Skip to main content

THE DARJEELING LTD. Dir Wes Anderson. 2007

Image result for movie images the darjeeling limited


We are treated to a bizarre short film set in a hotel room in Paris with Jack’s girlfriend (Natalie Portman) before the main feature. As a result, Jack (Jason Schwartzman) holds attention in the main feature because we have some idea about his sense of loss. Perhaps if all three brothers had been given a short of their own we could have understood them better.
The film blurb gives us the clue that three brothers haven’t spoken for a year, since their father’s death. Without reading that first, the film doesn’t show us this, or tell us why. What we see is a meeting of the brothers on a train in India, for the purpose of a spiritual quest orchestrated by brother Francis (Owen Wilson) heavily bandaged after a bad car accident. Peter and Jack humour him. Again, what’s the backstory?

There are clues that their mother wasn’t around much for them and won’t want to see them, but no clues about their relationship with their father, or whether their low-level sibling rivalry has strong foundation. Peter (Adrien Brody) is nervous about becoming a father himself but it’s not clear why. Without any clues as to his relationship with his own father we can only guess.

Heavy on symbolism, centring on death and mourning, Wes Anderson serves up a Western style of grieving – Francis’s control-freakish organized spiritual quest across India. This is contrasted against an Eastern treatment of death where the grief stricken Indian father, angry at first, then tender, holds and washes his son, repeatedly touches and bathes the body, and all the village are involved in the funeral. This juxtaposition with the isolation experienced following loss in the West is interesting. The brothers must learn to let things go and they fling away all their baggage to show they have managed it.

Minimal on dialogue and illumination, there are many gaps in the narrative. Rita (Amara Karan), the hostess on the train, is intriguing but why is she crying, and why doesn’t she get some decent lines? There is some visual humour, the general oddness of the brothers and their situation has a quirky appeal, and we get a good look at India. However, momentum slows right up about half way through and the movie drags itself into the buffers for the end. As with many journeys, leaves you wondering just why you went.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Running ‘till your nipples bleed

An email from a friend of mine arrives; she complains that, at work, she is routinely subjected to gruesome accounts of female colleagues’ intimate medical procedures and gynaecological problems. I am all commiseration because I, too, have had years of listening to workplace chats about periods, childbirth and sex lives. Oh please. Later, I wander off for a walk in the early evening sunshine and it is so silent and so beautiful that I flop down on the grass and lay awhile gazing out over the rolling fields, and the mouth of the river, and fall into a reverie. Two men pass by. A few minutes later sounds of women’s talk float nearer and, by the time the two females of the species draw level with me, I have risen up from my deliciously recumbent position in the meadow, alert and tense, something like a meerkat. “I do feel for her. Going down that IVF route is such an emotional roller coaster. I was never prepared for how terrible it was going to be.” I remain frozen in my meerkat position...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ian McEwan. Amsterdam. London: QPD, 1998

McEwan’s novel about ambition, personal betrayal and revenge features Clive, a modern composer trying to complete a major orchestral work, his friend Vernon, an editor trying to save his ailing newspaper, and Garmony, an unscrupulous right-wing politician on the rise. In common, all three have, in previous years, been lovers of recently dead Molly. They meet at her funeral and the story follows the next few weeks of the men’s lives. Vernon and Clive act as one another’s conscience, each infuriating the other. Which is more important, honesty, friendship and trust or Vernon’s newspaper and Clive’s symphony? The novel presents the difficulties of balancing personal and public morality, the importance of private shame and public reputation, the conflict between taking a moral decision for the greater good, or putting first ones own desires. Not just a simple exposé of a politician with a vulnerable side, Amsterdam is full of double standards and surprises, and takes a long, cynical look a...
Post a Comment
Read more

OLD JOY. Dir Kelly Reichardt. 2005

Dropout Kurt arrives in town and calls up his old friend, earnest father-to-be Mark to suggest a camping trip out in the forest, away from the city. They haven’t seen each other for some time and the film suggests a desire for intimacy as well as a quest for peace. Something of a lost soul, Kurt is emotional and, at times, to be pitied. He lives outside society, in a world of new age type retreats and travels, which seem to have left him out on the margins. In contrast, Mark has a home and a pregnant partner, and tunes his car radio in to phone-ins with much loud chat about the state of society in America but he seems only half alive. They drive out of town, with the camera as passenger, which gazes out of the car window while a gorgeous soundtrack by Yo La Tengo sets a mellow mood. The use of extended silence makes me a little uneasy; it’s hard to get away from memories of Deliverance, and a sense of apprehension. In the city, the glass of the car windows insulates us...
Post a Comment
Read more