The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Director: Wes Anderson
Writer(s): Wes Anderson / Roman Coppola / Jason Schwartzman
Starring: Adrien Brody / Owen Wilson / Jason Schwartzman / Anjelica Huston
Comedy / Drama
The Darjeeling Limited is Wes Anderson’s least popular film. It was never critically panned. It’s not considered a directorial mistake. It’s enjoyed by fans for what it is, but it’s seldom identified amongst his best work. It is, for the most part, just there. It merely exists, an afterthought in his catalogue of classics. I believe this to be a terrible shame and a tremendous oversight, and I hope to convince you so in this overview of the film. You see, Darjeeling Ltd. is my favourite film, and not just from Anderson’s resume. From the first painstakingly intricate shot to the last, I fell in love with the characters and the world he designed. Like any Anderson film, the visual quality of the film is stunning. Each shot is meticulously crafted. The colour palettes are vivid and evocative. The set design is as carefully-considered and detailed as a beaded tapestry. The camera movements look like choreography. But these are our expectations for a Wes Anderson film. None of these qualities are the reason this film is criminally underrated. These trademarks are mere tools Anderson uses to convey this story of enlightenment, communication, and loss.
The film opens with Peter Whitman (Brody) sprinting and narrowly catching a departing train where he is to meet his brothers, Jack Whitman (Schwartzman) and Francis Whitman (Wilson). Peter finds Jack in their cabin, and they are joined in short order by Francis, who explains why we are all here on this train. It’s been a year since their father’s funeral, none of the three of them have spoken, and Francis is determined to haul his family back together, with or without their help. It is fitting that the film should open with Peter attempting to catch up to wherever his brothers are, for I believe his narrative to be central to the story, and it will be the focus of this analysis. The motif of Peter lagging behind Francis and Jack is repeated throughout the film and symbolizes where he is in relation to his brothers in the grief process.
In the first significant scene, the brothers converse over soup and whiskey highballs in the dining car. Francis outlines the major beats on the spiritual journey he has planned for the three of them, and Anderson quickly establishes exactly who these people are. Jack, the youngest, responds to Francis’s strategy for enlightenment with curiosity and openness. Peter, the middle child, reacts with suspiciousness and hesitance. This is important, because it shows us that Francis and Jack have both committed to moving forward by the time they reached the train. Peter hasn’t. The brothers talk idly in a conversation seemingly about nothing: casual opioid use, the dinner menu, what each of them has been up to in the past year. But the dialogue in this scene is deliberate and purposeful, and yields a tremendous amount of information about the characters and their relationships to one another.
Francis has recently survived a car accident, later revealed to be a suicide attempt. In the wake of his accident, he’s become desperate to reunite his family, rebuild his relationships, and determined recover from his grief and isolation. Jack hasn’t been on American soil since their father’s funeral. He’s been treading water overseas, living out of French hotel rooms and equally avoiding and submitting to the will of his toxic ex-girlfriend. He’s on this train because he wants to be over her. He wants to put his feet back on solid ground. He also wants to fuck the Indian stewardess attending to them on the train. It’s a start. Peter’s hiding the fact, from his brothers and from himself, that his wife is pregnant and he’s destined to be a father. He’s on this train because he’s scared shitless. He just lost his own father, and he’s not ready to fulfill that role with nobody at his side to guide him through it. All three of them are self-medicating their residual grief with opioid painkillers.
The conversation itself is stilted and disjointed. A dozen different thoughts are started, but never completed. Each Whitman is speaking without being heard. Francis is revealed to be overbearing and controlling, much like their flaky mother. As the eldest son, it is likely that he spent the most time with their mother growing up before she developed her habit of serial abandonment. He seems to admire her. He gives her the benefit of the doubt. He’s the only one to ask about her; Jack and Peter don’t know or seem to care what’s become of her since their father’s death. Peter is tense and terse. Francis notes that he’s wearing their father’s glasses, the prescription still inside. Despite suffering from severe headaches, he insists on seeing through his father’s lenses. He’s accused of pilfering little artifacts from their father’s life in an effort to keep him alive somehow. Jack offers Peter a short story to read, later revealed to be an account of their father’s funeral. Peter responds indifferently at first, but is later seen weeping in the restroom, unable to share his grief with his brothers. The scene illustrates a fundamental inability to communicate. These brothers are broken, both as individuals and as family.
