Reviews
Shenanigans!! - The Darjeeling Limited
Why? Why why why?
As a longtime fan of Wes Anderson (I got on board for Bottle Rocket and never looked back) I’ve become accustomed to a certain sort of DVD release - specifically, a Criterion special edition, packed with special features and adorned with beautiful hand-drawn artwork by the director’s brother Eric. It started with the deluxe version of Rushmore, for which I gladly bought the film again (selling off my lame bare-bones copy to the local Media Recyclery). The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou both followed suit, with one notable difference - the Criterion versions were the only versions available. The company seemed to be saying “These are freshly minted classics by a modern master. They deserve to be viewed as such, immediately, without any kind of ridiculous placeholder disc while we allow enough time to pass to effectively gauge whether the work is of lasting merit.” I found this refreshing; the practice of pushing out a special edition six months after the initial DVD release of a film has always seemed idiotic and vaguely shameful to me. The immediate Criterionification of the last two Anderson flicks served as both a validation of his unique place in the landscape of American cinema and also a reminder that, once upon a time, disc was a collector’s medium - the difference between purchasing Terminator 2 on LD or taping it off of HBO with the VCR set for SLP (so you could fit Cliffhanger on the same tape!).
But on the fateful day of February 26, Criterion, for the first time ever, let me down. There is no deluxe edition of The Darjeeling Limited available at this time, and I haven’t found any evidence of future plans to release one. Which is a shame - The Life Aquatic may have been chilly and off-putting to many longtime Anderson fans (attributes which can probably be placed rather squarely at the feet of collaborator Noah Baumbach, who traffics in awkwardness like Young Jeezy slings crack cocaine), but Darjeeling is another story altogether - it’s a return to form, for anyone craving one, and also an improvement on the now well-established Anderson formula. Featuring appealing turns from treasured standbys Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Anjelica Huston (along with a wonderfully pointless cameo from Bill Murray), the film also marks the appearance of a welcome new face in the Anderson menagerie: Adrien Brody (who really should be working more.) The Darjeeling Limited may or may not be Wes Anderson’s best film, but it certainly stands proudly with past successes like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.
And that’s why it’s so disappointing that the only DVD available is a shabby single-disc affair released by Fox, with the only features being a rather weak making-of featurette and the original theatrical trailer. (Hotel Chevalier, the short film which is intended to play before the film, is also listed on the packaging as a “special feature,” but that seems somewhat disingenuous.) The primary pleasure of owning a Wes Anderson film on DVD is absorbing all of the tiny details and nuances that it’s simply impossible to pick up on during the initial viewing, and the special features on each of his special edition DVDs have aided considerably in the proper appreciation of exactly how much work goes into each phase of production. The featurette included on the Darjeeling DVD will certainly allow you some fresh insight into the design of the the titular train, but that’s about it. Also, it’s difficult to believe that, in trimming the movie to a refreshingly concise 91 minutes, Anderson didn’t have any fascinating material to cull from the cutting room floor.
I’m not in the habit of reviewing a DVD’s special features, but this is a particularly grievous oversight, especially coming only days after the 2008 Oscar telecast - during which there was absolutely no recognition of this film, certainly one of the year’s best. I’m afraid that we’ve reached the kind of impasse that trouble only the most consistently talented directors - both the critical and commercial communities are now taking Wes Anderson’s abundant gifts completely for granted. The Darjeeling Limited should have been the comeback story of the year: an uber-talented wunderkind regains solid artistic footing after a jarring, fairly serious tumble down the hillside of precociousness and pretension. Instead, it’s being treated as simply more of the same, and on this, I must call shenanigans.
Discussion
2 comments for “Shenanigans!! - The Darjeeling Limited”
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Well written. I thought that Darjeeling had a lot of great qualities, notably how vivid and full of action/color each shot was. I don’t think I put it in my Top 10 for the year because I didn’t believe the character’s motivations and for the first time EVER, did not approve of putting Angelica Huston in a movie. I don’t necessarily agree with the all-quirk, no-substance critique that has followed Anderson’s movies the last two attempts, but he definitely has a style and I think I’d like to see him branch out. He’s like Kevin Smith in a sense that you can predict the humor coming out of cookie-cutter characters. What happens about 1 hour in, though, is DEFINITELY a shift in him filmmaking style. It was a largely under-appreciated movie this past year, and that sequence with the river and the flashback showed that Anderson still has places he’d like to go as a director.
Yeah, that flashback was what really sold me on the movie. I had thoroughly enjoyed it up to that point, but once that happened, the whole structure of the piece (including the “Hotel Chevalier” short) started to make sense in a totally different way.
Basically, until the flashback, I felt like I was watching boilerplate Wes Anderson. And then, suddenly, dude turned a corner and became a totally different kind of filmmaker - a better filmmaker, on a completely different level. Much as I loved “Life Aquatic,” it took that flashback to make me remember why I fell in love with Wes in the first place.