"The Darjeeling Limited"

This tale of filial love and family baggage is Wes Anderson's most heartfelt feature film yet. Its companion short, "Hotel Chevalier," is darn near perfect.

By Stephanie Zacharek

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Photo: Fox Searchlight

Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson in "The Darjeeling Limited."

Sept. 28, 2007 | Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited" is a focused attempt to make a heartfelt director-to-audience connection: In an effort to regroup after their father's death, three brothers -- played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman -- board a train traveling through India. They swap drugs, ogle the pretty and, in the movie's eyes, "exotic" train attendant, and squabble. In Wes Andersonville, this is filial love, and although "The Darjeeling Limited" mostly suffers from the same jejune quaintness that Anderson's other movies do, at least it shows flashes of raw feeling. The picture is just naked enough that you want to wrap a blanket around it.

But not that naked. Anderson's movies -- the static, stilted "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," the eccentric-family quirkfest "The Royal Tenenbaums" -- have always left me cold. I remain unmoved even by the aggressively fey charms of "Rushmore." "The Darjeeling Limited" -- which opens the New York Film Festival this evening, and opens elsewhere beginning tomorrow -- is the first of Anderson's movies that has elicited even the mildest scrap of affection from me: I feel warmly toward it, although I reserve the right to remain wary of its aging-hipster gimcrackery. It's as if Anderson, yesterday's next big thing, heard the homemade coffee-can drumbeat of new young DIY filmmakers like Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg and realized that what the kids are into these days is shambling, sincere naturalism; his stock in trade, whimsical, deadpan irony, all meticulously orchestrated from the master control center of his brain, is starting to seem as outmoded as an old Mantovani record. Better inject some juice, and attempt at least an approximation of spontaneity, fast.

Maybe all artists do their best work when they're scared into it. "The Life Aquatic" met with a less-than-rapturous response even from many loyal Anderson admirers. And so to his credit, Anderson tries to push into new territory with "The Darjeeling Limited." Francis (Owen Wilson) has arranged a cross-country Indian train trip for himself and his two younger brothers, Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) -- although "arranged" might be too casual a word. He's planned the trip so carefully that he's even brought along a coordinator (played by Wally Wolodarsky) outfitted with a printer and a laminating machine: His job includes making plastic-coated cards for each day's itinerary, including visits to shrines and stops at local markets to purchase sundries like decorated leather slippers and pepper spray.

It turns out that Francis has suffered a terrible and unusual accident: His face is a map of bruises and bandages; a strip of gauze frames the oval of his face, Marley's Ghost-style. Peter and Jack feel sympathy and concern for him, but it's clear that his need to control and question their every movement drives them crazy. They rail at him; they roll their eyes at him; but eventually, a tragedy in the Indian countryside ends up bringing them all closer, and also leads to a reconciliation with their estranged mom (Anjelica Huston).

As the brothers gradually thaw their way out of the grief that's frozen them, and distanced them from one another, they're both endearing and wearying, in an upper-crusty Three Stooges kind of way: They clobber and pick at one another until they reach enlightenment. Schwartzman, formerly just an annoying actor, is finding ways to go deeper into characters that seem somewhat blank on the surface, and his timing just keeps getting better: He turns the intentionally awkward rhythms of the movie's dialogue into comically graceful, hippo-in-a-tutu pirouettes. Wilson, the controlling sad sack in this meandering little fable -- with his neuroses and his need for absolute, minute-by-minute orchestration, might his character be a stand-in for Anderson himself? -- turns an aggressively alienating character into one we can feel some kinship with. Or maybe it's just that his lazy drawl seduces us into liking him. Or it may be that it's simply impossible not to feel protective toward Owen Wilson right now, particularly since his character here shows the wounds and scars of what we can assume was a suicide attempt.

Next page: Family connections and attractive baggage