After waiting two weeks (Hawaii usually screens movies a couple days after they’re released in the mainland), I finally got to see Wes Anderson’s latest opus: The Darjeeling Limited.
So was it worth the wait? Yes and no.
Yes because it gave me my fill of Wes Anderson’s quirky dialogue and Robert Yeoman’s beautiful cinematography. There’s only so many times I could re-watch Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic before it began to get stale. It was all there (some more than others), but there was a lot of his style lacking. There might be two main reasons for this paradigm shift: one, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman had a lot of influence on this film. It’s very evident from the banter and the characters themselves (some have theorized that Adrien Brody’s character Francis is the screen version of a young Francis Ford Coppola) . Two,Wes may have grown up.
The latter is a usually a great thing, but as a Wes Anderson fan, I just wish he’d grew up a little more before releasing this movie. The little hints at a more mature Wes were there: the subject-matter and symbolism, the sex and the intimacy. But, it’s not quite fully developed. We can wait, Wes. Really. We want you to put your best foot forward.
All in all, it was a wonderful movie. We are not only introduced to the gorgeous and sensuous landscape of India, but also a mature set of characters dealing with outrageous situations the way only a genius like Wes Anderson could make them deal with it: head-on like a locomotive.
If you have some time, check out my movie tribute to Wes. A short movie we made for a 48-hour film competition entitled The Square Bubble.
Filed under: Movies, Pearls of Wisdom | Tagged: adrien brody, anderson, bollywood, darjeeling, hawaii, india, jason, limited, movie, schwartzman, wes
