Director: Wes Anderson

Rating: 9/10

Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrian Brody might not look like brother at first glance, but Wes Anderson made these characters so that not only do we see their distinctions, but also their similarities. This is an adventure film about the three bothers making a journey in India to escape from their respective lives and in search for themselves and to reconnect with family.

The three brothers meet on the Darjeeling Limited train to, well somewhere, and on the train, their rather wild behavior with the waitress, snake, and pepper spray got them kicked out of the train that eventually led to Wilson’s character spilling the secret of his trip: to find their mother who was hiding in the mountains somewhere in a temple. They blow on feathers, saved kids, gets invited to a funeral and eventually found their mother that we finally get a glimpse why they are the way they are. It must have seem that I gave away the whole plot, but trust me, it’s not the plot that matter at all, the mean is more important than the end.

One of the most delightful aspects of the film is the Indian background. Wes Anderson does not exploit our usual perspective of a conservative India with arranged marriages and dirty streets, instead, he has the train waitress having sex with random men including the Schartzman character, and the brothers buying up medicine or other illegal stuff from the busy (not dirty) streets of India. Background, however, is still immensely India, and it is an India that would probably only exist in a Wes Anderson movie.

Another great part of the film is the three cameos. 1) Bill Murray, whose non-speaking role and serious demeanor is such a contrast to the attitudes of the brothers; 2) Kumar Pallana, whose omnipresence is both weird and effective in the most comical sense; 3) Angelica Huston, whose role as the escapist mother is such an insight into the brothers’ lives. All three actors have a certain presence about them, and I find it wonderful that Anderson does not require them to speak much, or speak at all to fill a crucial role in the film.

This is the most solid work Wes Anderson has done since the awesomely awesome “The Royal Tenenbaums”, which might feel a bit frantic. The frantic part, which served the “Tenenbaums” so well, became this movie’s lone weakness in the form of a confusing flashback. His “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” contains many similar elements to this movie, but relied on the strength of the actors instead of the story to carry out his film. “Darjeeling Limited” is a much more mature movie made by a group of people who had recently just finished discovering parts of themselves. It is insightful yet never missed a chance to be funny. You will walk out of this movie feeling like the brothers, that you went on a journey with them and understood more about yourself.