Dysfunction Junction: Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited

I have a really strong relationship with Wes Anderson movies, but it's not an easy one. His pictures are an acquired taste, a difficult mixture of painful human emotion, quirky characters, and deadpan comedy. The tone is often so dry it's hard to figure out how to feel when it's all said and done. I know plenty of people who don't understand why I find Anderson's work so appealing. To them, he keeps repeating himself movie after movie, and the jokes just aren't funny anymore. In my eyes, I'd have to say maybe they've missed the point.

Anderson's movies, despite their recognizable settings, do not take place in the real world. From the opening scene, he establishes that his characters and their actions are a creation completely his own, and so it's OK if what happens to them is not exactly plausible. It may seem like a stretch for some, but with each movie, Anderson is very careful when it comes to developing the environment in which the story will unfold. The idea is to jump in from the get go or you're going to drown before the half way point.

Aside from Bottle Rocket (1996), I've admired all of Anderson's movies after the first viewing. Not to say I've known what to make of them right away. On the surface, they're deceptively simple and a bit theatrical. The beauty of Wes Anderson is that his movies gradually reveal themselves to you the more you let them in. I read reviews from critics who see the movie once, report exactly what is on the screen in front of them, and move on. The best art, I think, is not that easy to examine. I can say whether or not Anderson's movies have affected me after a single go through; I just can't really form a real opinion until I've been back at least once.

The biggest complaint regarding Wes Anderson movies is that he always explores the same themes. This is a strange criticism to me, as most filmmakers spend their entire careers tackling the same issues. They may not do it front and center each time as Anderson does, but that doesn't mean it's not there and easy to see. Anderson likes to deal with family dysfunction, particularly when it pertains to fathers and sons. Up until his latest, The Darjeeling Limited, it's been a living father. But as we discover soon after the new picture opens, the father has passed away and his sons are still trying to find a way to cope with it.

The fathers in Anderson's movies have sons who cannot connect with them, mainly because the father makes himself emotionally unattainable. It's a setback that has worked its way into their pysches, forcing the sons to learn how to be men on their own terms. The father/son dynamic is of course crucial to The Darjeeling Limited, but this time we don't know what kind of relationship the sons had with their father. We never see him, know what he did for a living, or hear what kind of man he was. All we know is that his three sons are fighting hard within, and with each other, to hold on to his memory.

Disappointment in the fathers has been important in Anderson's earlier works (real fathers in The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a father figure in Rushmore), but this is the first picture where we've seen the sons have to deal with the grief of losing one. Interesting that the father is completely absent from The Darjeeling Limited; while many say Anderson is doing the same old thing, this feels to me like a step forward, since this time it's not as easy to sense how close the characters were to their father. Obviously, they're upset from losing him; who he was to them in life, though, is of little importance.

The adjustment to living without a father has crippled each son in a different way. Jack (Jason Schwartzman) left the country and has been wandering all over Europe, living for months at a time in various hotel rooms. Peter (Adrien Brody) has held on to as many of his father's close possessions as he can: car keys, razor, sunglasses. All these items obviously defined for Peter who his father was (this is also evident late in the movie during a flashback sequence). Francis (Owen Wilson) doesn't seem to have found any real way to handle his feelings, so he attempted suicide. Due to his survival, Francis took it as a sign to contact his brothers and see if could re-connect with them, emotionally and spiritually.

The three reunite on a train in India for a journey that Francis hopes will bring them to peace with one another, and with their father's death. From their first moment together, there's no question that these brothers are not, and have never been, close. They don't share any common interests, so the trip just exists to give them each something to do and somewhere to go. The only thing these three guys share, aside from their last name, is their father's matching luggage (each piece is numbered, has his initials, and is covered with animal drawings).

The luggage turns into the movie's biggest metaphor. The picture opens with two men running for a train, one of them held back by the luggage they're carrying. In the end, to catch a different train, the three brothers will have to make a decision as to whether they should keep their luggage or finally let go of it. All of the metaphors in The Darjeeling Limited are easy to spot, but it's not a weakness. Since this is supposed to be a journey of a spiritual and "healing" nature, the brothers will almost certainly look at most anything as a "sign," whether it be their luggage or the train taking the wrong path.

The movie's dialogue is quick and to the point. The brothers only say what they have to, with the result often being sarcastic or rude. Why attempt to have an in depth conversation with someone you didn't want to see in the first place? Like Anderson's previous efforts, the dialogue isn't especially complex, but it's cleverly constructed and delivered by characters desperate to feel anything that might resemble happiness. Anderson's writing partner on his first three projects was Owen Wilson, who was next replaced by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), and is joined this time by Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. Despite the changes, the style of writing doesn't feel a lot different, although The Darjeeling Limited feels like the first Anderson movie that hasn't depended on its comedic elements all the way through. About halfway in, it becomes more concerned with the spiritual yearning of the three main characters.

As expected, pop songs play a key role in certain scenes. However, while Anderson's previous movies have featured a full collection of catchy tunes, The Darjeeling Limited keeps it light, instead focusing on music by Indian artist Satyajit Ray. It's a smart move tonally, and the few British rocks songs he does use -- two by The Kinks and a Rolling Stones cut (which is becoming an Anderson signature) -- are used at crucial turning points. This keeps them from feeling like a gimmick, an accusation thrown at Anderson's use of songs in the past.

Of all Anderson's projects, The Darjeeling Limited was the most difficult for me to connect with, even after my first two viewings. It's as if, like the characters, Anderson wanted to put us in a place we don't understand and will have a hard time figuring out. It's a picture about loneliness above all, beautifully set up by the short film that proceeds it, Hotel Chevalier. All of his movies have been about loneliness in some way or another, but the difference is that before, there was a recognizable sign of hope. Being together again may be a temporary cure for the internal loneliness each brother is suffering from, but it cannot make it completely go away.

God is what the characters ultimately seek to make them feel whole, and from the way it's handled, we can tell Anderson has been in the shoes of Francis, Peter, and Jack at some point in his life. What resonates the most about the movie is that he doesn't claim to have the answer for them or for us. Inner demons are not something someone else can easily make go away; it takes more than visiting every temple in India or sitting face to face with your long lost mother. In The Darjeeling Limited, the answers lie in a place that can only be visited by the one experiencing the pain. Anderson's movies have all had overwhelming moments of truth. But while before he's always shown us what's in his heart, this is the first time I've felt he really reached deep within himself and given us a glimpse of his soul.


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