Movie review: The Darjeeling Limited

by Alex Bentley

I’ll be right up front about this: I have never been the biggest Wes Anderson fan in the world. I know there will be some out there that are saying, “Then why are you the one reviewing a Wes Anderson movie?” Well, plain and simple, I’m a movie fan, and even if I haven’t connected with a certain director’s films before, I’m always willing to give that director the benefit of the doubt and hope that their next film will reach me.

That being said, it may finally be time to admit that Anderson’s movies are beyond my realm of appreciation. I certainly appreciate his technical filmmaking acumen, which is on full display in The Darjeeling Limited. But the way he chooses to tell his stories more often than not leaves me feeling cold. I need to feel some sort of connection with the characters in any movie I see, and Anderson seems to revel in not allowing you (or maybe just me) to do just that.

In this case, Anderson throws the audience into the journey of three brothers – Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) who meet up in India a year after their father’s death for a supposed spiritual journey at the behest of Francis. Turns out each son has dealt with their father’s death in their own unique way (we get a glimpse of what Jack was doing in a superior short film called Hotel Chevalier, which may or may not play before your screening – reports are muddled on that). Over the course of their trip aboard the titular Darjeeling Limited train, each seeks to narcotize his pain with sketchy Indian medicines and follow the random itinerary that Francis and his assistant Brendan (Wally Wolodarsky) have put together.

The main problem with the film is that we are never given a real idea of what the family dynamics were like for this clan prior to the father’s death. Clues both subtle and obvious are dropped throughout the film, but none of them add up to anything meaningful. We can tell that, as in all Anderson films, they’re a relatively-rich family, as the sons are able to take this journey and assorted detours with no thought as to how much it costs. This air of being spoiled never really leaves the three sons, no matter what other revelations arise. We are given a brief flashback to the day of their father’s funeral, and the three occasionally talk of their mother, whose importance grows as the film goes along. But, again, all of it seems kind of apropos of nothing. None of the three brothers ever seems to like any of the others, and thus any growth they experience in their journey feels false. One moment is especially jarring, when the brothers are joking around one moment and find themselves in a life-and-death situation the next. The ensuing experience would be extremely dramatic and wrenching in a different film, but here it just falls flat.

Any concern over Wilson’s recent real-life struggles doesn’t reveal itself here, as Wilson is hands down the best thing about the film. This is most likely due to the fact that he and Anderson know each other like the backs of their hands by now, having worked together in some form or another on all five of Anderson’s films. Wilson is charming, he’s funny, he’s eccentric in a good way – everything you’d want out of a leading man. You can’t say the same for Brody, who never seems to get a handle on Anderson’s patented weirdness and often seems to be playing a caricature rather than a character. You would think that Schwartzman is another one of Anderson’s mainstays, as he’s arguably best known for his role in Rushmore, but this is the first time they’ve worked together since then. They also collaborated (along with Roman Coppola) on the screenplay, which may account for the film not succeeding as much as it could have. This is the first time Schwartzman has been credited with writing any kind of screenplay, which seems to have served to drag his co-writers down, rather than their expertise lifting him up.

Other Anderson regulars pop up at various points in the film, with one apparently meant to be the big surprise of the film. But they all come and go like pieces of dust floating by, none of them ever making that much of an impact, much like the film itself. I can’t say the film is a complete waste of time – the soundtrack is filled with a number of fun and interesting songs that Anderson is also known for. I just wish they were used to support a better story.