The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Wes Anderson
Produced by	Wes Anderson Scott Rudin Roman Coppola
Written by	Wes Anderson Roman Coppola Jason Schwartzman
Starring	Owen Wilson Adrien Brody Jason Schwartzman Anjelica Huston
Cinematography	Robert D. Yeoman
Editing by	Andrew Weisblum
Studio	Indian Paintbrush
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release date(s)	October 26, 2007 (2007-10-26)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$17,500,000
Box office	$35,078,918

The Darjeeling Limited is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson, and starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman. It was written by Anderson, Schwartzman, and Roman Coppola. The film also features Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Barbet Schroeder, and Anjelica Huston, with Natalie Portman, Camilla Rutherford, Irrfan Khan and Bill Murray in cameo roles.

Plot

A businessman in India (Bill Murray) fails to catch his train as it pulls out of a station. He is beaten to it by a younger man, Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), who is carrying heavy luggage. Peter reunites with his brothers Francis (Owen Wilson) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) on the luxury train called "The Darjeeling Limited", which is traveling across India. The brothers have not seen each other since their father's funeral.

Francis, the oldest of the three brothers, has planned their journey in advance. The journey is supposed to culminate in a reunion with their mother (Anjelica Huston), but Francis tells his brothers that they are making the journey for spiritual self-discovery. He tells them of a car crash that he was in, saying that he technically died, and wants to reconnect to his brothers. His brothers are not convinced of this, and get annoyed with Francis' controlling behaviour such as choosing from the menu for them, which turns out to be a trait inherited from their mother. With his assistant Brendan's help, Francis draws up an itinerary for the trip and takes his brothers' passports to prevent them from getting off the train too early. The youngest Whitman, Jack, has written a short story which is similar to his own life, but he denies the similarities. He obsessively listens to the messages on his ex-girlfriend's answering machine at every train stop. Moreover, he has a fling with the train's stewardess Rita (Amara Karan), whom Francis nicknames "Sweet Lime" for the drinks she offers.

Peter, the middle brother, justifies his keeping many of his late father's possessions by claiming that he was their father's favorite. His wife, Alice (Camilla Rutherford), is expecting a baby, but Peter fears that their relationship may end in divorce.

In their trips through the Indian provinces, Francis has one of his loafers stolen by a shoe-shine boy; Peter buys a cobra, which later escapes from its transport container. This escape results in the brothers being confined to their cabins in the train. Francis and Peter get into a fight over the latter being their father's "favorite" and Jack uses pepper spray, trying to stop the fight. The train's Chief Steward (Waris Ahluwalia), whom the three brothers have repeatedly annoyed, throws the three of them off the train with all their luggage. On their way back to civilization, they see three young boys fall into a river while attempting to pull a raft across it. Jack and Francis rescue two of the boys, but Peter fails to save the third, which affects him deeply. In the boys' village, the three brothers are befriended by the villagers and attend the boy's funeral.

In a flashback, the three brothers and Alice are in a car, going to their father's funeral. They stop to pick up their father's Porsche from the repair shop, but the car is not ready so the brothers leave.

Back in the present, the Whitmans get on a bus, which takes them from the village to the airport. However, they rip up their tickets and decide to go visit their mother. The reunion is very emotional (it is learned that Francis's accident was, in fact, a suicide attempt) and the family is reunited for a time. The next morning, the three brothers find that their mother has again left her family and children.

On the way back the three brothers run for a train, and jettison all their baggage on the railway line as they and some porters run after the train. Jack reads his new short story, and gives in, accepting that it is representative of his own life. Francis wants to give the passports back to his brothers, but the brothers decide that the passports are safer with him.

Hotel Chevalier

Main article: Hotel Chevalier

Anderson also wrote and directed the 2005 short film Hotel Chevalier, starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman. The 13-minute film acts as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited. In it, Jack's ex-girlfriend turns up unexpectedly at his hotel room in Paris, and they spend the night together. Originally attached to festival screenings of The Darjeeling Limited, it was removed during the limited theatrical release and instead made available on Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store as a free download. On October 26, 2007, Hotel Chevalier was removed from iTunes in favor of releasing it in theaters with the wide release of The Darjeeling Limited.

Cast

• Owen Wilson as Francis Whitman
• Adrien Brody as Peter Whitman
• Jason Schwartzman as Jack Whitman
• Anjelica Huston as Sister Patricia Whitman
• Waris Ahluwalia as The Chief Steward
• Amara Karan as Rita
• Natalie Portman as Jack's ex
• Wallace Wolodarsky as Brendan
• Bill Murray as The Businessman
• Camilla Rutherford as Alice Whitman
• Barbet Schroeder as The Mechanic
• Irrfan Khan as The Father

Themes and motifs

The Darjeeling Limited includes many of Anderson's signature themes and styles, such as despair, abandonment, sibling relationships, a privileged class who rarely work, and timeless fashions and props. Anderson has revealed that The River by Jean Renoir, the films of Satyajit Ray and documentaries on India by Louis Malle were his inspirations for this movie. The film was dedicated to Satyajit Ray and makes allusions to him and his work (e.g., the portrait of Ray in the compartment of the train Bengal Lancer towards the end of the film).

Production

Locations

Much of the film was shot in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. The Himalaya scenes were shot in Udaipur, and the opening scene of the film was also shot on the streets of Jodhpur. The International Airport shown near the end is the old terminal building of Udaipur Airport. The scenes set in New York were shot in Long Island City.

Indian Railways does not operate a luxury train named The Darjeeling Limited, but it operates luxury trains like Maharaja Express, Royal Rajasthan on Wheels etc.

