During one such diversion, they rescue two country boys from drowning. Occasionally, the brothers descend from the carriage, either to see the sights or because the ferocious steward (Waris Ahluwalia) has kicked them off for infantile behavior. Yet the mood of the film is blithe, and its coloration peacock-bright. The Whitman boys are in a bad way, and there are times, as the camera swipes back and forth between them, rather than pausing to cut from one to the next, when they seem indissoluble in their unease. What makes the family inexhaustible, to the dramatic imagination, is that what may perplex and pain its members is likely to register as comic folly in the eye of the beholder. The dialogue bristles with ill-concealed secrets: “Don’t tell him I told you.” “He doesn’t want you to know.”Īnderson’s fixation on families, like that of Henry James on the quandary of expatriates, will, I guess, never end. Peter is unhappily married, and he seems to have pilfered some of his father’s belongings Jack is a morose Lothario, his pursuits affording only the barest pleasure and Francis, his head still bandaged after a motorcycle crash, is the organizer of the trip, who insists on ordering food for his siblings as if they were his kids. This is easier said than done, for the trio is primed for discord.
Once on board, Peter finds his two brothers, Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and Francis (Owen Wilson), waiting for him they have all joined up to refresh their brotherhood after the death of their father. There are more slow motions to come, gradually draining the haste and stress out of the characters, as if to prove that the quick are really the dead. If such daft awkwardness can be turned into a hiatus of grace, Anderson is asking, what other revelations might it portend? Time slows as he sprints, until we see the whites of his socks, and the soundtrack urges him on. In the opening scene of his new film, “The Darjeeling Limited,” we see an unnamed businessman in a porkpie hat (Bill Murray) rushing for an Indian train, and failing to catch it, while a younger man running beside him, Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), just makes it.
He could have picked Japan, I suppose, but his characters have to hop onto a rear carriage, like robbers in a Western, and you can’t really do that with a bullet train. So, if you are a movie director with a taste for the railroad but the misfortune to be living now, where do you turn? If you are Wes Anderson, you go to India. Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Wes Anderson on the set.
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