Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/4/07
Wes Anderson is one of those
filmmakers whose work you can enjoy while at the same time understanding
perfectly why some people hate it to pieces. He fills his stories
with aggressive comic artifice and has his performers act in a slow, deadpan
manner that seems to hint at either some greater wisdom or mental retardation.
I'd seen two of his movies previously, liking The Royal Tennenbaums
and loving The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, so I had high hopes
for his new film, The Darjeeling Limited. Alas, it lives down
to the worse attributes of his work: quirky for quirky's sake, slower
than a naked marathon in Antarctica and seemingly designed for decoding
over dozens of viewings. While it sports likable performances in
two of its' three lead roles, the third is filled by an utterly, humorlessly
blank Jason Schwartzman. Since he also co-wrote the script and stars
in the lethally off-putting short that precedes the film, I find myself
aiming a disproportionate amount of my scorn in his direction.
Since it starts with the
short, so will I. It's called Hotel Chevalier and features
the morose Jack (Schwartzman) in his morose hotel room. He receives
a call from his Ex (Natalie Portman) who shows up for a cryptic postmortem
on their relationship and some sex. Their conversation is the kind
of thing that needs to be played just right to pull off. Her:
“Whatever happens in the end, I don't want to lose you as my friend.”
Him: “I promise. I will never be your friend. No matter
what. Ever.” Portman's got it down, one-third playful, one-third
regretful, one-third seductive, but no matter how much the unfolding conversation
makes it clear she's put him through a lot, I just couldn't feel for Schwartzman
and his relentless disaffected monotone. Plus, the short seems much
more of an excuse for Portman's much-ballyhooed nude scene than setting
up the Darjeeling plot. Don't get me wrong, she's a beautiful
woman, but Anderson is the anti-Cronenberg, unable to make the nudity feel
the least bit organic. Between her aggressive, stagy posing and the
fact that I could literally count her ribs, I felt like by buying my ticket
I was personally depriving her of her daily nutritional requirements.
Don't starve yourself for me, Natalie; I'm not worth it.
Now, on to the movie proper.
A suitcase-clutching man (Bill Murray) races in a cab to meet a train that
seems to be a matter of life or death. On a dead run to reach it
as it leave the station, he's passed by Peter (Adrian Brody), and we begin
to follow him instead. Peter joins Jack and their older brother Francis
(Owen Wilson) in a compartment in the back. Francis, somehow wealthy
and shadowed by his ubiquitous assistant Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky),
has planned this event to reunite the brothers, who have not spoken since
their father's funeral. They've all got issues. Jack regularly
calls his Ex's answering machine to check her messages. Peter has
become a kleptomaniac and clings to a tale that his father told him he
was the favorite while dying in his arms. And Francis, who's relentlessly
planned their trip down to what order they're to wake up in, is wrapped
in bandages as the result of a mysterious motorcycle accident. Jack
falls in lust with Rita (Amara Karan), who works on the train, Peter smuggles
a cobra onboard, and Francis insults Brendan one time too many: the
three men find themselves thrown off the Darjeeling Limited and wandering
the countryside on their own. Let the healing begin.
It's impossible to watch
The
Darjeeling Limited without thinking of the real life troubles of star
and Anderson regular Owen Wilson, who recently attempted suicide just as
Francis likely did himself. I was particularly struck by a moment
when he removes all his bandages to reveal himself horribly scarred, comments
“Still got some healing to do,” and wraps himself back up. He's as
sweet, funny, vulnerable and childlike here as ever, and I'm sure many
of his fans will enjoy seeing him at the center of a parable of spiritual
healing and redemption at this moment in time. I also liked how Brody,
making his Wes Anderson debut, is able to make the director's style his
own, never seeming like he's acting a certain way for effect. Peter
is emotionally closed-off, but it's still easy to see what his issues are
and how he reacts to his brothers and surroundings. As I've mentioned,
Schwartzbaum's performance annoyed me to no end, just droning on without
adopting a character. You can only be so emotionally closed-off:
Jack seems more autistic than sad, but this strikes no one as unusual.
I did kinda like the short stories Jack writes, which tell his life story
verbatim except that he insists to everyone who immediately recognizes
themselves that “the characters are all fictional.” But I have long-standing
issues with writer/actors who seem to be taking my seven bucks as a cover
to make out with every actress in the movie without being able to seem
the least bit desirable on film. Not since Mike Binder made The
Upside of Anger so he could canoodle with Erika Christensen have I
felt so like an accomplice to a cinematic pickup artist.
Those issues aside, the biggest
problem with The Darjeeling Limited is that it's completely unable
to put a spiritual journey on film. I'm not one of those people who
believes other cultures are automatically more valid that our own, and
you're going to have to give me more than a couple guys wandering the countryside,
going to a funeral (I get it: They're Completing Their Unfinished Journey
That Began On The Way To Their Father's Funeral), getting blown off by
their mother (Anjelica Huston, whose up-tempo performance is all wrong
for her surroundings) and dropping their suitcases (I get it: they're Letting
Go Of Their Baggage) to feel like I've seen lives turn around. This
myopic vision quest is so slow, boring and random that I kept hoping each
scene was the last, as there's literally no way to know when we're approaching
a climax. The screenplay by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola
(just because you don't appear onscreen, Roman, don't think I'll forget
to single you out!) is jam-packed with little details and asides that mean
nothing. Numbers turn up all over the screen, Anderson gives us loving
close-ups of bottles and suitcases, and I have no idea what any of it means
except that it's all supposed to mean something. After a while, I
just stopped caring what.
I kept waiting for The
Darjeeling Limited to turn it all around: I liked Peter and Francis
enough that some real, quality closure to their stories would have made
me happy enough to feel good about the movie. But trapped in Anderson
and Schwartzman's self-satisfied quirk machine, it's literally two characters
in search of an exit, one that comes 90 minutes after we make their acquaintance.
Luckily, I got to leave too. Next time, I'm following Bill Murray. |
