During this past weekend Marcia and I watched “The Darjeeling Limited” starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and a brief appearance by Anjelica Houston.
From Amazon.Com, here is a description of the movie:
… about three American brothers traveling by train to find their reclusive mother in rural India … the oldest brother, Francis (Wilson), blackmails his two younger siblings, Peter (Brody), and Jack (Schwartzman), into traveling to a monastery where their mother, Patricia (Huston), has been in hiding as a nun. Supposedly embarking on a spiritual quest, the three men reminisce about the recent death of their father, and the family’s irreconcilable problems previous to their reunification. Though they do find Patricia, Francis, Peter, and Jack grow immensely from another brush with death, this time an Indian boy they try to rescue …
The film was directed and co-written by Wes Anderson. The same Anderson that did “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic”. If you have seen either film, you have some idea of the kind of humor the viewer is dealing with.
Like Anderson’s previous films, I am sure I was supposed to laugh a lot more, but just didn’t get the humor that I was supposed to be seeing. I did find quite a bit of humor in the film though. It is hard to keep away from the media about movies before you see them, but I had heard that this was not nearly as striking as his previous movies. I would tend to agree, but with that in my head I expected to like this a lot less then I did.
I think Owen Wilson brings too much of the same person into his roles. It seems like every film that I see with him in it, other then “The Wedding Crashers”, it is almost always the same character. It’s that annoying “I-know-better-then-you-do-and-am-on-an-higher-metaphysical-plane-then-you-but-I-am-really-an-idiot” type thing. (Though it REALLY worked well in “Zoolander”.) And again with Francis we see this. Sure, there are some good moments when it works really well in this movie, and overall with Brody and Schwartzman it went over pretty good here.
I was really impressed with Brody. He is showing some good range. He won an Academy for “The Pianist” and seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth. (I know it’s not the case, but I never seem to see hear his name associated with any movie.) This is only the second movie, the other being “The Village”, that I have seen him in since. And both these movies he plays a totally different character, and does a great job in his performance. I think he used more subtly with his character. Sure, it may have been written that way. But kudos for pulling it off so well.
Some of the high points of the movie were the ways the scenes were shot and the movie edited. To me it came across as very well planned and put together movie. Though some of the things happening to the characters seemed too overdone, or just pointless. You win some, you lose some I guess.
Not a bad movie. I think those that liked Anderson’s previous films would find enough to like about this one. And those that liked similar films like “I (HEART) Huckabees” would, too.
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