The Darjeeling Limited
with
Hotel Chevalier
Director: Wes Anderson. Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman. Cinematography: Robert D. Yeoman. Film editing: Andrew Weisblum. Production design: Mark Friedberg. Producers: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Lydia Dean Pilcher, Scott Rudin. With: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Wallace Wolodarsky, Waris Ahluwalia, Barbet Schroeder, Irfan Khan, Camilla Rutherford, Bill Murray, Natalie Portman. USA. 91 + 13 mins. 2007.
By David Sterritt
Three wealthy American brothers, poor little rich boys all, board a train in India to seek spiritual enlightenment, family reconciliation, and lots of possibilities to get plenty high on everything from alcohol to cough syrup to stuff you smoke in a pipe.
This mild-mannered comedy is Wes Anderson’s most economical movie since the underrated “Bottle Rocket,” and it’s likable all the way through, thanks to understated acting by the three stars and superb portrayals by a gifted supporting cast; among the standouts are Amara Karan as a spunky train hostess, Waris Ahluwalia as the vehicle’s long-suffering chief steward, Wallace Wolodarsky as an assistant to the tourists—looking like a cross between Wallace Shawn and Paul Giamatti, he gets great mileage from a tiny role—and best of all Anjelica Huston as the travellers’ mom, who makes a very late appearance but steals the screen every moment she’s around. The movie builds even less momentum than the subcontinental train of the title, which manages to get lost even though it’s on rails, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture with more endings, one after another after another. … But you’ll enjoy the ride if you check your goal-oriented habits at the door and simply go with the cinematic flow.
"Hotel Chevalier," a brief two-character short, is the unofficial Part 1 of “The Darjeeling Limited,” not shown in theaters (although it has been shown at film festivals and press screenings) but available for downloading from the Internet. It concerns a couple played by Schwartzman and Natalie Portman making a melancholy attempt to jumpstart their stalled love affair in the Paris hotel where she’s tracked him down. The feature will make sufficient sense if you don’t bother to catch the short, and the whole arrangement seems flat-out gimmicky to me. Ditto for the music tracks of both pictures, by the way, which exploit the instant nostalgia value of various oldies in ways the pioneering Martin Scorsese never would have dreamed of, or wanted to.
