I (finally) saw The Darjeeling Limited yesterday. It was okay. I didn’t have huge expectations going in because a number of people had said negative things about it. I certainly didn’t think it was horrible. Wes Anderson’s quirky, ironically hip, aesthetic sensibilities shined.
My take on the film was that it was a story about brothers moving beyond their grief and anger over the loss of their father and their mother’s abdication of any semblance of a family relationship. This seems clearly symbolized when they finally toss the antiquated looking luggage they have been hauling throughout the entire movie to jump on a train at the end of the film. However, in the process the movie seems to make a few comments about faith, religion and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life. First, Christianity appears to often be little more than a charade used by the selfish as a means of escapism. This is certainly the impression we get from the mother’s new life in a convent in the Himalayas and her deceit and flight from her sons who had come to visit, not to mention not going to her estranged husband’s funeral because she “didn’t want to.”
However, the film is an equal opportunity criticizer, which seems to be the reigning standard for political correctness these days. (Not that I’m saying Wes Anderson was shooting for PC, the film’s obsession with cigarette smoking is enough to dislodge that notion, just that it’s an interesting overlap.) Western attempts at some sort of vague, idealist, drive-thru spiritual experience are certainly shown to be pathetic attempts to give meaning to our lives in the same way we do everything else - quick and easy consumerism. Francis (Owen Wilson) is shown to have completely bombed in his attempt to experience peace and harmony with his brothers by running every aspect of the trip (with the help of his guru-lackey) and visiting the “most spiritual place[s] in the world” as if they were somehow nirvana-imparting tourist destinations.
So is the film dark and brooding? No not really. There is a prophetic moment in the film when Jack (Jason Schwartzman) smashes a bottle of Voltaire No. 6, a bottle of perfume stuck in his luggage by a woman he’d rather not remember at the moment. Like Jack the film refuses to succumb to Voltaire’s cynicism. Irony it will allow, maybe even a bit of absurdity but the full absurdity of man - man as the being that laughs meaninglessly and constantly, it will not stand for. Rather, eschewing the quick and easy grasps at “spirituality” pursued by the brothers as trivial and mundane, and the world-renouncing escapism of Christianity personified in their mother as self-centered nonsense, the film instead finds meaning in the existential moment.
Man is not a laughing thing or a meaningless thing or even a “spiritual” thing. Man is an acting thing. The key moment for this theme is when the three brothers see 3 young children attempting to cross a rushing river on a perilously unkempt raft. One minute Francis says “Look at those assholes,” in a strikingly callous tone, and the next the children have fallen off and all three brothers drop their luggage and dive in to save the boys. While Peter fails to save ‘his’ boy [Several folks on imdb note that this is a reference to the self-reconciliation Jack begins to experience about his prior ambivalence toward his own fast approaching role as a father.] the other two succeed and the community honors Peter’s attempt. This is the moment when these three brothers find meaning. They find meaning in their lives together and in their existence as humans capable of action in the moments that matter - which cannot be contrived but are self-evident. Their angst is relieved, albeit briefly, in the moment of instinctual action. Finally while the movie does affirm a sense of meaning in the existential moment it never collapses into utopianism or even optimism for that matter. It is quite clear up front that this moment of meaning cannot be sustained. All one can do is live between those moments that are so full of life remembering the ones that came before and always ready to seize the next one.
I confess I don’t fully understand the Bill Murray cameos at the beginning and end. I can’t imagine that such intentional scenes are ‘mere’ cameos, but the meaning seemed obscure to me. I considered possibly the concept of the repetition of it all. This story is particular, concrete and detailed, but the story is happening all the time, all over the world over and over.
So, as I said, the film is okay. I find it difficult to get excited about the ironic yet two dimensional portrayals of Christian belief, or even ’spirituality’ for that matter (although much western ’spirituality’ is truly ironic and two dimensional) that make them look absurd as they are juxtaposed with a complex and deeply moving existential moment in which life is apprehended and what is important and what is petty comes into relief with striking clarity. It seems like such an unfair choice. Must we really choose between self-indulgence, self-delusion and simply living in rebellion against Voltaire’s laughing, absurd life? I don’t think so.
Copulative Waw, Definition: The situation which occurs when two waws get together and end up with a little yod.
