Film Review: Darjeeling Limited

By: Alibastard | in: Movies |

Reprising his Imperialist preoccupations, dispersing the dramas of a dysfunctional, prep-school elite into a near Tin-Tin landscape, Wes Anderson pairs down his character list (at last) and revisits Bottle Rocket terrain with his return to the male triad.

Again, one of Anderson’s films seems displaced in an almost children’s book environment. Sumptuous details within the train and other voyage atmospheres embolden the film’s dramatic subtext just as they did in Rushmore, Tenenbaums and are brought to an almost critical mass with their CGI animation in The Life Aquatic. Despite the tendency for Anderson’s art direction to wage a near takeover in previous films and almost monopolize our focus (usually stealing scenes flat out from Anderson’s dryly-directed troupe…think the killer whale behind Papa Zissou in Aquatic) Darjeeling finally hits a balance between theatrics and design.

Adrian Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman (who co-wrote the script with Anderson and filmmaker friend Roman Coppola) are three brothers, all of vague metropolitan importance, who have been bamboozled by Francis (Wilson) into blindly following an Indian travel itinerary that leads to their estranged mother. Within their search, the brothers attempt a comic sojourn for spiritual enlightenment, romantic certainty, the resolve of their father’s recent death (the appointment of their last interaction) and, of course, a re-connection to one another.

Darjeeling Limited

Delving with less self-consciousness into the grand events of human experience (capitol H, capitol E), Anderson loosens up his aesthetic with more meditative (but none-the-less rock and roll) looks at death, life, love and sexuality, still veering far enough from abject sentimentality to be brilliant. Finally his detail-laden perspective is watered perfectly with human moments, and that “lets tie up all the characters’ loose ends in the last 15 minutes” thing has been thankfully abolished.

Anderson still pursues the perhaps trivial preoccupations of the upper class – but somehow setting them in India actually creates an even greater sense that he’s kind of aware of his white collar preoccupations. His characters are still as obnoxious as Max Fischer (Rushmore) as they fight about an Indian boy stealing a $200 shoe. They’re still as manic as Dignan (Bottle Rocket), and as full of shit as Royal (Royal Tenenbaums). But still, there is always an inward, pained understanding represented in someone. The in-love brother and sister Margot and Richie from Tenenbaums. Or the melancholy Rosemary Cross from Rushmore. And adding a significant dramatic presence in Darjeeling is Adrian Brody, as Peter – a feat that Wilson and Schwartzmann, caught in the flatter dimensions of their comedic roles, don’t deliver.

All in all Darjeeling strips its flashiness to give a still complex pageantry of masculinity in search – the metaphors of movement, brotherhood and fatherhood resounding with considerable strength.

Darjeeling Limited Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mbgzJG5Zdk

[Subscribe to this feed]

Posted on October 11, 2007

Comments

6 Responses to “Film Review: Darjeeling Limited”

Kendall on October 11th, 2007 7:25 am

I look forward to this as a movie, and I look foward to welcoming Adrian Bordy to the list of actors Anderson is harboring.