..Gary Dretzka
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Doug Pratt
..Ray Pride

Is Wes Anderson a Genius? 

When I sat down to watch Wes Anderson's latest opus, I was nervous for him.  After the disappointment of The Life Aquatic, Anderson's new film would be a turning point.  Anderson could go down one of two roads; either he could have ventured outside of his beautiful plastic world of surface eccentricities or he was going to go further down the rabbit hole and really bathe himself in those gorgeous oddities.  It would be important for Anderson to show some restraint, to scale things back and make a return to the more realistic world of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.  Following the overblown The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, with its ornate and intricate sets and stop-motion fish and nothing but pastel colors, it was imperative for Wes Anderson to make a film that could make an audience feel something other than admiration for his craft.

What Wes Anderson has done with The Darjeeling Limited is craft a masterpiece that eschews all the criticism for his previous work.  This is a film where Anderson has decided that he doesn't much care whether or not you are tuned into his surreal sensibility because this is the niche he has carved out for himself.  In making this film, Anderson realized that in order to be an artist - like the filmmakers of the 70's that he admires so much - he would have to resist the temptation to sell out and make the film that everyone wants him to make. 
           
I might have been let down by his last film and felt that his style had gotten in the way of the substance of his films, but I am just a viewer and a critic.  If artists were to listen to what I or anyone else had to say, and let it effect their work, then we would be lacking in art.  Because he has remained true to his style, Anderson has become one of the most original and singular filmmakers of the last ten years, becoming a director who is reverential of previous filmmakers while creating a style that is uniquely his own.
           
When Anderson burst onto the scene in 1996 with Bottle Rocket, he was a director we thought merited some consideration.  From the moment in which Anthony escapes from the asylum that he could have simply walked out of, only to rob his parents' house, it was clear that Anderson enjoyed walking that fine line where realism meets surrealism.  That opening scene is a good indicator of the kind of director that Wes Anderson is, preferring the romanticism of "escaping" rather than the cold reality of just walking out the front door. 

He would return to the "escape" idea again and again in his films, from Max Fischer dropping out of school to Richie Tenenbaum living on a boat or Jane Winslett-Richardson staying with Steve Zissou's crew.  These are all characters that don't need to run away from anything other than their own insecurities and failures.  When they run away, they are giving up on the "real world" because it was a world that they didn't understand or that didn't understand them.  What happens within the minutes of Anderson's films is usually what helps them heal and realize that you can run away from a place, but you cannot run away from yourself.

In The Darjeeling Limited, the three brothers are all running away from something.  Francis (Owen Wilson) is trying to find some truth after a near-death experience that leaves his face covered in bandages.  Peter (Adrien Brody) is running away from his wife who is a month away from giving birth to his first child.  Jack is escaping a tough breakup with an ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman; their relationship can be seen in better detail in the short film Hotel Chevalier) that has left him confused about what it means to love.  These three brothers have spent the last year running away from each other, not speaking at all, only to band together to run away from their own lives and hopefully find something meaningful on a train ride through India.

From the opening moments of the film, it is clear that Anderson has no interest in changing his style, with a Kinks song playing during a slo-mo sequence three minutes after the movie has started.  But it doesn't seem overly-stylized or half-baked, it seems to have a purpose as we close in on Adrien Brody's awkward face, lifting up his large sunglasses as he watches the train station get further away.  This is the moment for Peter to say goodbye to the reality, his face conveying a mixture of emotions as he prepares for a spiritual journey with his brothers.  Unlike in Life Aquatic, this film doesn't need to be quirky for quirk's sake and the eccentricity of the characters feels organic. 

The rapport between the three brothers is ultimately what the entire film rests upon.  If the film fails in this regard, if it fails to make the audience believe that these three strange souls are brothers, then the film fails completely.  But, it doesn't fail, in fact it succeeds enormously.  As someone who has a brother, this film touched me immensely, because it gets the cadences of brotherly love just right.  There is nothing overt about the way in which these brothers react to one another that spells anything out for the audience; in fact, there is not one mention about which brother is the oldest or the youngest, it is just conveyed in small gestures like when Francis puts his arm around Jack or when Peter is reading Jack's short story.  They fight like brothers, of course, but the moments that the film really gets right are the moments when they just talk like brothers.  It's not in the words that they say, but in the ways in which they say them.

It is clear that the idea of family is a theme that Wes Anderson likes to return to and the ways in which we hurt our families knowingly and unknowingly.  The Royal Tenenbaums was the film in which this theme was most clear, a family with an absentee father who still tries to exert his control over the family when he shows up and the children that resent him for it.  But, family ties are not easily cut and they continue to love and forgive Royal throughout his various mistakes and foibles.  Similarly in The Darjeeling Limited, the three boys find the compassion in their heart to forgive their mother despite her history of running away from them.  Perhaps this is where all of Anderson's characters learn how to run away; from the parents who passed along their own selfishness to their offspring.

