Darjeeling's Limitations

To what end did Wes Anderson put together The Darjeeling Limited? This is a question that demands to be asked when viewing this film. Needless to say, perhaps, most good films don't demand that we ask this question.

Darjeeling boasts some nice segments, some clever cuts, nods to cinema techniques that were abandoned several decades ago and that now look fresh again. And no one could doubt Anderson's skill at using music montage: here it is The Kinks that make the scene, popping up to good effect throughout the film, though nothing could quite top Anderson's masterful sequence from Rushmore involving "A Quick One" by The Who. Anderson knows how to make music work on film.

Anderson's strengths also reveal his weakness: he's too hip for his own good sometimes, and much of this film reduces down to indie-cool posturing. Anderson's relentless reconfiguring of family-structure breakdown and rebuilding gives him something to work with, but by now his characters seem to be plodding through the landscape without any direction--which is alright as long as someone in charge (the director) knows where they are going. This is a journey film in which nobody (audience included) seems to have anything genuine staked on whether we ever get there or not.

Worst of all is the prologue to the main story, a short entitled Hotel Chevalier, the purpose of which seems to be to showcase the contours of Natalie Portman's body without actually showing any direct frontal nudity. It's supposed to illustrate the wound that is central to the inner life of Jason Schwartzman's character, Jack. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. It's hard to buy into the fiction that such a relationship ever existed. The brazen go-to-it-iveness with which Portman's character borrows Jack's tootbrush is the only redeeming moment.

Excursions into the quirky and the unexpected gave Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums a noteworthy charm. At this point, though, we have come to expect the quirkiness, and for this reason it has lost its charm. The tailor-fit retro fashions displayed by Anderson's characters once made style seem like substance, but now they just seem like style, which on its own inevitably falls out of fashion. In all, Anderson needs to strive for something different--something more substantive--next time around.