Anderson quirky!
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I can't think of another director who's been elevated to "darling" status as quickly as Wes Anderson. It was as if Anderson's films had a cult following before any of his audience even got religion. "Bottle Rocket" launched him, "Rushmore" solidified his reputation, "The Royal Tenenbaums" anointed him, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" almost sank him, and now "The Darjeeling Limited" asks fans to vicariously book a passage to India for another semi-dysfunctional family outing. As with his previous films, the dramatic arc in "The Darjeeling Limited" is more casual and accidental than the rest of Hollywood seems to offer, with quirkiness or randomness often a substitute for conventional plot devices.
Will Rogers once remarked that nothing in life was certain except for death and taxes. But Bill Murray seems to have squeezed out two more guarantees: if the Cubs make the play-offs, he'll be invited to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" or throw out the first pitch in one of the games, and if Wes Anderson is making a movie, Murray will be offered a part. Though Murray missed out on Anderson's first film, he's been in every one since. His cameo appearance here suggests he's not only a good luck charm, the way the Pixar folks have used John Ratzenberger, but a visual allusion to Murray's "Lost in Translation." In an opening scene, Murray plays a businessman running to catch the train as it leaves the station. He doesn't make it, but one of the Whitman brothers does, implying that were it not for fate or luck (or faster legs), this might be the businessman's story instead of the brothers'. And, of course, what follows will be very much a "Lost in Translation" experience for the trio who haven't spoken to each other for a year, and who find each other's company as foreign as the people they meet.
Murray's feeling-out-of-it disassociation is replicated almost clone-like in Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) Whitman, who move from scene to scene with largely the same deadpan, as if powerlessly pulled along by some unseen force that's in no hurry to get them anywhere.
Dad is dead, mom (Anjelica Huston, again!) left, and so Francis convinces his two brothers that they need to travel across India in order to bond and re-connect. As we watch them, though, and as we see flashbacks, we begin to suspect that they were never all that connected in the first place. Francis tricks them, they withhold information from him, and yet we get the sense that the gulf between them isn't nearly as big as it was in, say, "The Royal Tenenbaums." In perhaps the most profound moment in the film, Schwartzman's character says, "I wonder if the three of us could be friends in real life. Not as brothers. As people." Good question, and not just for these three brothers, but for all siblings in every country. In a way, that's what this quirky film explores. Are these guys friends? And if not, can they be?
It's appropriate that Wilson plays the ringleader, since he has the biggest history with Anderson, collaborating on the screenplays for Anderson's first three films and appearing in every one. But for the sake of variety I think this film might have been more interesting if these three didn't all sign up to become members of the Bill Murray Jaded and Discombobulated Club. Sometimes their reactions and facial expressions are just too much the same, when it's suggested that their personalities are significantly different. That's one shortcoming. Another is that the film seems to take several tonal detours, changing most abruptly when the brothers try to save three Indian boys from drowning.
A third thing worth mentioning--though it's not necessarily a negative--is that the hairstyles and yellow-orange tint that the film has, combined with a Bollywood soundtrack, really evokes the Seventies. So does downing bottles of Indian cough syrup to get high. And yet, there's Jack with his MP-3 player and dock in several shots that snaps your head back and makes you realize, Oh, yeah, this must be now.
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