Darjeeling’s Limited success

Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, like most of his other films, feels like a personal journey, a soul-searching adventure into the true meaning of life, love and family. But unlike his other films, Darjeeling features poorly developed characters, a story shrouded in unexplained mystery and deadpan dialogue that does not snap with the traditional Anderson touch.

The movie concerns itself with three brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. Wilson, the outspoken catalyst of the three, decides that they should take a month-long journey through India by train (named the Darjeeling Limited, obviously) to reconnect as a family. That’s the plot of the film, almost in full.

The motives of the brothers, the events that drove the family apart, their lives outside of the movie’s world — in a very un-Anderson-like fashion, these story points are never discussed. Anderson has always been a master at wordlessly infusing subtle hints about characters and their backgrounds in his films, whether through body language, short quips or meticulously designed sets and props. As The Royal Tenenbaums proved, he will even use flashbacks and narration to bring his characters to life.

But in Darjeeling, Anderson misses the boat. Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman are all more than serviceable as the brotherly trio, but none of them connect with the audience in a worthwhile way. Darjeeling conjures a world where Max Fischer, Royal Tenenbaum and Steve Zissou (Anderson’s protagonists of yesteryear) are flat, uninspired characters with little substance and even less emotion behind them.

Anderson is rumored to have cut entire scenes that explained a great deal of back story to allow the audience to draw its own conclusions about the characters’ lives. If this is true, Anderson has been overcome by his own genius.