The Darjeeling Limited

With movies, everyone has to manage the expectations game; back in my first-run heyday, I found that if I bought too wholeheartedly into great reviews or word of mouth, I could end up disappointed even by a fairly good film. Now that I see most of my movies from the safety of my couch, it's even worse: I have six more months to hear friends' raves and watch a film rack up awards.

Unfortunately, we don't get many chances to experience the opposite effect—a movie we end up enjoying more than we expect from the advance word. Given how rarely Whitney and I bother queuing movies we haven't heard great things about—a rule reinforced by most of our occasional deviations—a pleasant surprise is hard to come by.

I had been in general agreement with friends' consensus that director Wes Anderson peaked early with Rushmore and then went into a slight but steady decline with each subsequent film. By The Life Aquatic, his work seemed to have drifted into a pleasant but increasingly unreal world of its own, one that featured great, offbeat soundtracks but left him less and less able to connect with, well, the world most of us live in.

And word was things hadn't improved much with The Darjeeling Limited, which came and went relatively quietly last year. It tells the story of the Whitman brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), who have not spoken to one another for a year, since their father's death. To bring them together again—as he puts it, to "become brothers again"—Francis organizes a train trip through India, a "spiritual journey" for all three of them.

The brothers are each—not surprisingly, in a Wes Anderson joint—a mess. Francis is recovering from a possibly self-inflicted motorcycle accident; his head is heavily bandaged for most of the film. Peter is closed-down and disconnected from his wife, who is about to have their first child back home. And Jack seems just lost, repeatedly calling his ex-girlfriend's answering machine to eavesdrop on her messages (the short prequel Hotel Chevalier, also included on this DVD, provides some of the reasons for this). Once reunited, the three fall right into what are clearly established patterns—Francis as OCD surrogate parent, right down to a schedule for each day, and the other two alternately bristling at and accepting his presumed leadership. They fight, they make up, they get thrown off the train, and the other two eventually discover Francis's real plan: Their final destination is in fact their mother (Anjelica Huston), who cut herself off from all of them many years ago to become a Himalayan nun.

Their journey through India has everything we've come to expect from Anderson—it's beautiful (cinematographer Robert Yeoman captures the country's wondrous color palette magnificently), it's intelligent, and it's decidedly offbeat. There's the usual frequency of required suspension of disbelief, as well as the smart, hip soundtrack (this time some great Kinks classics and wonderful Indian music). Like most of the director's films, this one wanders from scene to scene, more interested in a study of its characters as they encounter its implausible situations than in any linear narrative.

Yet there's also something here that had seemed to be fading from Anderson's last few movies: real feeling. The script (by Anderson and cousins Schwartzman and Roman Coppola) allows us to get a grasp on these three sad characters slowly and organically—which goes a long way toward making all the focus on character and situation worthwhile. It may be that by homing in on just three characters, rather than the menageries of Life Aquatic and Tenenbaums, Anderson has given them room to expand beyond quirky archetypes. And the three lead actors—especially Wilson, who's not playing his usual slacker—take up the challenge, displaying a believable and ultimately very moving fraternal rapport.

There's still an artifice here that will annoy many people; if you've hated everything Anderson's done so far, this probably won't change your mind. I can't deny there's something ephemeral even about the powerful feelings the film summons up—I can't think of another director whose movies so consistently leave me a little unsure what I think of them as they end. But the director clearly knows what he wants to do, and in The Darjeeling Limited, I think he achieves it. Now I'm looking forward to what he does next—though I'll try to keep my expectations tempered, of course.