It's a little late so I don't expect to be able to fully explain how much I loved Wes Anderson's latest film, The Darjeeling Limited (2007). However, I should point out that the lukewarm reception the film got upon its release is completely insane. A lot of the arguments leveled against this gorgeous movie include the fact that Anderson is just rehashing old ideas; even if this is true, which is to say, if the film contains a lot of his trademarks (it does), then I still don't see how it can be at the fault of anyone involved in the making of this film. I would even go so far as to argue that it is a departure for Anderson, at least certainly on a formal level. A lot of The Darjeeling Limited is set onboard the titular train, which shakes up Anderson's usually tidy and rigid mise-en-scene quite a lot, even more so than during the Belafonte submarine scenes in 2004's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. The three lead performances (by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody) are simply stellar, with each of them playing off one another in crafting what may be the most successful blend of the melancholy and hilarious in all of Anderson's films, which is saying quite a lot. I assume that even critics of the film won't try to deny the sheer beauty of it; D.P. Robert D. Yeoman (who has shot all of Anderson's films, along with Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale [2005]) does a marvelous job in his use of a soft, almost Bazinian palette that at times reminded me of more naturalistic films like Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny (2003), another work likewise interested in male egos. Almost too beautiful for this world, The Darjeeling Limited cements Anderson's place in contemporary cinema.
