car), Peter is clingy (wears his father's glasses - with his father's prescription in them), while Jack writes passive-agressive stories with fictional characters who obviously aren't entirely fictional and seems to want to bang anything that moves.

The brothers go through some amount of reconciliation throughout the film, but like most of Wes Anderson's movies, the ending is somewhat muted, and the film seems to be more about how all the characters get to the ending. In The Life Aquatic, this was in the form of a voyage to kill a jaguar shark complete with claymated ocean scenes and a preposterous battle with modern day pirates. I actually liked the over-the-top surrealness of Life Aquatic (most professional critics seemed lukewarm at best about it), but I found myself liking Darjeeling Limited as well. Even though the train itself seems to come directly from the oddest corner of Wes Anderson's mind, some of the starkest scenes take place off of the train out in the vastness of actual rural India. The film is of the same sort-of comedy, sort-of drama, hard to place mold of his other films, though more towards the serious side than Royal Tennenbaums or Life Aquatic (that's not to say that there aren't a few laugh out loud moments because there are). The film is quieter on the whole, and seems to be itself a sort of meditation in the same vein that the characters within the film are trying to find. I'm not sure if it led me to any great personal revelation though.

The biggest flaw in the movie is one in all his films-- one which seems to turn off a lot of people completely, while I can deal with it, though nevertheless acknowledge it-- namely, that Anderson seems to be too eager to make the film as off-beat as possible. I already mentioned the biggest example of this: the strange short film before "the real film" that is in the same continuity but doesn't have the same tone whatsoever. But throughout the film there's examples of dialog between characters where one character will ask a question, and the other will give a response that doesn't seem to be applicable to the question at all. Sometimes, it's for humorous effect, but a lot of the time its merely distracting, and its hard to take the emotion in the film as serious as it should be taken when characters don't seem to interact like actual people. There are other examples of this same basic idea, like Owen Wilson's character, whose head is wrapped in an absurd amount of bandages and keeps losing teeth throughout the movie because of a motorcycle accident. It seems at first like its supposed to be funny, but later on there are hints that Owen Wilson's character may be suicidal, and suddenly its hard to determine how you're really supposed to feel.

Even with all the off-beat stuff in Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums, and Life Aquatic, I "got" those movies more than I did this one, I think. Even though Darjeeling seems more grounded in reality, his previous movies seemed to resonate more with me for some reason. Still, there are some enjoyable scenes that use the backdrop of India beautifully, and the performances by each of the three brothers are quite good. There are many worse ways to spend an hour and a half