It s been three long years since Wes Anderson fans have had a new masterpiece to savor. The wait is over, as The Darjeeling Limited pulls into the station as the fifth addition to the Anderson canon. Darjeeling continues the director s oft-explored themes of family dysfunction and that elusive search for the profound moments in life, but this latest outing is guided by a new dimension of maturity.
Co-written by producer Roman Coppola, star Jason Schwartzman and Anderson himself, the film follows the story of three estranged brothers, who reunite for a train ride through India, in an attempt to reconnect a year after the death of their father. Anderson regulars, Schwartzman and Owen Wilson, join Adrien Brody to form the disillusioned triumvirate of siblings who pop painkillers like tic-tacs and fight like feral cats trapped in a boxcar. The brothers Whitman are each plagued by personal dilemmas and are constantly at odds, but amidst the in-fighting and attacks, both physical and psychological, there exists a brotherly love that keeps them bound together for better or worse.
Wilson plays Francis, the organizer of the Indian adventure, who is determined to force a spiritual epiphany and heal the wounds of his scattered family. Desperately eager to find personal truth and bandaged from a near-fatal accident, Wilson s Francis is haunted by a sadness and despair that resonates with a real-life intensity given the recent suicide attempt by the actor. And the emotions that his character evokes are poignantly touching.
Schwartzman portrays the manic lothario and sweet-lime-indulging Jack, whose autobiographical short stories reveal his true feelings, even though he insists all the characters are fictional. The third and middle brother is Brody s Peter, who has recently learned he will soon be a dad but is still reeling from the loss of his own father, using the elder Whitman s possessions as his own and even claiming that his father told him he was the favorite son. The three very different men have lost sight of the things that made them a family and in one weighty scene, Jack wonders aloud if they could have been friends in real life.
Not as brothers, but as people. The void between them is clear and it is the narrowing of that chasm that serves as the film s central conceit.
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