From here, the Whitman brothers embark on a manufactured spiritual journey which culminates in a surprise family reunion Francis has arranged with their estranged mother. Francis brought an assistant along who provides them with a laminated daily schedule, a checklist of experiences they need to have to find enlightenment. Jack fucks the Indian stewardess and thinks he’s found love. Francis throws his money around and is stunned when he’s taken advantage of by the locals. Peter buys a deathly poisonous snake because he thinks it’s neat. They engage with Indian culture in the most shallow of ways. When they pray, they impose their American traditions on the cultural experience they intended to have. In self-entitled and privileged naivety, they expect enlightenment to happen to them just because they decided to show up. This immaturity manifests in several ways. They keep secrets from each other. They break promises. They bicker constantly. Their childish impulsivity lands them in progressively deeper trouble with the Chief Steward of the train after a series of escalating lapses in judgment: they lose the snake on board the train, they invade the privacy of the stewardess, and then Francis and Peter start a fight that ends with Jack pepper spraying the both of them.
At this point, the Whitman brothers are thrown off the train. Here, at the midpoint of the film, is where the real spiritual journey begins. They read a letter from their mother, who doesn’t want to see them. She makes up excuses and tells them to go home. They resign themselves to failure and agree: fuck it, we tried. Let’s just go home and never speak of this again. The next morning as they haul their father’s baggage along the riverbank, they see three Indian boys pulling themselves across the river on a rickety raft. The line breaks, the raft spills the boys into the river, and the single most important event of the film takes place. The brothers jump into the river after them at Peter’s behest. Now, I love this film enough not just to have seen it dozens of times, but to have read its screenplay, and there it is explicitly stated that the Indian boys are brothers, and each Whitman saves the image of himself from the river. Jack saves himself, the youngest. Francis rescues himself, the eldest. But Peter can’t save the middle child. The two get swept away and the middle child, in Peter’s image, is dashed to death on the rocks in the river.
They carry the boy’s body to his home. They’re invited to participate in the funeral. Here, in the heart of rural India, after shedding all the laminated checklists and shrines and snakes, the Whitmans finally have a raw spiritual experience. The Indian funeral is intercut with a memory. It’s the short story Jack wrote. It’s the day of their father’s funeral, the last day the Whitmans communicated as brothers. On this day, Peter frantically attempts to retrieve his father’s Porsche from a mechanic against the better judgment of his brothers and his wife. He was there the day his father died. He was the only witness. Instead of resisting his irrational desires, Francis and Jack join him in this fool’s errand. Francis receives word that the boys’ mother will not be attending their father’s funeral. He keeps this a secret to protect his brothers, however briefly. They manually push the car into the street, cutting off an irate driver. They confront him together, united as family for the last time. And then the young boy’s body is burned on the funeral pyre. They watch. Despite all indication that he’d be very good at it, Peter is terrified of fatherhood. Of dying and leaving a child as he was left. But his grief stands in stark contrast to the unnatural agony of a father burying his own son. Peter is exposed to the inevitability of birth, and death, and the decision of what kind of father he is going to be.
Post-funeral, the Whitmans lurk in an airport, awaiting their plane home. Each makes a phone call to whoever they have waiting for them: Jack dials the answering machine of his manipulative ex-girlfriend; she’s going to stalk him to Italy. Francis calls his assistant, his only friend, and begs for his return. Peter calls his wife and tells her he’s in India on a spiritual journey, but he’s found himself and he’s on his way home. He’s going to miss India. He buys an embroidered vest for his son. He has finally arrived in the psychological space his brothers have occupied during the film. He rips up their plane tickets. He drives them into the countryside on a motorbike. They aren’t leaving before they see their mother.
