The Darjeeling Limited

When you love a director's body of work, then in my view, sometimes you even have to be loyal to the weaker projects and find value in them.

I don't mean blind loyalty. I said "sometimes." I mean, I love Kevin Smith films, but that doesn't mean I'll be writing about Jersey Girl someday.

With Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, I stay faithful, even though I know the film isn't perfect. People complain that Anderson is just re-hashing old tricks (slow motion shots set to British invasion tunes, excessive use of Jason Schwartzman and a Wilson, and cinematography that is by turns amateurish and wildly inventive). My problem with that criticism is this:

Nobody was bitching about this after his first four films, so why start now?

But I'm no Wes Anderson apologist. I know this film isn't as strong as, say, The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, but I'm forgiving. Crank out four great films and you're allowed to indulge yourself. Go to India. Try new things. Hire the same people all over again and wink at your fans.

People who complain about this film are too quick to dismiss what's here. The story of three brothers reuniting for a cross-country train ride through India does work, but there are a few too many precious Wes Anderson moments for some fans, and in my buddy Jake's view, there are just too many Coppolas involved in Wes Anderson's work. That's a fair comment. With Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola around, Anderson's work slips.

Gone is the brilliance of Bottle Rocket, though Owen Wilson tries to bring some of that magic back (instead of first aid tape across the bridge of his nose, this time it's his head wrapped in gauze, plus a bandage across the bridge of his nose — can't help but see that as some kind of metaphor).

With The Darjeeling Limited, we get a facsimile of a Wes Anderson film with some great moments (the train montage with all the cars-as-sets) combined with moments that are a little ridiculous (talking without saying anything). I do feel like Wes Anderson is winking at all of his admirers here, and I have to cut through that to enjoy this film.

His ending? He makes the three brothers literally throw down their baggage so they can get on another train. See what he did there? Throwing down their baggage. It works on TWO levels. Ya see?

So what keeps me coming back to a film that isn't perfect, isn't Wes Anderson's best?

When I saw the trailer in the theater, I caught a glimpse of a credit along the lines of "Featuring music from the films of Satyajit Ray" and I almost cried. Wes Anderson knows about Satyajit Ray. Wes Anderson is teh awesome.

Satyajit Ray is India's greatest director, and another connection to film school for me. I watched The World of Apu (a.k.a. Apur Sansar) back then, in some film class that I'm sure had a name but I can't recall, and I had to choke back tears several times. Even in grainy, scratched, shitty black and white, The World of Apu was so gorgeous, well written, heartbreaking, and triumphant.

I spent the next five years searching off and on for a decently priced DVD of the film, and later, the entire "Apu Trilogy." Storebought copies on DVD are either too rare, too expensive, or both.

That's not to say I never found a way to procure these films. I can't tell you everything.

As a result, sadly, none of Ray's films qualify for this blogging project, but I can't help but connect The World of Apu to The Darjeeling Limited, if only to celebrate that a western filmmaker is finally showing some appreciation for a giant of world cinema that most Americans know nothing about and never will. We need film snobs like Wes Anderson to give us things like Satyajit Ray repackaged, even if said film snobs are wrapped up in the Coppola family a little too tightly.

[Ranting Tangent: I hate how most Americans don't watch foreign films. They miss out on so much because they're either too lazy to read subtitles or too lazy/dumb to learn a foreign language. None of this is news. When did reading and appreciating art regardless of country of origin become so damned difficult for people?]

In a way, The Darjeeling Limited reminds me of how much I grew and how my tastes grew when I was in film school, not just with my exposure to Satyajit Ray, but also to Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio de Sica, Stan Brakhage, and scads of others. Mostly, film school blew my mind, validated my passions, immersed me in a culture that I'd only heard about in video stores, and generally made me feel like I wasn't crazy for loving this stuff so much.