I must be in an overly cynical mood today. Regardless, I just finished watching Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, which has recently come out on DVD.
This movie is yet another suitably quirky Anderson film. I'm all for directors who put their stamp on their pictures, especially when it's to the degree where you can tell who made it just by looking at a brief clip. I'm also all for characters that are idiosyncratic and different. What I'm
trying to say is, I really do like Wes Anderson, perhaps mostly because he doesn't make Julia Roberts movies. Ever. He has his own voice, and I applaud that.
That said, this movie was all style, no substance, which is what his movies sometimes can be, at their worst.
The Darjeeling Limited is built around a wonderful, interesting concept: Three adult American brothers unite in India to reconnect. The brothers are, of course, suitably quirky to
the nth degree. They are played by Owen Wilson (Francis), Adrian Brody (Peter) and Jason Schwartzman (Jack). These oddball brothers are wealthy enough to stay endlessly at gorgeous Parisian hotels, tear up their return tickets from India and carry an Ipod with a speaker dock all through their Indian trip by train/bus/bike/etc, but they are duly pained by their father's death and their mother's negligence. It was difficult for me to invest myself in their story-- they come off as exceedingly self absorbed, and while that may have worked for Margot Tenenbaum (in Anderson's highly enjoyable The Royal Tenenbaums), she was not filmed interacting with
locals throughout third world India-- rather, she appeared in her natural environment of upper class New York City. The characters here seemed to have permanently down turned, achingly sad eyes, overly glorified by many closeups and slow pans. Oh, the pain of great wealth and great luggage!
This movie is yet another suitably quirky Anderson film. I'm all for directors who put their stamp on their pictures, especially when it's to the degree where you can tell who made it just by looking at a brief clip. I'm also all for characters that are idiosyncratic and different. What I'm
trying to say is, I really do like Wes Anderson, perhaps mostly because he doesn't make Julia Roberts movies. Ever. He has his own voice, and I applaud that.That said, this movie was all style, no substance, which is what his movies sometimes can be, at their worst.
The Darjeeling Limited is built around a wonderful, interesting concept: Three adult American brothers unite in India to reconnect. The brothers are, of course, suitably quirky to
the nth degree. They are played by Owen Wilson (Francis), Adrian Brody (Peter) and Jason Schwartzman (Jack). These oddball brothers are wealthy enough to stay endlessly at gorgeous Parisian hotels, tear up their return tickets from India and carry an Ipod with a speaker dock all through their Indian trip by train/bus/bike/etc, but they are duly pained by their father's death and their mother's negligence. It was difficult for me to invest myself in their story-- they come off as exceedingly self absorbed, and while that may have worked for Margot Tenenbaum (in Anderson's highly enjoyable The Royal Tenenbaums), she was not filmed interacting with locals throughout third world India-- rather, she appeared in her natural environment of upper class New York City. The characters here seemed to have permanently down turned, achingly sad eyes, overly glorified by many closeups and slow pans. Oh, the pain of great wealth and great luggage!
away the summer in the hammock in her yard, voraciously reading through any books that came our way. My best friend's sister was 5 years older than us. Although she was basically nerdy too, she was, by age association alone, more advanced and thus cooler than us. It was through her that I discovered Sassy Magazine at the age of 11.
iddle school years. It showed me there was a world outside of my preppy high school-- a world where there was more going on than wearing Gap Jeans and driving a Mercedes.
