Wes Anderson has never before been more surefooted in his technique than in The Darjeeling Limited. When appropriate, shots are long and smooth, and, when appropriate, the rhythm of images is staccato. Anderson's intricate, playful staging remains pleasantly over-stimulating. A long sequence with rooms as train cars, each traveling across the screen, is especially nice. But craft alone cannot create great art. If Darjeeling had come before Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, everyone would be calling Darjeeling the work of a brilliant new auteur. Because it came after those two well-loved films, most expected more.
Basically, Darjeeling needed more plot and more jokes. Sparsity in a film is not intrinsically weak, but I liked Rushmore and Tenenbaums because they were funny and they admirably accomplished fairly complicated plots; I just don't get the same feeling from Darjeeling. So very much happens in Rushmore and Tenenbaums, Darjeeling feels sort of decaffeinated. I suppose we must acknowledge the likely strong influence of Owen Wilson on the scripts of Rushmore and Tenenbaums, and I suspect Wilson of a few of the rare clever, darkly funny lines in Darjeeling. Let's hope Wilson can overcome his very public tribulations and co-write another film with Anderson, because Anderson doesn't seem to be able to productively co-write with every writer. His vision is distinctive enough that this is hardly surprising. Anderson plus Noah Baumbach (whose most successful movies are based heavily on personal experience and have little of the extended fantasy I associate with Anderson) led to the lifeless The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Anderson plus Roman Coppola plus Jason Schwartzman doesn't seem to add up either. Interestingly, for such a distinctive filmmaker, Anderson's dependence on co-scriptwriters indicates that a description of Anderson as an auteur in the manner of Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman is not precise. We should probably not demand that those who want to be great directors write their own scripts. A movie is a very big project, and I fail to see how collaboration necessarily lessens artistic value.
It's always so apparent to critics why films work and why they don't. A familiar critique of Anderson's filmmaking could be termed the Dollhouse Criticism—that Anderson can't escape his own intricate little world. But, much of what propels Darjeeling is self-conscious cinematic artifice, and dislike of artifice is dislike of Anderson (and many other filmmakers). To discourage Anderson in this regard is to warn him away from one of his great strengths as a filmmaker. Another common criticism is that of obvious metaphors—bandages for emotional damage, luggage for emotional luggage, train travel for travel through life, etc. But, everything just seems too beautifully shot for the obviousness of these metaphors to be detractory. Jonah Weiner claims that Anderson's movies frequently mishandle race (http://www.slate.com/id/2174828/). I always feel like I'm in on quicksand in any discussion of race, but I would say that Inez in Bottle Rocket, Henry Sherman in Tenenbaums (who, in the end, gets the girl), and Rita in Darjeeling all seem like the most rational characters in their respective films, the only people with their heads on straight, and I don't see them as negative (or even stereotypical) representations of a racial group. I would prefer a critical attack on the, to my view, racist Gone with the Wind, which was number four on AFI's 1998 list of the hundred best American movies. Where are all the exciting young non-white or non-male American filmmakers? Examples are relatively sparse.
An Indian child dies suddenly in Darjeeling. It happens, I think, the way such things actually happen—all of a sudden, and just after something wrong has been said. I found this portion of the film moving. I'm one of three brothers, which may explain part of my response. Or, in my cynical mode, I might view Darjeeling as designed to push certain socio-cultural buttons on me. Darjeeling has the right kind of music, the right look, the right kind of humor, the right actors, etc., all adding up to what a SF slacker in his mid-20's would like. In other words, as a member of what is almost certainly the films target audience, I'm not sure how objective I am in my pleasurable response to Darjeeling, and to Anderson in general. No less a critic than Pauline Kael makes a similar claim about youth who view The Graduate as Art in Trash, Art, and the Movies (collected in Going Steady, on pg. 127). I take this point. But, if I only wanted to do objective analysis, I'd still be studying Mathematics. If I'm going to write about films, I can only do the film writing I would do. Nothing else is worth anyone's time.
