Director – Wes Anderson.
Cast – Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston.
Wes Anderson is a director who seems to have it all. Mainstream success with indie style films featuring some of the greatest actors of this and previous generations. There must be a reason why everyone from Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Bill Murray, the Wilson brothers, Adrian Brody, Jason Schwatzman among others keep finding time in their schedules for Wes.
Since Bottle Rocket, his endearingly innocent first film, his stock has risen exponentially to the point where with The Darjeeling Limited has a certain expectation attached to it. It is difficult to say whether this latest offering meets the expectation. It certainly fulfils all the criteria of a typical Wes Anderson feature - quirky characters, dysfunctional family, a very particular palette of colours and dialogue that would never be part of a conversation outside of a Wes Anderson movie. But it never captures the imagination like Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums and maybe the reason for this is the very fact that it ticks all the Wes Anderson boxes. It’s all a little predictable now and the surprise at seeing strange people in strange settings and hearing strange answers to strange questions is no longer there. I wonder if Wes is in danger of being too conscious of being Wes Anderson.
The sense of development from Bottle Rocket to Rushmore to The Royal Tennenbaums stopped dead at the plain boring and slightly pretentious Steve Zizou And The Life Aquatic and I was interested to see if Darjeeling would signal a return to form. While it is a comeback of sorts it is still full of too many self-indulgent scenes that do not seem to progress the story in any way. There are only so many scenes with no dialogue a film can take. We can appreciate the mood of a film without it being forced down our throat with faux poignant close ups and slow motion sequences.
The characters from all of his films are interchangeable and this is both a blessing and a curse. They are so familiar at this stage you can almost finish their sentences and while contempt may be too strong a word the familiarity is definitely breeding a kind of boredom.
Cast – Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston.
Wes Anderson is a director who seems to have it all. Mainstream success with indie style films featuring some of the greatest actors of this and previous generations. There must be a reason why everyone from Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Bill Murray, the Wilson brothers, Adrian Brody, Jason Schwatzman among others keep finding time in their schedules for Wes.
Since Bottle Rocket, his endearingly innocent first film, his stock has risen exponentially to the point where with The Darjeeling Limited has a certain expectation attached to it. It is difficult to say whether this latest offering meets the expectation. It certainly fulfils all the criteria of a typical Wes Anderson feature - quirky characters, dysfunctional family, a very particular palette of colours and dialogue that would never be part of a conversation outside of a Wes Anderson movie. But it never captures the imagination like Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums and maybe the reason for this is the very fact that it ticks all the Wes Anderson boxes. It’s all a little predictable now and the surprise at seeing strange people in strange settings and hearing strange answers to strange questions is no longer there. I wonder if Wes is in danger of being too conscious of being Wes Anderson.
The sense of development from Bottle Rocket to Rushmore to The Royal Tennenbaums stopped dead at the plain boring and slightly pretentious Steve Zizou And The Life Aquatic and I was interested to see if Darjeeling would signal a return to form. While it is a comeback of sorts it is still full of too many self-indulgent scenes that do not seem to progress the story in any way. There are only so many scenes with no dialogue a film can take. We can appreciate the mood of a film without it being forced down our throat with faux poignant close ups and slow motion sequences.
The characters from all of his films are interchangeable and this is both a blessing and a curse. They are so familiar at this stage you can almost finish their sentences and while contempt may be too strong a word the familiarity is definitely breeding a kind of boredom.
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