I’m quite sure that Wes Anderson could direct a film in some war torn wasteland and make it erupt with beauty, because that is what Anderson has done with every single film he’s been involved with. ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ I finally got around to watching last year, some eight years after its original release. It was of course worth the wait. First off, its setting in the sun drenched land of India was the perfect watch on a warm hazy summer day in England, but its story of brotherly love is a perfect watch any time of year. Wes Anderson has forever been a master at creating films for men. His deep understanding of how we function, how we love, hate and work our way through our problems is more perspicacious than any psychologist out there today.
Its basic premise is the squabbling, which leads to new beginnings of a relationship, between three brothers – Francis (Owen Wilson) Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) for the most part playing out on a train journey through the towns and villages of India. It is the first meeting of the three brothers since their fathers funeral a year earlier. Their journey ultimately leads them to the Himalayas, where their estranged mother Patricia (Anjelica Huston) lives as a nun at a Christian missionary, high a top the mountains.
Going back to my earlier statement of Wes Anderson understanding perfectly the male mind, each of the brothers has their own dilemma to deal with, and it’s fascinating to watch just how Francis, Peter and Jack both quietly and loudly deal with them. I think all of us men at some point have had such desires, faced such problems of the heart, as these three have. In the case of Francis, he has a desire to reconnect on a deeper level with his brothers and, it’s subtly revealed that he tried to commit suicide a while back, Peter, whose wife Alice (Camilla Rutherford) is on the verge of giving birth to their first child, is in a state of turmoil over whether he will prove himself a good father and Jack is pining for his lost love (Natalie Portman) who he is determined to get back. The latter of which I’ve experienced numerous times. With Francis confiscating their passports, the boys have no choice but to address their dilemmas, in this chaotic and frenetic environment.
There’s one scene in the film where the boys accidentally release a snake on the train, in which hilarious chaos ensues. It perfectly sums up the the plot of the film, the snake representing all the hidden chaos the brothers have in their own lives let loose, but this is a Wes Anderson film, and his metaphors are usually weaved in a lot deeper than that. However, I’m not sure, with the snake being traditionally associated with the hidden darkness of mankind and the spiritual world. Whether it possesses a deeper meaning or not, it is but one of many specific incidences in the film in which the boys are forced to work together, and slowly but surely gain some sense of emotional cohesion with one another.
Of all his cinematic back catalogue, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ is Anderson’s most exploratory, he took those themes of familial dysfunction that we first saw in ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ and delved into it a little deeper. I believe in this film it is much more concentrated, much more constrained, he puts brotherly relationships into his exotic and eccentric petri dish, unraveling the masculine mind and illuminating its many facets on the big screen. Ultimately, from ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ and ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ respectively, I get the feeling we have to believe in and fight for the perpetuity of family or else we’re fucked.
Anderson’s mind is one of rich creative profundity, and never once does he patronise his characters, no matter how childish they may be, for example to someone seeing Jack behaving in the manner of a love sick puppy for that girl in the yellow coat, as we saw in the teaser for the film ‘Hotel Chevalier’ set in a chic Paris hotel, where Jack has a midnight tryst with her, Anderson could have quite easily mocked him throughout, but he doesn’t, because we’ve all been through Jack’s situation, it’s an eternal conundrum of the human condition, and Anderson treats it as such. Yes, in ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ love, in its many shapes and sizes, is explored, it may be a theme explored time and again, but it’s one that has occupied us for centuries and will do forever more.