Theatrical Review of The Darjeeling Limited

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There is a moment in "The Darjeeling Limited" in which Jack Whitman (the wonderfully sublime Jason Schwartzman) sticks his head out the window of a moving train. He sees the lovely Rita (Amara Karan) gazing back at him. It´s rare moment of male-female intimacy in a movie based on the relationship between three brothers. After being raised on years of "National Lampoons" and "Spaceballs" style comedy, anyone expecting one of them--or both--to be hit with a tree branch, camel head or other object. Obviously, it never happens, which is to the great advantage to the film. Director Wes Anderson (along with co-writers Schwartzman and Roman Coppola) makes sure the film never delves into the predictable, instead remaining on the side of honesty in a potentially ludicrous situation.

Jack, Francis (Owen Wilson) and Peter (Arien Brody) are estranged brothers, all with their own issues. Francis feels the need to be a mother hen and reunited the trio to find their long-lost mother (Angelica Huston); Peter is running away from his pregnant wife; and Jack . . . well, Jack has female problems. As they make their way through India on a spiritual quest-and an unknown mission to find their nun mother-these three try to find a way to become brothers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I´m not a Wes Anderson fan. I´m not an Owen Wilson fan. I fell asleep in "Rushmore," passed on "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and couldn´t be bothered with "Bottle Rocket." I have a healthy respect for Adrien Brody, based primarily on his work in "The Pianist." And Jason Schwartzman was an unknown to me. Using just that criteria, I went into "The Darjeeling Limited" expecting, frankly, the worst.

Starting with the short film prologue featuring Schwartzman and Natalie Portman, "The Darjeeling Limited" weaves a spell over the audience, making us feel genuine emotions for the brothers despite our better reasoning telling us not to. After all, how can we sympathize with a man running around in head bandages for the entire movie all the while telling his brothers what they should eat, think and feel? But we do by the time the end credits roll. As much as we want to hate Francis for treating his brothers like children, among other things, his motivations are real. There is no sense of artificiality to him; the way he lives his on the edge doesn´t cross into buffoonish behavior.

A running joke for the majority of the film is Francis asking and then quickly telling Peter and Jack what they are going to eat, particularly in a dryly hilarious sequence in the train´s dining car. As a movie savvy audience, we understand the stereotype involved in his words. He´s acting like the mother-figure, a punch line which doesn´t pay off until the climax to the film, involving Angelica Huston.



"The Darjeeling Limited" runs into a somewhat minor issue with a sequence in which the brothers attempt to rescue three children caught in a raging river. It happens to be the first time the three act like family instead of squabbling children and it´s the most heartbreaking moment in the film, one that ultimately brings the trio closer together. What makes these scenes stand out is knowing Peter´s wife is pregnant back home, something undoubtedly driving him to try as hard as he does--and ultimately become devastatingly depressed--to save the child. No matter what the Whitman´s are put through from this point forward, they know they have to stick together because they will get each other through the hardest of times.

It should be no shock that the major theme here is family. The ties that bind, the gulf between members of the same family and how we can hurt each other even through we don´t mean to. If there is one problem with the film--and only one, since this is an exceptional study on the meaning of brotherhood--it´s that the transition from enemies to loving brothers is a bit too abrupt. A bizarrely placed sequence where the brothers try to get their dead father´s car out of the shop doesn´t add much to the characters or story; it´s time Anderson could have used to connect each part of the funeral sub-plot.

That is, admittedly, a very minor nitpick. "The Darjeeling Limited" was entirely filmed in India and nearly every scene shows off the grandeur and beauty of the land. If not the marketplace in which shoes are stolen and a poisonous snake joins the trifecta, it´s the ruggedly comfortable village where the central transformation takes place. By placing the story in a far away land without the comforts the characters are used to, a simple relationship film turns into a fish out of water morality tale.

The titular train, the Darjeeling Limited, serves as a backdrop for a wonderfully off kilter ending. The secondary characters introduced during the film--Portman´s girlfriend, Bill Murray´s businessman, among others--are shown in various compartments, alluding to the way we all compartmentalize our lives and emotions from those around us. None of these people knows how to let anyone else in. Even Jack´s ex (Portman) voices a variation of this in the prologue; neither Jack nor his paramour care if the other has slept with anyone else. Chances are they have, though. Portman´s character is going to hate herself in the morning after they do what they´re going to do. It doesn´t matter in the end. The emotions they know will come are locked away until they are safely away from the other. Really, on Jack´s end, the emotions are tucked away so far it takes revelations by Peter and Francis to get him to open up just a little bit.

One of the things I look out for during a film are unusual camera angels or filming techniques. Some, like the upside down shots in "The Seeker," fail to impress because they draw attention to themselves. Here, though, Anderson allows his actors to fully act in extended takes, moving the action horizontally from one room to another. The unbroken take requires everyone involved to not rely on coverage or closeups to fix problems in the editing bay, thereby showing what each actor is made of.

"The Darjeeling Limited" isn´t everyone´s type of movie, yet it should be. Because of this film, I´m rethinking my stance on earlier Anderson projects. The script doesn´t pull any punches and makes very few mistakes. Right now, it rates as one of my favorite movies of the year, thereby earning a 8 out of 10.

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