The Darjeeling Limited

Review by Anthony Morris

Wes Anderson is a man who has a story to tell. Whether it's Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, you know what you're getting: tightly wound tales of people burdened by grief desperately trying to escape into their own private, obsessive world. 

Which often happen to be really, really funny.

Here the grief-stricken types (not that you'd know it from a casual glance, as Anderson's tight-wound characters only drop one or two clues as to why they're acting so odd) are three brothers, played by Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson (who's heavily bandaged face is more unsettling than it was meant to be in the light of his recent real-life suicide attempt).

In an attempt to bring the brothers together after the death of their father, the eldest (Wilson) has organised a physical and spiritual journey across India on the titular train. His high-minded yet over-itemised plans soon collapse under the weight of a mass of family rivalries, yet despite the occasional fist-fights, picking up of stewardesses, purchases of killer snakes, taking of painkillers and stealing of shoes, the brothers do start to progress towards a more enlightened state.

Sort of.

This is a little more lightweight than Anderson's previous films (where Bill Murray's hangdog face added a world-weariness that grounded the hijinks) but it's still both funny and touching in equal parts. The short film before the main feature (which fills in some of the background of Schwartzman's character and co-stars Natalie Portman) is very different in tone, but the two are so intertwined that their differences end up reinforcing the other's strengths, making for a combination that's a lot more interesting than either one would be separately.

Anderson might never make the truly great film he once promised (unless it was Rushmore), but he's an artist for whom "more of the same" is by no means an insult.

4 out of 5

The Darjeeling Limited
Australian release: 26th December, 2007
Cast: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston
Director: Wes Anderson
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