With Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) at the helm of a film, you know you are in for a trip. In only five feature-length films, the director has become the source of heated debate among the film cognoscenti: Some say his creations are overly insular and whimsical just for the sake of it, while staunch defenders cite Anderson’s universe as a wonderful sphere just beyond our own reality – an exaggerated take on life.
The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson’s first feature-length film in three years, paints many of the director’s themes and collaborators on a foreign canvas. In India, Anderson finds a new, challenging turf on which to air his dysfunctional family, road tragicomedy flick. Critics and moviegoers, go to your separate corners.
After a year of separation following their father’s death, three equally disturbed brothers reunite in India to embark on a spiritual journey. The controlling brother, Francis (Owen Wilson, You, Me and Dupree), plans out the entire trip with carefully crammed itineraries. As brother pits against brother pits against brother, it becomes abundantly clear this will be no easy passage through India.
Anderson is an auteur in the strictest sense of the word. After witnessing several seconds pulled from any of his films, there is no question of whose film you are watching. The long tracking shots, characters staring into the space beyond the lens, slow motion sequences set to classic rock and the stunningly quick zoom shot – all identifiable techniques in Anderson’s canon.
Adrien Brody (Hollywoodland) is new to Anderson’s world and plays brother Peter, delivering the most subtle and commendable performance of all three lead actors. Brody fits in naturally with the Anderson regulars and is a terrifically introverted counterpart to Wilson’s Francis.
Previous Anderson cohort Jason Schwartzman (Marie Antoinette) co-wrote the screenplay along with the director and another of the gang, Schwartzman’s cousin Roman Coppola (yes, son of Francis Ford and brother to Sofia). Sporting a George Harrison-fashioned mustache, Schwartzman gives a quirky turn as Jack, a creative writer whose fictional characters parallel his brothers and ex-lover. The morose, tormented Jack sets his eye on an Indian stewardess, eager to bury the pain of his failed romance.
To the dismay of eager Anderson fans, the director’s fantastic 13-minute short, Hotel Chevalier, which chronicles the last encounter between Jack and his lover (a bruised and beautiful Natalie Portman) does not show in front of Darjeeling.
Interestingly enough, much of Darjeeling feels like a collection of shorts. The atmosphere, not always as engaging as it is playful, gets somewhat disjointed due to an overload of ideas and back story. But despite the cries of Anderson detractors, the filmmaker has not failed through repeating himself – or at all. If Darjeeling does not completely succeed across all 91 minutes, it is due to Anderson’s decision to branch out into less comfortable territory, and a director can hardly be faulted for expanding his vision.
In The Life Aquatic, Anderson and company hit a zany peak. With Darjeeling, Anderson wisely scales back on some of the fantastical elements.
As the brothers literally carry their deceased father’s baggage through the Indian scenery, the storybook aspect slowly crumbles and the past closes in on the travelers. Jack neurotically checks his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine, Peter contemplates divorce on the eve of his first child’s birth and Francis reveals his severe face wounds may or may not have been caused by a suicide attempt.
Death and depression figure more prominently into Darjeeling than in any other Anderson film, and though there are plenty of yucks to be had early, large portions of the film carry a graver tone. Failed parents and lost, grown-up children have always been an Anderson specialty.
But he would never let a cloudy day spoil his characters’ little parade. The brothers forge on through Anderson’s pastel vision of India, photographed in sublime Panavision by Anderson’s frequent cinematographer Robert Yeoman.
Even with Coppola and Schwartzman lending their hands on the screenplay, Darjeeling unmistakably bears the mark of New York’s most bizarre major studio director. And like his characters, Anderson is in the process of discovering himself through an increasingly curious cinematic legacy. Darjeeling, like his other films, falls far from perfect, but it is Anderson’s most honest and ambitious yet, certainly worth the ride.
zherrm@umd.edu