For those who enjoyed Wes Anderson's dip into short films with Hotel Chevalier, you might be happy to learn that The Darjeeling Limited is basically a collection of short stories with the same three recurring characters.  The film is indeed episodic, but in a good way, with a narrative thru-line that helps carry the emotional baggage (pun intended) throughout the journey.  There is a flashback sequence late in the film and it is a self-contained story in the same way that Hotel Chevalier was, but it also relates to the events that happen within the larger feature.  If this flashback was cut out, it wouldn't have killed the whole movie, but it would have made it a less rich experience.  This is true of all the "episodes" in the film.  It truly is a film where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

In the last few Anderson films, there have been some ultra-serious moments contained within stories that usually dance around those kinds of moments.  (Spoilers ahead) There is the sequence in The Royal Tenenbaums where Richie tries to off himself and the moment in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou where Ned Plimpton dies in the helicopter crash; these moments are like an injection of reality into the lives of characters that have spent most of their lives running away from such reality.  In the former film, Anderson has earned the moment while in the latter film, it feels tacked on and forced. 

There is a similar moment in The Darjeeling Limited and it takes place on a river.  It is a moment that stops the film cold, but in the best way.  The film slows down at that moment and reality sinks in not just for the audience, but for these brothers as well.  Adrien Brody is a marvel in this sequence, saying the most simple line with the utmost restraint and grace, "I couldn't save mine."  This single episode in The Darjeeling Limited makes everything that happened before and everything that comes after worthwhile.  It gives the film a poignancy and truth that some filmmakers can never hope to achieve in hours of screen time.

This is what Wes Anderson does so well when he is firing on all cylinders; he creates a surreal world where universal truths sneak in.  By making the arena in which his characters breathe a place that is so foreign, we have to try and find the moments that make it relatable. 

It truly was a stroke of genius for Anderson to shoot his film in India, because it is a country that doesn't need to be gussied up in order to be surreal or odd.  It is naturally strange on its own and it is a country that is uniquely its own.  This isn't like in The Royal Tenenbaums where Wes Anderson was creating his own "New York," this is Anderson having to roll with what India gives him; and lucky for us, India gives him a plethora of riches with which Anderson can bathe the audience in.  The set design of the Darjeeling Limited train is similar to Steve Zissou's boat in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou .  However, the main difference is that Zissou's fake boat would stop at fake islands and interact with fake sea creatures.  In The Darjeeling Limited, the titular train stops at real place in India with real people.

The look of this film is typically Wes Anderson, but there are lots of shots by Robert Yeoman that reminded me of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation or Peter Bogdanovich's Targets; those quick zooms that find the characters somewhat clumsily.  About twenty minutes into the film, as the three brothers were wandering a marketplace and trying to buy shoes and a snake, I realized that it wouldn't surprise me if the film were made in the 70's.  It didn't remind me of any modern day films, instead conjuring up The Passenger or the Apu films or The 400 Blows.  But it still felt original, like it was a unique and modern film, only with hints of where film has gone before.

The passengers on the train are often framed like they are within a movie frame, often shot with a rectangular piece of glass in between us and the actors.  We watch the train go by, with these little windows that peek into the lives of the characters, much the way in which we watch movies and peek into the lives of the actors.  In his film The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Zizek talked about the train sequence in Possessed  when Joan Crawford sees the train slow down and sees through the windows at all of the little stories being played out, like those windows were movie or television screens and she was watching fiction. At one point in The Darjeeling Limited, the characters close the shades on these windows, a way of the characters telling the audience that we've seen enough fiction for now.  It's almost Anderson's way of saying that once in a while, you should shut off that television and go outside and live.

The acting is aces across the board.  It's the first time in a long time that I can remember Owen Wilson playing something other than his laid-back surfer dude character and it works; it reminded me that Wilson is capable of turning in some great performances and I hope he'll have the opportunity to do so.  Adrien Brody was a revelation for me, a laconic but lovable middle child, turning in his most nuanced performance since The Pianist.  Jason Schwartzman once again shows why he is in Anderson's repertory company, his voice and mannerisms perfectly suited to this pastel world; the way in which he evokes pain while never seeming hurt proved to me that he is capable of being more than just a goofball.  The supporting performances by Anjelica Huston, Irfan Khan, Waris Ahluwalia, and Amala Karan do their job efficiently and with heart, particularly Karan as the stewardess who helps herself by helping Jack.

Ultimately this is a film that moved me a great deal and entertained me the entire time.  The script by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola is tight and focused and meandering with purpose.  It's a difficult task to write something that seems to amble along aimlessly yet has a drive and a destination that shines through.  While I don't think this film is on par with The Royal Tenenbaums, it is still a small masterpiece that stands up to Rushmore and is miles beyond The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

At the very least, The Darjeeling Limited gives us all reason to believe in Wes Anderson again.  While I do hope that in the future he will journey outside of his comfort zone, his world is still more than a pleasure to spend ninety minutes in.

- Noah Forrest
October 9, 2007

Other columns by Noah Forrest
10.02.07 - Jake Paltrow's The Good Night
09.27.07 - Cleaning House
09.20.07 - Top 10 To Date
09.13.07 - Film Vs Television
08.31.07 - Halloween Review
08.28.07 - Who Is The Next Scorsese?
08.21.07 - Fall Preview
08.14.07 - The Horrific State Of The Horror Film
08.10.07 - Reservations About Catherine Zeta-Jones
08.07.07 - Saving Steven Spielberg
07.30.07 - Skinheads in the Cinema & This Is England
07.28.07 - Siena Miller: Good or Evil?
07.26.07 - The Frenzy on the Wall

Noah Forrest is a 24 year old aspiring writer/filmmaker in New York City.

The opinions expressed in these columns are the writers and do not neccessarily reflect the opinions of Movie City News or any of its editors or other contributors.

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