lii BAGGAGE ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH WES ANDERSON'S DARJEELING LIMITED BY CHRIS NORRIS OR HIS LATEST ADVENTURE, WES ANDERSON follows three brothers on a tour through India, their luxurious transport a train called the Darjeeling Limited. Francis, Jack, and Peter Whitman meet on hoard with their lives in disarray. Their mission, as declared bFy Owen Wilson's Francis—who bursts into the Him as a bandaged Boy Scout head case—is true modern-American absurd: "We're here to find ourselves and bond with each other," he declares. "Can we agree to that?" Francis then produces a list of "spiritual places we have to see." And off we go in this new offering from Anderson, whose oeuvre and current locale prompts one unsettling question: has the twee auteur become a Marc Jacobs imperialist, leading his WASP pilgrimage through the jewel in the crown and fat- tening his menagerie of eccentrics? He certainly plays with the idea. If not quite ugly Amer- icans, the brothers Whitman sure are goofy ones. So keen is Anderson's ear for brother dynamics that their age order is clear within three lines of dialogue: the youngest, Jack., the moony middle Peter (new Anderson clan inductee, Adrien Brody), and the overbearing eldest, Francis. Two of the characters offer a kind of best-of-Wes retrospective. As Three men and a swami (left to right): Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody 30 1 FILM COMMENT > September-October 2007 September-October2007 I FILM COMMENT I 31 Jack, a mustachioed Jason Schwartzman reassumes shades of Invasion. Add an exotic locale and three well-financed gad- Rushmore's indomitable sophomore Max Fischer, still boyish abouts and you have the boilerplate for The Darjeeling Limited^ years later, still trying for soulful sophistication and adding the finest iteration of the Anderson oeuvre to date. portable mood-music when necessary. He spends the film bare- The brothers Whitman are on this reunion trip because their foot in a suit a la Paul (Is Dead) McCartney, although he's more family was recently shattered. Months earlier, a car accident the group's Davy Jones—his hair almost-bowl cut, making eyes claimed the life of their father, whose very memory they fight at pretty girls. As Francis, Wilson brings back the corn-fed, over as they wander from site to holy site. The scenery is gor- spaced-out enthusiasm of his career-making character Dignan in geous, but the pilgrimage far from pretty. Through boxy lug- the Anderson debut Bottle Rocket, recasting the caper-seeking gage and long. Bailing limbs, Anderson expertly conveys the outlaw as an adult shattered by near-death experience but still general gracelessness of America in the world as his characters perilously full of gung-ho. He manfully leads Jack and Peter on stumble between settings in suits, loafers, and a cane, wrestling a forced family march to enlightenment—complete with lami- on the train's floor, spraying each other with mace, imposing nated itinerary and detailed user instructions. their gaze with gleeful obliviousness. "Those guys are laughing With varying degrees of desperation, they go from one Spiri- at us," says Jack of some kids on a wall. "I love it here," says tual Place to another: kneeling, ringing bells, donning ritual head- resolute Francis. "These people are beautiful." "Those guys are wraps—three greedy tourists grabbing at epiphany. Yes, they're playing cricket with a tennis ball," says Peter. ridiculous, but as the film unfolds so does the pain behind their But after a while, the scenery sucks them in. The film announces desperation. In fact, it's even telegraphed in the opening scene, a this with an abrupt, aaion-film zoom that swoops onto Wilson's rhapsodic visual mini-tragedy ^__ face as he offers the interna- starring sad-clown Bill Murray. tional greeting, "Look at those In his current apogee in pub- assholes." Cut to three young lic esteem, Murray is what a lit- boys piloting an overladen raft erature professor of mine once across a fast-flowing river. The called a fire engine. That's some- raft overturns, Francis yells, thing in a story—a hint, event, or "Go!" and off the brothers race character—that you notice with- to save their Indian counter- out knowing why, that eventu- parts. They fish out two, but as ally proves crucial to the tale. Peter struggles with the third, a You watch where a fire engine is rope breaks, he and the boy sail going. And at the first sight of down the rapids. Seconds latei; Bill Murray—jolted around in Peter emerges drenched and an Indian taxi wearing a suit stammering, a limp body in his and Man Who Knew Too Much WITH VARYING DEGREES OF DESPERATION, arms. "He's dea—he's dead," fedora—you