Why The Darjeeling Limited is Wes Anderson’s best… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed is Wes Anderson’s best film

06 Aug 2017

Words by Nathanael Smith

Three well-dressed men seated in a brightly coloured, ornate railway carriage.
Three well-dressed men seated in a brightly coloured, ornate railway carriage.
Ten years ago, the direc­tor dropped his most pro­found med­i­ta­tion on life’s journey.

There are 900 ele­phants in The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Not that you’re like­ly to have noticed – each hand-paint­ed pachy­derm appears on the walls of the train that pro­vides the film’s pri­ma­ry set­ting. In fair­ness, most nev­er make it into shot, but they are there: unique, beau­ti­ful, colour­ful. This lev­el of atten­tion to detail is not uncom­mon in the films of Wes Ander­son, and it’s one of the rea­sons why his detrac­tors often accuse him of favour­ing style over sub­stance, as if his rig­or­ous form is some­thing to be sneered at. Yet to crit­i­cise his films in this way is to miss the point. For Ander­son, style informs sub­stance, and back in 2007 he arguably found his ide­al canvas.

The sto­ry of three white Amer­i­can broth­ers trav­el­ling through India in an attempt to recon­nect and find them­selves should set off warn­ing bells imme­di­ate­ly. The obvi­ous risk is that The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed might be Eat, Pray, Love’ for the hip­ster crowd; the con­cept of find­ing your­self in an exot­ic” land doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly become less patro­n­is­ing just because a respect­ed direc­tor tack­les the mate­r­i­al. How­ev­er, Anderson’s film skew­ers the idea of using oth­er cul­tures for self-actu­al­i­sa­tion, while find­ing deep emo­tion­al res­o­nance in the nat­ur­al vibran­cy of its setting.

Ander­son, along with co-writ­ers Roman Cop­po­la and Jason Schwartz­man, makes it clear that the Whit­mans are cul­tur­al out­siders. They seek to tap into the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of India while being far too absorbed in their own egos to ever come close to under­stand­ing its peo­ple and their var­i­ous cul­tures. They kneel to pray in a sacred tem­ple, a row of can­dles fram­ing their faces as they attempt to feel some­thing tran­scen­dent. It isn’t long before they descend into pet­ty bick­er­ing about own­er­ship of a belt and con­trol of pass­ports. In anoth­er scene, the broth­ers bun­gle a rit­u­al with a pea­cock feath­er after fail­ing to lis­ten to sim­ple instructions.

Three well-dressed men seated in a brightly coloured, ornate railway carriage.

Crit­ic Matt Zoller Seitz not­ed that The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed is, not about epipha­nies, it’s about think­ing you’ve had epipha­nies.” The Whit­mans antic­i­pate enlight­en­ment but find that their ram­pant indi­vid­u­al­ism, cul­tur­al igno­rance and dis­or­gan­ised trav­el arrange­ments blocks them at every turn. In spite of this, there are moments in the film that do touch upon the sub­lime, and the set­ting is par­tial­ly respon­si­ble for the fleet­ing moments of emo­tion­al con­nec­tion. By chart­ing an actu­al train through the Indi­an coun­try­side, and by employ­ing a pre­dom­i­nant­ly local crew, authen­tic­i­ty pokes through Anderson’s beau­ti­ful artifice.

One of the most strik­ing shots in the film is a long zoom that shows the broth­ers emerg­ing from a rick­shaw into a busy mar­ket­place, before fol­low­ing them around. It’s a chaot­ic, crowd­ed shot that feels a world away from Anderson’s usu­al com­po­si­tions. He allows the essence of India to invade the intri­cate­ly detailed world he con­structs with­in the train – for all the broth­ers’ obliv­i­ous­ness, the country’s sheer force of char­ac­ter still man­ages to work its way into their care­ful­ly reg­i­ment­ed world.

The film’s turn­ing point revolves around the trag­ic death of a child and a brief stop in rur­al vil­lage, a world away from the opu­lent din­ing com­part­ment of the train. The vil­lagers, includ­ing an unfor­get­table Irrfan Khan as the boy’s dev­as­tat­ed father, are treat­ed not as exot­ic for­eign­ers but with the same warmth and human­i­ty as Anderson’s most cher­ished char­ac­ters. The shot of Khan col­laps­ing, grief-strick­en, into the riv­er is among the most pow­er­ful the direc­tor has ever filmed. In this moment, the broth­ers are com­plete­ly dis­armed, con­front­ed with their own grief which they have been stu­dious­ly avoid­ing up to this point. Fran­cis’ itin­er­ary could not pos­si­bly have pre­pared them for this.

The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed is Wes Ander­son at his most Wes Ander­son. Immac­u­late pro­duc­tion design, metic­u­lous fram­ing and off­beat dia­logue are all present and cor­rect, and it’s per­haps because of this that the film is unlike­ly to win many con­verts. Yet when the time calls for it Ander­son relax­es his pre­oc­cu­pa­tions, allow­ing the form of the film to meld per­fect­ly with the var­i­ous themes he explores. Even for a remark­ably con­sis­tent direc­tor, it remains his rich­est and most remark­able work to date.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.