Let me get this out of the way first:
Bottle Rocket > Rushmore > The Life Aquatic > The Royal Tenenbaums
I know that most Wes Anderson fans tend to rank the the Tenenbaums above Life Aquatic, and some list it as their favorite Wes Anderson movie ever. As for me, I just couldn’t get into the movie. Rather than get washed over by the quixotic feeling of offbeat sadness mixed with shimmering glints of hope and humor that his films tend to exude, Tenenbaums left me just feeling low. The people in the movie are supremely miserable, and the craziness that takes place in the movie just felt off. I haven’t seen the movie in quite some time, so who knows how I’d feel about it now.
So what about The Darjeeling Limited? It seems like Wes Anderson is a director that really enjoys playing with his cinematic toys. The boat set he used in Aquatic is proof of that. In Darjeeling he takes that boat set and amps it up even further with his musty, claustrophobic train set. He pops his usual cast of oddly confident, yet emotionally flawed characters on the train while it chugs through India. While they’re physically on the train, mentally and spiritually they’re collectively retracing the experience of losing their father. Their lives are filled with trinkets of their deceased dad, they reference him in conversation with each other, and they even go so far as carrying his full set of luggage. OK, Wes… I think we get the symbolism.
Even though he may hound us with his symbolism, a Wes Anderson film lives and dies with its characters and their interactions. The three brothers the movies focuses on manage to have a nice chemistry together. Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody do a good job of playing off each other, and each one of them manages to express a different trait they inherited from their parents. The rest of the cast is the usual colorful blend of background characters that you’d expect from Anderson. Maybe more so than an any of his other films, the setting is also a big character. The countryside of India, often used as a symbol itself for finding spiritual peace, rolls by and guides the characters through their journey. I did like that when the characters finally hit their moment of clarity, it is not via a scenic view, a tourist trap temple, or some deep trance, but rather as an unexpected accident that finds its way into their path.
So where does it stand for me in the list of Wes Anderson films? I would place it right behind Life Aquatic. While the movie does drag and wander a bit more than it should, which is especially rough since we can make a good guess at where the characters are going long before they get there, it still has the sly quirkiness present throughout Anderson’s work. Ultimately, I’ll gladly take any of his films over 90% or more of the cinematic dung that is thrown out for us to feed on.
For those of you that just like to skip to the end:
Bottle Rocket > Rushmore > The Life Aquatic > The Darjeeling Limited > The Royal Tenenbaums