Patricia Whitman (Huston) is a critical, ruthlessly independent woman, and in meeting her, we come to understand the stunted emotionality her sons demonstrate. What began as a misguided, but well-intentioned attempt at a family reunion becomes a heated confrontation. Peter sits her down and in one breath tells her he’s expecting a child, and he demands to know why she wasn’t at their father’s funeral. The answer? She didn’t want to be. She took a hard pass on being their mother, on supporting them when they most needed it, because it didn’t suit her lifestyle. They sit for a time, communicating more in silence than they have said out loud the entire film. This scene is incredible for how much it is able to say with no words at all. The gravitas of the confrontation is communicated entirely in the subtext of the actions, exchanges, and character development up to this point in the film.
Patricia looks from one son to the next, her expression saying: This is who I am, and you know this about me. It calls to mind the story of the frog and the scorpion. Why did she abandon her children? It was in her nature to do so. Anderson pans from Patricia to the Whitman boys. Francis, begrudging respect. Peter, disappointment. Jack, unbridled anger. The camera pans again, this time to a train where each car contains a minor character from the film, all of whom are moving forward in their own lives: the remaining Indian brothers light a candle vigil. The stewardess stubs out a cigarette. The steward with the Whitmans’ confiscated snake. Jack’s ex-girlfriend in his bathrobe in his French bed. Peter’s wife resting, her womb stretched wide with his infant son. Life goes on, and finally, the Whitmans have caught up. In the morning, Patricia has abandoned her sons again, to no one’s surprise. This time, however, it’s okay. In coming to terms with the loss of both parents, the brothers have found each other. Francis produces a final artifact of prayer, a peacock feather left-over from a failed attempt at spirituality. This time the brothers pray over the feather, each performing a ritual meaningful to themselves, accepting their differences and appreciating their togetherness.
The final scene of the film finds the brothers in the same place they started, but different. They sprint beside the tracks of a departing train they are late for, followed by three Sherpas and a dozen of their father’s Louis Vuitton suitcases. As they realize they are losing ground, Francis shouts: “Dad’s bags aren’t going to make it!” Triumphantly, the Whitmans literally throw away the baggage of their father’s death they’ve been hauling around the entire film, and free of the weight of it they board the train, leaving a wake of confused Sherpas behind. Peter and Jack give their passports to Francis, a symbol of their trust and commitment to supporting each other. The train, the steward, the drinks, the cigarettes—everything is the same, but where the film started with three brothers arriving from separate places, it ends with them arriving together.
I am endlessly moved by the way the writers of this film told a story almost wholly through subtext. This speaks to the experience of grief more broadly: We can’t share the experience. Whatever we do, we can only imagine the internal process of another person based on our own experiences and observations. It is this space between observation and personal experience in which the entire story takes place. The viewer is left to string together the wreckage of each character’s life, despite the fact that it’s never outright spoken anywhere in the film. We understand how damaged Peter and Francis and Jack are because we, the viewer, already know loss. We know what it looks like.
I wrote this analysis with as much restraint as possible, and in doing so, I left it barely readable and I sacrificed so many of Anderson’s beautiful details. Words, metaphors, gestures, reactions, artifacts, acting nuances, entire characters. All culled from this analysis in the interests of brevity. I could have discussed this film scene-by-scene, frame-by-frame. It’s a moving photomosaic. On every viewing I see more details nested within each shot. More depth emerges from each character. It is my hope that reading this, you will give the film another viewing and you will discover all of the beautiful little things I left out. The Darjeeling Limited is an exceedingly lovely story of loss and fumbling towards healing. I hope you will find the same comfort I have in Anderson’s upfront treatment of tragedy as commonplace, because it is, and it unites us all.
12-11-2016, 03:49 PM
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