solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

I’m not going to call The Darjeeling Limited a return to form for Wes Anderson because ‘The Life Aquatic’ was a hugely entertaining movie. The general consensus seems to be that his previous shark-chasing Bill Murray starrer was a bit overblown and superficial, the classic ‘third album’ if you will (although his forth film). For me, it was a hugely enjoyable and stimulating hour and a half in the cinema. I sometimes feel that people forget that Wes is basically great at making very entertaining films. He is constantly being copied by other directors and his films will all only increase in acclaim in time. Why the resistance to be entertained? Horses for courses I guess.

Anyway, if you do think The Life Aquatic was self indulgent, you should like this new Indian train caper a little more. It’s an absolutely fantastic movie; smaller, tighter and with a focus on character and fractured sibling relationships. It’s a simple, but enjoyable, premise; three brothers try to get their relationship back on a spiritual journey on a train, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’. As you might suspect, it doesn’t go the way they had planned.

Darjeeling has got everything you would expect from Anderson; it looks amazing, has a fantastic soundtrack, loads of wit and wry observations, great performances and occasional, stimulating diversions from the speedy narrative. Adrien Brody is a fantastic, fresh voice to the Anderson family and he gives a poignant performance of a confused man at a turning point in his life. It’s a good old fashioned movie with quality character development married to the kind of widescreen spectacle that only cinema can provide. It’s another feast of a film from Anderson, once again clocking in at an hour and a half exactly. It was consciously a looser shoot this time and it does feel more natural than his recent work truth be told. The sexy short film with Natalie Portman (Hotel Chevalier) should be in front of prints in the UK too; a pleasure that was missed in the US (and this preview).

At the end of the screening some older journalists were very obviously misty eyed and giddy on cinema after the credits had rolled. It felt as if they’d just watched an old classic. At the same time a younger chap was sniding “yeah it was a Wes Anderson film you know, same as the others!” His friend asked him whether this was a bad thing. He was asked “no, no, it was good, it was really good.” I can relate more to the open minded reaction of the older viewers, but in a way I do agree with the cyncial youngster; it’s very much a Wes Anderson film, and thank God for that cos it’s another classic.

The Darjeeling Limited is currently playing at the London Film Festival, but will be released nationwide in the UK on the 23rd of November

Posted in News | | Share This

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:11 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.