I am happy to say that tonight I have seen my first Wes Anderson film. A few friends and I watched The Darjeeling Limited. Vince told me that the first Wes Anderson film I should see should be The Royal Tenenbaums, but alas, Hollywood Video did not carry that movie, so we had to settle.
This movie was unlike many American films that I am used to. The beauty was not in the plot, not in the action, and not in the tear-jerking, epic clash-of-opposing-forces-at-the-end-of-the-world type scenes. The power of Darjeeling was built in the characterization of the three brothers, Francis, Peter, and Jack, and the tools that Anderson uses to express their interactions with each other, the people they meet, and with themselves. My favorite character was the mother. When the viewer finally meets her in the movie, he/she understands so much more about each of the main characters.
One aspect of the movie that I found terribly interesting was the brothers' search to find spiritual fulfillment in a culture other than their own. That quest for enlightenment in alternative styles seems to have become an undercurrent in American society since the beats discovered Zen; so much so that according to Christian Lander, the #2 thing that white people like is religion that their parents don't belong to. Throughout the movie, the brothers try everything from blaspheming in front of holy shrines, to painting dots on their foreheads, to playing with peacock feathers, all in order to find some guidance in their lives. All of this experimenting is undercut by the fact that the only reason the elder brother chose India as the location for the brothers' reunion is so that they can try to find their mother once again. This ulterior motive threatens the validity of their spiritual quest. Towards the end of the movie when the brothers have given up on returning with their mother, Jack even turns around at a shrine and asks: "what should we pray for now?" Now that they have failed in their true goal of bringing their mother back with them, the brothers are unable to pretend that they have been trying to become closer with each other. Luckily for them, the time spent together on the trip was enough to deepen their bonds and help them to drop their baggage (both literally and metaphorically). The end of the movie finds them united once again a train with a much closer relationship than they had had when they first met on the Darjeeling Limited.
I am typically not a fan of movies, but I really enjoy Anderson's style. He forces the viewer to be active, to notice the details (when do characters take swigs from coughing medicine, which characters play with music boxes) and to piece together their own conclusions about why people act the way they do. They meaning of the movie is not only portrayed through the script. The film was also not without its moments of comedy. I laughed outloud when a shot revealed the three brothers riding carefree on a motorcycle, their hair blowing in the wind, only to pan to a car traveling slightly behind them filled with porters carrying the brother's luggage. This is one of the few movies that I would not mind watching more than once. I feel that the more time I spend with this movie, the more I will learn from it. I look forward to watching Wes Anderson's other films.
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Good review, Cass. In my opinion, Wes Anderson is in a league of his own. Perhaps we can include one of his films on the agenda for some future Pasta Night.
ReplyDeleteReading how the brothers searched "to find spiritual fulfillment in a culture other than their own" actually reminded me of our own conversation the last time you came to Pasta Night at our house when the subject was "conversion." Spiritual fulfillment is not found in religious ritual but in right relationship; one will be wasting one's time seeking soul-care in some properly pious practice if one will not work towards reconciliation with others in one's life.
Perhaps this is what the brothers themselves discovered. You write that "the time spent together on the trip was enough to deepen their bonds and help them to drop their baggage." Let us always hope that, in our relationships with others, "the time spent together" will indeed "deepen [our] bonds."