Critiquing theEat Pray Love-style travelogue with a heartfelt examination of miscommunication and mourning,The Darjeeling Limitedfollows three brothers named Francis, Peter, and Jack portrayed byOwen Wilson,Adrien Brody, andJason Schwartzman, respectively, as they embark on a journey of spiritual growth and familial reconnection in India.Often considered one ofWes Anderson’s minor features, an ardent fanbase has rallied aroundThe Darjeeling Limitedas an essential piece in the Andersonian puzzle, providing a thematic and aesthetic bridge between the family-centric character studies of his early career and the detail-oriented ensemble pieces of his later work. Littered with lush vistas of Indian villages that surround the ornate titular train,The Darjeeling Limitedmobilizes the typical visual panache of Anderson’s filmography to deliver an emotionally rich and relationally textured tale of growth and grief.
AlthoughThe Darjeeling Limitedhas been criticized for the way that it exemplifies Indian culture from an international perspective throughout the brother’s train-bound tour, Anderson’s emphasis on the brothers’ misguided approach to cultural experiences reveals the “lost in translation” experience of collectively mourning their father’s passing. Focusing on Anderson’s utilization of narrative doubling between the funeral in the village and the short film of the father’s funeral at the film’s center as well as his use of the train as a symbol of personal grief,The Darjeeling Limitedfunctions as a methodically paced meditationon the ever-changing process of grief, highlighting how the perceived weaknesses strengthen the overall emotional poignancy and narrative potency of the film.
‘The Darjeeling Limited’ Is Fully Aware of How Appropriative the Brothers Are and It Uses It in the Story
In terms of visualizing the brothers’ journey of self-discovery and reconciliation, Anderson engages local Indian culture simultaneously from the perspective of wide-eyed visitors on a narrative level and a reverent homage to the richness of sociocultural rhythms across the nation, criticizing the protagonists’ willful ignorance towards both their reckoning with a grief-stricken family unit and their place in the world as a whole. In particular,Anderson follows the brothers through a wide array of spiritual experiences, beginning with a brief walkabout through multiple Hindu temples and ending with a trip to a Catholic monastery in the mountains.
By juxtaposing the impact of Eastern and Western religions on various villages and environments, Anderson gently gestures toward the painful impact of Western Colonialism in India, which further critiques the brothers’ initially selfish experience of self-actualization through their privileged experiences in another country. Through this deft yet subtle repositioning of the central narrative outside a space of misguided travelogue voyeurism and into a space of nuanced personal experiences of being “lost in translation,” Anderson allows the three central brothers to find both solace in the midst of their sociocultural faux pas and peace through their educational international experiences.
A Funeral in India Reveals the Source of Brothers' Grief
Perhaps the most emotionally rich and thematically sophisticated portion of the film is the second act, which parallelsthe death of a young boy that the brothers attempt to rescue with the death of their father. After Jack struggles and eventually fails to bring a boy to safety from the rushing waters of a river, the boy’s fellow villagers invite the three brothers to the funeral, illustrating an openness to forgiveness and reconnection that mirrors the desired reconciliation between Francis, Peter, and Jack. In the middle of the funeral sequence in India, a brief vignette based on Jack’s semi-autobiographical short story reveals the brothers bickering over their family car and their mother’s absence on their way to their father’s funeral. As the micronarrative unravels, the audience witnesses the brothers misunderstand and disconnect with each other in real time, revealing the rift in the family left by their father’s passing.
Upon returning to the sequence of the funeral in India, both the characters and the audience gain a greater understanding of growth through grief rather than separation because of loss through these shared experiences. The parallel trajectories of the familial funeral and the funeral of a stranger reveal grief’s ability to obscure clear communication and render the familiar as unfamiliar, which directly relates to the brothers’ misguided engagement with foreign customs and Indian culture. Nevertheless, through the kindness of strangers and the hard-won humility of the brothers, the parallel stories of personal pain render the film as a meditation on working through grief with loved ones rather than working to overcome grief alone.
Wes Anderson Movies Ranked from Worst to Best
The dazzling, dizzying filmmaker has left his mark on American cinema in a relatively short time.
The Setting of the Train in ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ Leans Into the Theme of the Film
In addition to the mournful narrative beats at the center of the film, Anderson’s centralization of the train as a symbol for grief and loss rendersThe Darjeeling Limitedas one of the most elegant elegies in cinema history. By visualizing the train as the central motif of grief throughoutThe Darjeeling Limited,Anderson provides a space for the brothers to contemplate their progressionthrough the grieving process as well as their place in the world beyond the narrow perspectives. One such instance of grief-centric meditation on the train appears near the end of the film when a long-take tracking shot through the train cars of various secondary characters allows the audience to envision the world of the film outside the three brothers’ insular journey across India.
In the long take tracking shot, we witness various secondary characters, including Jack’s lover Rita and Francis’s secretary Brendan, as well as previously unincluded characters, including Jack’s ex-girlfriend and Peter’s wife, sitting within train car-like sets of their homes or modes of transportation. Rather than providing microcosmic narrative chains to expand on the secondary characters’ stories, Anderson and his crew transform the scene into an atmospheric diversion from the film’s main trajectory, embodying the brother’s process of grief by emphasizing the world’s continued movement beyond them.
Between the train cars, the production designers include segments of homes, hotels, and plane cabins rather than traditional train cars to signify the locational dissonance between the various interwoven characters, setting the sequence apart as a narrative impossibility because of its occurrence outside of the brother’s experiences in India. By revealing the smallness of the brothers’ place in the world as a whole throughout their train trip,Anderson taps into the existentialism of processing personal loss, paralleling the cycles of grief with the seeming endlessness of the brother’s train-bound trip.
