The Darjeeling Limited

Stylized storybook images, well-developed characters, and humor so dark it’s hard to separate from tragedy define a style that has become synonymous with director Wes Anderson. After cultivating his unique cinematic perspective in earlier films like “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Anderson both solidifies and reaches beyond his trademark vision in “The Darjeeling Limited.”

His fifth feature, which he authored alongside Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford, is an oddly intense portrait of brotherhood and loss. It chronicles three siblings—played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Schwartzman—who embark on a Beatles-esque spiritual journey through India a year after their father’s death, having spent the intervening time estranged. Everything does not go as planned: after several strange mishaps, the brothers end up lost in the desert with no one to ask for help and no easy way out.

Wilson, Brody, and Schwartzman create a compellingly realistic dynamic of brothers in mourning: they give freely but take away just as quickly, they speak like seven-year-olds, they hurt each other by arguing about whom Dad loved more.

Anderson’s portrayal of India, with its desolate yet rich scenery, is also particularly adept. In a telling directorial move, Anderson almost incorporates the three alienated brothers, wearing “tilak” marks on their foreheads and flowers around their necks, into the foreign landscape.

The careful pairing of slow-motion shots with music—one of Anderson’s many filmmaking signatures—is especially effective here. The opening uses the technique to give the film its name, showing Brody rush past Bill Murray’s character to catch a train—“The Darjeeling Limited.”

Only 90 minutes in length, “The Darjeeling Limited” is more compressed than most of Anderson’s other films, but the brevity is a definite advantage. The spiritual journey moves quickly, ending with inspiring strength.

What should add to the runtime is Anderson’s short film “Hotel Chevalier,” which ostensibly provides a prologue to “The Darjeeling Limited.” “Hotel Chevalier” won’t be shown in theaters, but at the request of Anderson and the studio, it is available for free on iTunes.

The short shows Schwartzman and Natalie Portman ’03 in a Parisian hotel room and reveals a few details that complicate the subsequent feature. Although the feel of “Hotel Chevalier,” enhanced by the use of a camera sliding on a track, is distinct from that if “The Darjeeling Limited,” the two films share the remarkable confidence of an extraordinary director well into his prime.

—Staff writer Andrew F. Nunnelly can be reached at nunnelly@fas.harvard.edu.