Sin #36: A Dry Journey

Three brothers find themselves on a train to India in search of some kind of spiritual answer and a chance to meet their mother after she went to live on a monastery.

Peter, the oldest, is married and expecting a child; even since before their father’s funeral he has always considered himself his father’s favorite son. Francis, the middle son, recently tried to commit suicide and is the most anxious to bring the brothers together. Peter, the youngest, has been traveling a lot and is currently on a strange and undesired relationship; he’s the most eager to get off the train and return to his mellow existence.

“The Darjeeling Limited” starts out with a brief prologue called “Hotel Chavalier” in which we meet Peter and his on-and-off girlfriend (played by Natalie Portman). It’s a lovely short film that actually expands on the emotional impact of the film. As for the movie itself, it’s another one of those Wes Anderson gems that focuses on a family using dry and witty humor. Much like “The Royal Tenenbaums” and even “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” it’s about how a dysfunctional family can find ways to work together y discover that beyond their differences they actually love each other.

One of the things that strike me the most in an Anderson film is its visual palette. He loves warm tones, saturated colors and a stylized use of textures. In “The Darjeeling Limited” he finds a perfect marriage between his style and the Hindi culture, that is itself quite bright and colorful.

The one film that failed to connect was “The Life Aquatic with Steve Sizzou” which was as visually interesting as the rest of his movies but felt more like a hollow exercise in stylized dramatization without any emotional resonance. One watches this movie at arm’s length, waiting for something really interesting to happen (while we are kind of entertained by the nice images). And even though it features good performances from a wonderful cast it remains merely a curiosity.

Wes Anderson is a true talent and remains one of the great filmmakers to emerge from the indie movement. His movies are dry and charming (sometimes even a bit tragic) but at the end they make us unreasonable happy; I think they have to seen more than once to appreciate all the little nuances creeping under the surface. Even in his latest venture, his first family film “The Fantastic Mr Fox”, we can still recognize his trademarks and smile (even though this time we see puppets instead of people).