There is a train named "Darjeeling Mail" that operates between Sealdah Station and New Jalpaiguri Station, the nearest broad gauge station to Darjeeling, which connects to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

The train

In a featurette released with the DVD, production designer Mark Friedberg describes some of the work put into creating the train used for the film. The sleeper car where much of the action takes place had walls that could be openend up on hinges, thus providing extra space for cameras and some of the lights. An "I" beam attached to the ceiling allowed the camera to run smoothly down the corridor of the rocking train. Everything in the dining car, from the wooden chairs to the painted dishes, was produced in India by local carperters and artisans.

The inspiration for the locomotive's exterior came from Indian buses, which are often richly painted.

Some of the filming inside the train was done while the train was moving--a technical nightmare because of the continual changes of light. If the crew had to film with the train stopped, train movement was simulated by rocking the car with a beam used as a lever.

Music

Main article: The Darjeeling Limited (soundtrack)

The soundtrack features three songs by The Kinks, "Powerman", "Strangers" and "This Time Tomorrow", all from the 1970 album, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, as well as "Play With Fire" by The Rolling Stones. "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt is prominently featured as well, being played within the film more than once. Most of the album, however, features film score music composed by Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, Merchant-Ivory films, and other artists from Indian cinema. Director Wes Anderson has said that it was Satyajit Ray's movies that made him want to come to India. The works include "Charu's Theme", from Ray's 1964 film, Charulata, film-score cues by Shankar Jaikishan and classic works by Claude Debussy and Ludwig van Beethoven. The film ends with the 1969 song "Les Champs Élysées" by French singer Joe Dassin, who was the son of blacklisted American director Jules Dassin.

Release

The Darjeeling Limited made its world premiere on 3 September 2007 at the Venice Film Festival, where it was in competition for the Golden Lion and won the Little Golden Lion. The film's North American premiere was on 28 September 2007 at the 45th annual New York Film Festival, where it was the opening film. It then opened in a limited commercial release in North America on 5 October 2007. The film opened across North America on 26 October 2007 and in the UK on 23 November 2007, in both territories preceded in showings by Hotel Chevalier. The film grossed $134,938 in two theaters in its opening weekend for an average of $67,469 for each theater.

The film (widescreen edition) was released on DVD 26 February 2008 on Fox Searchlight, with features limited to a behind-the-scenes documentary, theatrical trailer, and the inclusion of Hotel Chevalier. The film was re-released by the Criterion Collection on 12 October 2010 on both DVD and Blu-ray, the latter being the film's first release on the format.

Critical reception

The film received generally favorable reviews. As of July 2012, on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 67% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 168 reviews, with a consensus among critics that the film "will satisfy Wes Anderson fans." On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 67 out of 100, based on 35 reviews.

Chris Cabin of Filmcritic.com gave the film 4 stars out of 5 and described Anderson's film as "the auteur's best work to date." Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a "B+" and said "This is psychological as well as stylistic familiar territory for Anderson after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. But there's a startling new maturity in Darjeeling, a compassion for the larger world that busts the confines of the filmmaker's miniaturist instincts." A.O. Scott of The New York Times said that the film "is unstintingly fussy, vain and self-regarding. But it is also a treasure: an odd, flawed, but nonetheless beautifully handmade object as apt to win affection as to provoke annoyance. You might say that it has sentimental value."

Timothy Knight of Reel.com gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and said "Although The Darjeeling Limited pales in comparison to Anderson's best film, Rushmore (1998), it's still a vast improvement over his last, and worst film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)." Nathan Lee of The Village Voice wrote "A companion piece to Tenenbaums more than a step in new directions, Darjeeling is a movie about people trapped in themselves and what it takes to get free — a movie, quite literally, about letting go of your baggage." The Christian Science Monitor critic Peter Rainer said "Wes Anderson doesn't make movies like anybody else, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not. His latest, The Darjeeling Limited, combines what's best and worst about him." New York Magazine critic David Edelstein said that the film is "hit and miss, but its tone of lyric melancholy is remarkably sustained."

Nick Schager of Slant Magazine gave the film 2 stars out of 4 and said "the ingredients that have increasingly defined Wes Anderson's films...seem, with The Darjeeling Limited, to have become something like limitations." Emanuel Levy gave the film a "C" and said "Going to India and collaborating with two new writers do little to invigorate or reenergize director Wes Anderson in The Darjeeling Limited, because he imposes the same themes, self-conscious approach, and serio-comic sensibility of his previous films on the new one, confining his three lost brothers not only within his limited world, but also within a limited space, a train compartment." Levy also said "after reaching a nadir with his last feature, the $50 million folly The Life Aquatic of Steve Zisou [sic], which was an artistic and commercial flop, Anderson could only go upward." Dana Stevens of Slate magazine wrote, "Maybe Anderson needs to shoot someone else's screenplay, to get outside his own head for a while and into another's sensibility. It's telling that his funniest and liveliest recent work was a commercial for American Express." Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film 1¹⁄₂ stars out of 4 and said "At a stage in Anderson’s career when he should be moving on, he is instead circling back."

Glenn Kenny of Premiere named it the fifth best film of 2007, and Mike Russell of The Oregonian named it the eighth best film of 2007.

External links

• The Darjeeling Limited at Fox Searchlight
• The Darjeeling Limited at the Internet Movie Database
• The Darjeeling Limited at AllRovi
• The Darjeeling Limited at Box Office Mojo
• The Darjeeling Limited at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Darjeeling Limited at Metacritic
• IONCINEMA.com interview with Wes Anderson
• An open letter to Wes Anderson from Steely Dan offering musical contributions for the film
• Darjeeling Limited Analysis