Wes Anderson is a director of details. Of course, he's more than that; his past films like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic are works that celebrate the quirkiness of dysfunction. But at heart, Anderson cares as much about his characters' emotional baggage as he does about their prop suitcases. The director/writer's latest release, The Darjeeling Limited, is no exception.
Darjeeling may strike a viewer with the weight of a novel or an intricate painting due to its impeccable wardrobes, set-design, cinematography and acting. Set in contemporary India, Anderson cunningly lets the scenery show itself off to the camera. Yet the film's protagonists - three reunited brothers played by Schwartzman, Brody and Wilson - only accentuate the sharp visuals. The siblings' chain-smoking, cough-medicine-chugging, $6,000-belt-wearing tendencies complement and contrast effectively with the Indian countryside. The expected witty dialogue doesn't disappoint, and the tongue-in-cheek sentimentality almost gets to be too much - almost.
And that is the single problem - Darjeeling is a little over-saturated. It has a cobra, a man-eating tiger, cool sunglasses, a French philosopher's perfume, peacock prayers, "the most spiritual place in the world," love, lust and, of course, death. But don't worry, this just skims the surface; there are plenty more splendid wonders in the movie. Anderson, it seems, ordered such a juicy and delicious film that his audience will inevitably overeat.
NOTE: Anderson made a short 17-minute feature, Hotel Chevalier, as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited. It was cut by distributor Fox Searchlight, and can be downloaded for free on iTunes.
