The Darjeeling Limited

Sat, May 24 03:58 AM

Cast: Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Irrfan Khan

Director: Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson has made an art of saying things effortlessly, time and again with a group of friends, who perhaps excel at it better than most. There is Wilson, Schwartzman and, of course, Murray - the man of limited words in The Lost Translation. Paired with Brody, they make a film that's a near-lyrical journey into a world that exists as much in the real world as in their imagination. There are other films which stumble where these two worlds meet, but in The Darjeeling Limited, one lies in the other.

Francis (Wilson), Peter (Brody) and Jack (Schwartzman) Whitman board The Darjeeling Limited on a "spiritual journey" at Francis's behest. Jack hasn't been to America in a year, since their Dad's death, and has just broken up with his girlfriend in France; Peter is about to have a son and, as he says, the only way he imagined his marriage to end was in a divorce; while Francis the eldest, who is obviously rich, has just survived a road crash, which might have been suicide.

Francis hopes the train journey through India's holiest places with his brothers would help them discover themselves, and each other. Only halfway through does he tell them that their destination is actually their mother, who has virtually cut off links with the family and lives as a nun somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas.

When we get the first glimpse of The Darjeeling Limited, it's Indian kitsch at its best. The train is painted in bright colours, with drawings of elephants on all possible things, including the cutlery. The ticket checker is tall, thin and turbaned; the stewardess slim, dark with heavy kohl-lined eyes and a precariously low petticoat.

Before you roll your eyes at the picture, you realise that it's the Whitmans who are the oddity here. That this is an India they have conjured - of gaudily coloured temples, petty thieves, deadly snakes, turbaned servants and mysterious women - which they can only survive on Indian "medicines" with funny names guaranteed to give a high if not a cure; a "faceless" assistant who does all the research, types out a laminated daily itinerary and "slides it" under their door; and mountains of coordinated n luggage. Francis has even got a ritual figured out with peacock feathers and some illegible mantra to complete their enlightenment.

It's when their mother tells them she doesn't want to see them, gently, and the spiritual myths break that the Whitman brothers discover that what they are seeking lies not far from their heart.

A small boy who dies while they are trying to save him from drowning in a small village in Rajasthan - while the most clichéd of set-ups - suddenly wakes them to a new world. Here's a village rallying around a father (Irrfan) who has lost his son; and there was their father buried without either his sons or wife. There is a father running away from his yet-to-be-born baby, here was a father preparing his son lovingly for his funeral. Here was a village welcoming them with open arms; and there was a mother that had shut them out.

By the time they meet their mother, the Whitman brothers know that she has given them much, but that now she may have nothing more for them.

Dysfunctional families and odd siblings are not a new feature to Anderson. However, in The Darjeeling Limited, he has taken his work to another level.

The film is an ode to Satyajit Ray, and Anderson lavishly uses musical scores from the great master's films. He also lovingly uses the shot of a train in the background as he brings alive the beauty of a land that we often never see for ourselves.

That ultimately is where The Darjeeling Limited takes you: to places within reach, just out of reach.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com

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