October 23, 2007
Review: The Darjeeling Limited
The Darjeeling Limited is Wes Anderson's most focused film to date. It isn't a particularly ambitious picture, but it steams ahead with a confident focus and charisma not found in his earlier efforts. A title card from the director at the beginning requests that the audience see "Hotel Chevalier" first even though everyone has already pretty much committed themselves regardless once they've taken their seats. It just so happens that I had seen it; I agree that it adds something, but I'm happy it was left off here. The opening sequence as presented, fuelled by an absurdist urgency reminiscent of Godard's Breathless, perfectly sets the tone of picture: light, whimsical and painfully human.
The main characters, once the film finds them all, are brothers of the classic Wes Anderson archetype: intelligent, articulate, manipulative and extraordinarily wounded. Jack is unlucky in love and passive aggressive, forced out of his comfortable exile by his domineering former lover. Peter is pessimistic and arrogant in his emotional distance, fleeing his pregnant wife primarily because he always saw himself as a future divorcee. Francis is domineering, self-hating, and lonely. He crashed his motorbike into a hill and survived only because the doctors rather regrettably managed to do every single thing right. Over the course of this movie, their lives will not progress meaningfully so much as evocatively.Continue Reading
