I loved Rushmore and I liked The Royal Tenenbaums and I didn't see The Life Aquatic.
I'm not sure what I think about The Darjeeling Limited. Visually, it's lush and colorful and humorous. It was interesting to watch. The shots were framed precisely. The plot was slim and nonsensical. The action was fractured and inscrutable. Some scenes jumped out and others fell flat.
Two things struck me, though. One was a close of up of Angelic Huston. She is getting more beautiful as she gets older. She has one of the most fantastic faces in pictures and her lingering close up is one of the highlights of the film, even though it lasts for less than a minute.
The second thing had to do with those who do good works in foreign lands. In the movie, three brothers end up visiting their mother, who doesn't want to see them. She is living in a convent in Nepal helping orphan children. We later find out that she didn't go to their father's funeral. When they see her, they ask her to come home and she says, "They need me here." That made me think, "But your family needs you too. And, don't you have more responsibility to these people, who you gave birth to, than strangers? If it weren't for you, they wouldn't exist, so if they say they need you, you ought to pay attention."
Whew, it pissed me off then and it still does! Not the point of the movie, though, I suspect.
Monday, October 22, 2007
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2 comments:
I found this film to be tedious and frustrating. I too loved so many of Wes Anderson's films, but try as I might, I couldn't get into this one. I agree with your comments about the scenery and the cinematography; the setting and visuals were great. The biggest problem was the three main characters; I never got to care one whit about any of them. Mostly I just wanted them gone. There were many interesting components of this film; Sweet Lime, the train conductor, the assholes who almost drowned in the river, the villagers who mourned them, India itself... these were the real stars of the film. As for Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrian Brody, every moment they were on the screen, I was wishing they weren't.
big cee: You are completely right. The main characters were by far the least interesting folks in the movie.
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