Family fantasy travels India by train

It contains no dragons or unicorns, but The Darjeeling Limited is as much a fantasy as any of Tolkien’s books. The only substantial difference may be in the characters: those in a fantasy are impassioned by hope, those in Darjeeling are just hopeless.

The film is directed by Wes Anderson, a hyper-stylized American director known for his dysfunctional and broken families, which he films with novel-like detail involving tangential dioramas of props and events. His family in The Royal Tenenbaums was as ruined as families become without murdering one another in their sleep. The three leads in Darjeeling could be long-lost cousins.

The film begins with a cameo I would not dare to spoil. A glum-looking man in India is late for a train. He bribes a taxi driver to speed through pedestrian traffic, he sprints down the depot and chases the train down the tracks. He’s old and not as light on as feet as he once was and is overtaken by a younger man who is swift enough to catch the fleeing locomotive. This is Adrien Brody as Peter, one of three brothers reuniting after their previous meeting one year ago at their father’s funeral.

The other brothers are Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and Francis (Owen Wilson). They all despise each other to a moderate degree, and Jack and Peter immediately begin plotting their escape from the train and the continent. Francis collects passports: “I’ll just hold onto all of them,” he says. The three brothers share a large compartment on the Darjeeling Limited, from which they will patch up their relationships while visiting India and its many holy sites. They lug around their father’s garish old Louis Vuitton luggage set, a set so large that each piece is numbered and the final number is in the double digits.

Anderson’s films, which he often writes and produces as well, are filled with tremendous characters played by actors who were born to play them. Tenenbaums would not have worked without Gene Hackman. Same with Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray. Or Life Aquatic and Willem Dafoe. No exception here on Darjeeling — the film completely requires the acting of Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman. They command their characters so well, you’d swear they were playing themselves, and with Owen’s character, who attempts suicide on a motorcycle, maybe they were.

Peter has a pregnant wife at home who he doesn’t love. He spends much of the film wearing his father’s prescription glasses, which give him headaches to no end. The headaches allow him a chance to swap prescriptions with the other brothers. Jack has left his girlfriend in Paris, but continues to check her messages with a stolen voicemail code. He wrote a fictional short story that everyone mistakes for non-fiction. Francis, whose emotional wounds are less obvious, is wrapped extensively in bandages after a motorcycle incident that may have been a cry for help. Together they venture into India to discover themselves and each other. In a simple way, Darjeeling Limited is a road movie, with romantic views of Indian landscapes.

The best character, though, is the train. I don’t think it exists, and if it does it should be booked solid by moviegoers wanting to experience its magical journey. The compartments contain the brothers’ competing personalities and hidden rages, the dining car lends itself to a hilarious lunch, a stewardess with the most beautiful eyes teaches Jack about love and lust, and a chief steward confiscates a king cobra the brothers buy in a market. The movie, like the train itself, is on rails, but unless you’re in the first car you’re not sure where it’s going to go. The ultimate destination is a secret trip to meet the brothers’ mother (Anjelica Huston), but that’s not really what the film is about.

The film is a fantasy of family, of what we expect and remember about those we love. Often times our memories are created to support the fantasies. The train, itself a euphoric vision of a train, serves as the catalyst to the destruction of the brothers’ fantasies of each other, their father and their conflicted mother. When they see the truth, they see their real family. I found the theme rewarding and invigorating; and, although it’s somewhat of a departure in style for Anderson, it’s his most mature work.

It’s also very funny, more funny than Ben Stiller’s freak show called Heartbreak Kid, which beat it at the box office last week in limited release. In a perfect world, Stiller would be trampled over to get into a film like The Darjeeling Limited.

Now there’s a fantasy for you.

See the prequel

The Darjeeling Limited would not be complete without the 13-minute short film that acts as a prequel to it. It’s called Hotel Chevalier and it stars the Jack character (Schwartzman) meeting with his girlfriend (Natalie Portman) in Paris before the trip to India. The music is terrific and the dialogue cuts into these characters’ souls. It also clarifies a short sequence in Darjeeling when Portman briefly shows up. It’s not attached to the movie (a shame), but it is available for free on the Internet from a variety of sources. I used iTunes, but you can also find it on YouTube, Fox Searchlight’s main page and the movie’s Web site.

(These reviews will run Oct. 12, 2007, in the West Valley View newspaper.)