ScreenWize

There are filmmakers that work hard to get laughs from their audience, staging elaborate or violent pranks like the boys from Jackass or out-doing each other in the gross-out stakes like those from the Knocked Up school. Not Wes Anderson, however. His films meander through hyperstylised worlds, delivering equal parts pathos and dark comedy, and are, to me, achingly funny. The beautifully detailed world of The Darjeeling Limited shares much thematically with his earlier films Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, from a keen nostalgia, the notion of family, the search for meaning, and deep irony, yet this film is both sadder and more uplifting.
A year on from the death of their father, oldest brother Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson) convenes a trip through the heartland of India with his estranged siblings Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) in a sleeper berth upon the sumptuous train The Darjeeling Limited.

Controlling to the point of hysteria and wrapped in bandages from a possibly intentional car accident, Francis leads his brothers on a spiritual quest, hoping they will regain their closeness.
Peter has taken off on his pregnant wife, while Jack is obsessing over his former girlfriend (Natalie Portman, from Anderson’s related short film Hotel Chevalier, attached to the start of Darjeeling for the Australian release). Francis’s agenda, which comes on laminated cards prepared by his personal assistant, is quickly derailed by a series of small gratifications, from smoking and drinking, to slugging back non-prescription pain medication and seducing the stewardess, Rita (Amara Karan). With an absentee mother and the constant presence of their dead father, these boys are carrying around a lot of baggage, and the metaphors in the screenplay are bang-you-over-the-head obvious – they struggle with 11 very cumbersome pieces of lush Louis Vuitton luggage.

The screenplay was written on a trip through the subcontinent by Anderson, his star Jason Schwartzman, and Schwartzman’s cousin Roman Coppola (Sophia’s brother), and the film is stunningly shot on location throughout India by cinematographer Robert Yeoman. Not an immediately obvious choice for a comedy, Adrien Brody’s performance initially seems studied, but when the brothers encounter real tragedy at the end of the second act, his acting chops validate his casting. But it’s all eyes on Owen Wilson – knowing as we now do of his real-life emotional struggles, one reads depth that may or may not be there into his unhinged performance as Francis. As with Anderson’s previous films, the soundtrack is always spot-on, from the nostalgic trash of Peter Sarsedt’s ‘Where do you go to (my lovely)’ to scores borrowed from the films of Sajit Ray, to whom the film is dedicated.

CK

Rating:

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon