The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Directed by Wes Anderson
Written by Wes Anderson
Starring Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Angelica Huston, Natalie Portman
Release Date October 26th, 2007
Published October 25th, 2007
Director Wes Anderson is spinning his wheels. Seemingly unable to make a movie with a point after the funny, insightful Rushmore and the quirky Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and now The Darjeeling Limited are masturbatory exercises in style and precociousness. Their saving grace is good natured humor but that doesn't make them any less shallow.
Admit it Wes fans; we were expecting something more here.
The Darjeeling Limited is the name of a fictional train route through a few small villages in India. On this train three American brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrian Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), have gathered for a spiritual journey. Peter and Jack are under the impression that Francis, the oldest of the three, has brought them together to reconnect as brothers. In reality, Francis is leading them to a remote convent where their mother (Angelica Huston) has taken up residence.
The trip to see mom is the framing device for a series of revelatory moments for each of the brothers who slowly reveal their secrets to each other and come to terms with why they haven't spent much time together since their fathers death and an incident on the day of his funeral that sent them in different directions.
Director Wes Anderson seems to be stuck in a rut. After Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums he seemed destined for great things. In two consecutive features since; Anderson is caught up being overly precious and even cute in the way he toys with dialogue and with visuals. Some could fairly describe him as dicking around hoping to stumble on something insightful. He rarely finds anything in The Darjeeling Limited.
Arguably the most notable aspect of The Darjeeling Limited are the disturbing real life imitates art scenes with Owen Wilson. Just before Darjeeling was leaving the station, Wilson attempted to take his own life. The same thing happens to his character in the film who survived his own attempt at suicide. It's not Wes Anderson or the film's fault that such a coincidence happened but it does cast a pall over the otherwise good natured proceedings.
The true subject of The Darjeeling Limited may be a distinct sense of ennui. These characters are bored and so is Wes Anderson. In fact, so are we in the audience. Jason Schwartzman's Jack is plagued with ennui as evidenced in the short feature, Hotel Chevalier, that precedes The Darjeeling Limited. In this brief backstory we see Jack with, presumably, his girlfriend played by Natalie Portman. The two go through the motions of familiar interaction but the sense that they bother each other in order to stave off boredom is quite clear.
Adrien Brody's Peter deals with ennui by stealing or 'borrowing' his brother's and late father's things. His boredom isn't as plagung as Jack's and is also far less interesting. On the bright side, oldest brother Francis may have dealt with his ennui by attempting suicide, so the stealing is at least somewhat healthy by comparison. It's all very European and arty to make movies about characters who are disaffected, bored and longing but often in Europe those feelings are the run up to some kind of breakthrough or revelation.
In The Darjeeling Limited we get a cheap homage to revelation. The ending features the kind of ironic distance that was very much in style in the late nineties when hipsters had an allergic reaction to anything remotely earnest. This is not to say that The Darjeeling Limited isn't well crafted and oddly fascinating. It's just, for me personally, watching an artist drown in his own self satisfying disaffection is kind of boring.
