| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Comedy |
Then there are movies that seem to be more about the personal obsession of the director. Woody Allen is the king daddy of these kind of movies, although lately his films seem to be aiming for a wider audience and "Match Point" is as good a thriller as anybody has made in years and "Scoop" as a romantic comedy is a lot more friendly to non-Woody fans than a self-indulgent entry from the nineties like "Deconstructing Harry". Allen is a very funny guy, and the fact that his personal movies even get made is a testament to some saving graces in the film industry.
Wes Anderson may be the next Woody Allen, and this is not in the sense that he has much in common with the older artist. Allen's most personal movies center around urban men and women in tottering romantic realtionships, a fear of death above the norm, and satires of crass commericalism. (Its no wonder he's so prolific with those obcessions going for him.) Most of the time they end with a minimum of happiness.
Anderson's movies about familes trying to come back together, sort of seguels to movies that were never made. His movies don't really begin at a set point and build up a story so much as throw you into a plot already in progress with characters scambling to patch things up with their relatives and discover some meaning to life and its bouts of depression and suffering.
Luckily for us,Mr. Anderson, like Woody Allen, makes comedies. "The Darjeeling Limited" is a fun if meloncholy movie about three upper-class American guys who never quite grew all the way up and have lived insulated lives of material ease. The only reason they engage us is that they are all wounded in some way and are, in effect, orphans. The older brother, a anal control freak (Owen Wilson) gets his two siblings (Adrien Brody, Johnathan Swartzman) to meet up with him in India for a long spiritual quest through the desert on a train, a cart, a couple taxis and a motorcycle. It's a chance for the brothers to recapture their realtionship with each other and their cloistered mother (Angelica Huston, in a brief but effective performance) , who is a nun in a Cartholic convent.
One's tolerence for his kind of film is probably based on if you like offbeat humor, heavy on curious circumstances and deadpan line deliveries. (Sample: a beautiful Indian train stewardess asks the youngest brother, who has just hit on her out of the blue: "What is wrong with you?" He replies, after an extra long pause: "Let me get back to you on that."
Anderson's previous movies included "Rushmore" (which I liked, and thought was an excellent vehicle for Bill Murray) and "The Royal Tanembaums" (which I found too quirky for its own good and ultimately all a bit too much, but well-acted with a great cast for a consolation).
This newest movie has a lot of baggage in it--literally, as the brothers travel about the sometimes harsh Sub-Continent with enough luxury luggage to impress an oil sheik. Despite the cras consumption around the edges, the story gives us several good reasons to root for these guys (especially in a key scene where they come together for the first time as a group to try and save three Indian boys in danger of drowning). Slowly, as they come closer to their mother's convent and meet her after a long absense, the trio unknot their past disputes and seperate neurosis' to become stronger as blood brothers and, a bit at least, as individuals.
I should add this is not the usual "inspiring film", like "Rocky", but it does present offbeat characters in an exotic enviroment in funny and sometimes moving ways.
If the line for "Beowulf" is too long at the cineplex, go see this one
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