All of the things that make Wes Anderson films interesting, as well as predictable, are here in abundance, but with more 90 degree pans and more Indians. The one significant thematic difference between this film and Anderson's earlier work is that the "father" part of father/son dynamic that dominates the character interaction has been dead for a year. His three sons, played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody, take a "spiritual" trip to India to hash out their feelings. Along the way there are hijinx, terse exchanges, furtive romances, and sudden explosions of violence, all of it culminating in a moment of catharsis that set off a tuning fork in my heart, even though I should have known better.
Even with Anderson working at the top of his game behind the camera, and even with me being a huge sucker for what he tots around in his bag of tricks, The Darjeeling Limited failed to resonant fully. I think that a large part of the problem is that Anderson's characters are so closed-off and withholding that the film relys on visual metaphors to do the heavy lifting of depicting character development. In those moments the artifice of the film is revealed: you can see the wires, as it were, and it reminds you that the characters are really just puppets.
Still, there are sequences from the film that resonate deeply, and it contains some of Anderson's most assured, captivating visual filmmaking, and the "exotic" setting adds both a sense of novelty and some great opportunities for satire at the expense of the brothers, who think that they can buy "spirituality" in India as easily as bootleg shoes in a bazaar. More than anything else, though, The Darjeeling Limited left me wondering what Wes Anderson could do if he chose to move out of his self-constructed, Salinger-esque cinematic ghetto. What if, instead of documenting rich kids dealing with their asshole parents, he depicted spaceship pilots dealing with giant alien robots? It could be really cool: I'm sure he could work in a Kinks song somehow.
Score: 8.1
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7 comments:
matt, did you ask adam about the abs diet, too?
just saw TDL. i like Brody's character a lot, and the scene where Brian the albino quits. he reminded me of Bill Ubel, the bond company stooge from Life Aquatic.
but i found it a bit hard to swallow, even though it is, as you say, his biggest accomplishment visually. the reason for the is that the non-U.S. setting seemed to highlight Anderson's bourgie hang ups more than ever before. i couldn't help thinking, "how very fucking rich of them! :D" at a lot of parts, and schwartzman falls for the swarthy girl, and the exotic Indian drugs and OH! give me a break, Wes. get over it.
and yet, i walk away from the movie feeling mostly good about this soft october night, longing for the same things that these brothers found, thinking about Brody's nose, and nearly in tears. how the fuck does he do that? i wish he wouldn't.
i will see it again, maybe two more times, one of the times to enjoy it purely for its merits (which are, finally abundant) and then the other time to critique it.
That was a big concern of mine as well, Rob. Especially right at the beginning, when they breeze right past the third class passengers on their way to their spacious first class compartment. Those huddled masses are never seen again!
I'll see it with you over Thanksgiving break if you want: those bastards, in an effort to get more money, didn't show "Hotel Chevalier" for the first week of screeings. I tried to watch it online, but it didn't seem to be available.
the short film involved Schwartzmann and Portman being very bourgie in an expensive French hotel, and Portman gets naked but you don't see anything (maybe her butt), and she has short hair and likes toothpicks and then they don't have sex and Schwartzmann eats a mint and orders a grilled cheese, which is funny, i guess.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I keep hearing about the notorious scene by the river, where apparently a child has died or is dying? Critics say it feels a bit imperialist in tone...?
There's plenty of stuff in this movie for post-colonial scholars to mull over, but the "imperialist" aspects of the river scene are absolutely intentional and meant to reveal the mindsets of the main characters in relation to each other and to the world around them. That said, I'm sure Edward Said would have a field day with this one if he wasn't dead.
Said cock is good for the abs diet.
So, I finally saw this a month of being unable to actually work out a time. Maybe I was expecting too much, or just got a bit overly critical, or am missing some major point, but I was actively disappointed and somewhat angry with this. The entire third act was so obnoxiously heavy handed that I really, desperately want to figure out a way to excuse it, but can't really come up with anything more than "I think Wes would know better." Any help here? I mean, literally throwing your father's baggage away? That's a conceit that belongs in Garden State*, not this.
So, what is it? Am I being overly analytical? Am I supposed to forgive this as a sort of awkward metafiction (even though the author in the story seems unable to do anything other than recall things exactly), or is the whole movie just supposed to be a critique on the notion of a soul-searching quest, to the point that it lets everything just become a farce? If so, doesn't that inherently cancel out any sort of emotional resonance as being ridiculous?
I imagine I will watch it again, and would like to try and see if filtering out the wires and such will be easier once I know they are there. But, until then, I have a sort of sour taste in my mouth, and feel sort of robbed of the Wes Anderson Motion Picture Experience.
*Natalie Portman lol
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