Word: anderson
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...shock but not a surprise to see Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, the new semi-comedy from Wes Anderson that had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3. As Francis, the eldest of the three Whitman brothers, he's clearly in physical distress. His head is wrapped in two thick bandages. His nose has a Band-Aid on it. His right hand and wrist are taped, and he uses a cane to walk...
...Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling's attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson's approach, which is so super-cool, it's chilly. In his elaborate visual construct, virtually every shot is followed by with the camera point-of-view shifted 90 or 180 degrees - which is geometrically groovy, no question, but pretty quickly predictable. Same goes for his stories, which rely on gifted people behaving goofily. Anderson has the attitude for comedy, but not the aptitude. His films are museum...
...Wilson has appeared in all five of Anderson's feature films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and the new one) and co-wrote the first three - the ones I prefer in the the director's oeuvre. The script here is by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola (Francis' son, Sofia's brother) and it doesn't add luster to anyone's reputation...
...Actually, there's a bit in Darjeeling - it lasts just a minute or so - that shows what Anderson is capable of. The camera tracks down a corridor of train compartments; in each is a different character, glimpsed for just a few seconds. The Sikh trainman, the hostess, Peter's wife, Jack's Paris assignation... and Bill Murray, as a businessman seen briefly at the film's opening. It's a gracefully composed series of snapshots into the lives of Darjeeling's subsidiary characters, and it made me yearn to dip more fully into their stories. I wanted...
...Maybe Anderson could make a film, at least a short, about each of these characters. It'd be fine by me if his collaborator on the screenplays was Owen Wilson. It could be therapeutic...