watch where he's THEY GO FROM ONE SPIRITUAL PLACE TO says Peter. "I didn't save mine." going. And where he's going is ANOTHER: KNEELING, RINGING BELLS. DON- The drastic shift in tone per- out oi the picture. Using Mur- NING RITUAL HEAD-WRAPS-THREE GREEDY fectly mimics the way real-life ray almost as a silent-film actoc, TOURISTS GRABBING AT EPIPHANY. tragedy ambushes the mundane the director tells you everything and flips your life's genre for you need to know about the good. Stunned, the now not-so- story's instigating event in one knockout opening scene. In the first merry pranksters carry the boy back to his village, where the film of the film's four (count 'em, four) trademark slo-mo processionals kneels in solemn homage to Renoir's The River. across the screen, Murray dashes to catch a train. Also set in India, the Renoir fihn depicted the funeral of a As he strives forward he's slowly overtaken by Brody—who young boy on the banks of a "life-giving" river, the Ganges. enters frame and film from the right, outpacing Murray, the Kinks' Anderson spares no detail in giving a commensurate stateliness to elegiac "This Time Tomorrow" on the soundtrack: "I'll leave tbe this village tragedy. The Whitmans sit in various states of immer- sun behind me/And I'll watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by." sion with the locals—Peter in swami-like repose watching a baby Two men race to catch a train: the younger one makes it, the older swing in a cradle. Jack sitting with women plaiting flowers on a one doesn't. And as he clambers aboard, Brody's Peter stares back garland, Francis lying on a litter, wordlessly offering a boy a hand- at the receding figure of the older man, his long soulful face wear- shake. To the sound of women crying, we cut to the image of a ing an expression that will take the rest of the film to explain. father washing a small shirtless body soon to be given to the river. These people know how to mourn. HEY SAY AN AUTHOR SPENDS HIS CAREER REWRITING The brothers' role in the funeral is, apparently, to reprise the the same book, and Anderson surely does like cer- album cover of Abbey Road. And so, in another slo-mo pro- tain terrain. In his films, we can usually count on cessional, Wilson, Schwartzman, and Brody walk in profile to one suicide attempt, one physically or emotion- the funeral, moving left to right as the soundtrack plays the ally absent parent, mannish boys, boyish men, Kinks' swaying "Strangers." It's a dicey move, throwing yet some spiritual questing, some repressed grief, Tmeticulous composition, and deep album cuts from the British The Darjeeling Limited will open the45th New York Film Festival on Sept.28. 32 I FILM COMMENT i September-October2007 another Kinks promenade past the viewer, but the moment the outer edge of childhood. The ritual is important if only as an works. It suggests an emotional undercurrent binding strangers act of good faith. Take one step toward epiphany and there's a in grief, the sense of some ritual transformation actually taking chance epiphany might take two toward you. hold. "I will follow you wherever you go," goes the song. Of course, nothing smells worse than an unearned epiphany. "Strangers on this road we are on/We are not two we are one." You can fake them in films with swelling Bowie songs and tight Anderson knows how to use a pop song. emotive headshots, but it leaves a bad taste when the characters haven't earned it. Such was the effect of the oddly lifeless Life NDIA MIGHT SEE.M A BIT OF A STRETCH FOR ANDERSON, WHO Aquatic, Anderson's last and worst film, which seemed built solely has always hewed to cozier, tonier settings—a prep school, around BUI Murray's prodigious charm. But the characters in a brownstone, an oceanographic vessel. But this is an India Darjeeling earn their shot at redemption—partly through three mediated by the Beatles and French films, an India roman- exceiient lead performances, partly by metanarrative devices that ticized by Westerners overlooking nukes and disease. It's a reveal the reality behind works of fiction. The film's companion cinematic India of the mind and one Anderson navigates short. Hotel Chevalier., which will show only online and at festi- quitIe ably. Detractors may foam at the sight of these obscurely vals yet which the director hopes everyone will see before The well-financed white boys trotting around with their prodigious Darjeeling Limited., practically dares you to dismiss the new luggage toted by an array of brown servants. But there's no way Anderson, based as it is on cutesy Europhilia and the improbable that such a fastidious arranger of images lets something like this allure of Jason Schwartzman's bare feet.