Wes Anderson, king of tongue-in-cheek, gets spiritual

By Steven Snyder

As the years have dragged on, the quirky worlds of Wes Anderson have been imitated and replicated more times than one can count. In the beginning, he was the only filmmaker attempting to create comedies in this fashion, using a very rigid and formal visual style, relying heavily on illustrative soundtracks just as he was stripping many of his characters down to macabre, methodical, hilarious, machines.

What’s funny about so many of his films is the way in which understatement clashes with over-the-top flourishes, the characters barely moving a muscle while in the background, Anderson constructs some of the most absurd canvases imaginable. This is what he did with the rough-edged buddy comedy of “Bottle Rocket,” the distorted coming-of-age riot of “Rushmore,” the dysfunctional family tale of “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and the wacky, high-seas-adventure of “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”

With each title, he has moved further into his isolated bubble, demanding less of his characters while playing with his formalistic style more and more. In “Life Aquatic,” he reached the outer edge of this approach, as the movie stood as a technical marvel but was lacking anything resembling a human soul. All of which makes “The Darjeeling Limited,” Anderson’s newest title and the opening night selection of the New York Film Festival, that much more of an achievement, focusing for the first time on not just the presence, but the emotional core, of its three scarred, scared characters.

The movie’s title comes from the transcontinental train that the three brothers, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) board in India, all in hopes of embarking on a “spiritual quest.” It’s clear from the outset that Francis, who shepherds over his younger brothers, is the leader of this fractured group, and that deep down he has the hopes of bringing his family back together after the painful loss of their father, which neither brother has started to adequately cope with.

Boarding the train, we see the ways in which the trio’s scars have risen to the surface: Francis sports a head wrapped in bandages, the product of a high-speed motorcycle accident, the cause of which may be more dark than one imagines. Jack has a quieter variation of emotional scars, a man who’s attempting to go on with a broken heart, returning constantly to the phone so that he can dial his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine and — against her knowledge — check her messages. When he’s not doing that, he’s hitting on every available woman in sight. Peter, meanwhile, seems to be the peacemaker of the group, trying to bring Jack up while holding Francis down. But as his brothers notice all of their late father’s possessions popping up in Peter’s luggage — he uses dad’s razor, puts his keys on dad’s keychain — it’s clear that he, too, is damaged goods.

And so off they go, playing the parts of Americans on a great adventure, referring to their laminated daily schedules — prepared by Francis’ personal assistant, who is also traveling with them — as to what holy shrine and tourist attraction will occupy the next day.

That is, until a mistake on their part results in the brothers getting booted from the train and, like a breath of fresh air, we watch as the Darjeeling Limited — along with Anderson’s rigid and regulated, anti-emotional style — disappears over the horizon. Ripped from their isolation, forced out into rural India and stumbling upon a horrific accident involving some young boys, the final third of “Darjeeling” becomes the most emotional chapter of Anderson’s career, an array of poignant moments overwhelming his standard, dry and droll depictions of modern American angst and ambivalence. It’s noteworthy that the last portion of the film is all but silent, the quick wit and rapid jokes trailing off into nothingness.

Some longtime fans of the director may be put out by the sudden seriousness of the tone here, and some Anderson critics will sense too much of the same style here to note the considerably different foundation waiting beneath all this stilted fluff. Instead, it may be a new audience altogether that seeks out this pretend-comedy, an audience of former pranksters who themselves have grown up, for what appears to be a man growing into a very different kind of filmmaker. In the way that “Life Aquatic” was Anderson’s bottoming out, “The Darjeeling Limited” may just be his breakthrough.