The Darjeeling Limited

anderson actually says that the film is largely inspired by ray's cinematography work...which i can see. i dont understand all the hate for this film on this forum. it is not meant to give a view of "the real india". it is a film about a family struggling to reconnect. i think many people on here were hoping for something different going in and thats why there is so much distaste for this film. i really enjoyed wilson's performance in this, and agree with theyamdancer in wilson being great in midnight in paris. brody is always incredible, and jason schwartzman has a dry sense of humor that i love. anderson's films are not for everyone, but what great films really are?

For what it's worth, I'd like to say that it was, for most part, a beautiful film - slow sequences, very well timed use of older tracks (including some merchant ivory and Satyajit ray film soundtracks) and excellent cinematography that did justice to the lovely backdrop.

The train is, of course, fictitious but it did look pretty. The theme of 'coming together of the 3 brothers as a family' did make me wonder a few times as to whether there was a plot (it got very slow sometimes) but still, it's a good movie and treats India the same way as many other Hollywood movies do - as a backdrop.

I actually liked the way the brothers are portrayed including their callous approach to the rules of Indian society and the Indian railways - they're shown as clearly ignorant of a lot of things happening around them - like behaving on-board a train, etc....That is also similar to a few other movies that play on a stereotype of foreigners visiting a country (not necessarily India). In this case, they're shown as kinda clueless, sometimes they get their bones broken, in a foreign locale and all that helps evoke the viewers' sympathy towards them. I thought that added to the appeal of the film.

In short, very enjoyable - I have a DVD too and the entire soundtrack in loss-less format that I've listened to many times over.

i also have the sound track often play it while i am reading, just a nice compilation of music. everyone dont laugh, but i also bought the "story of india" sound track and love listening to that...

I guess from an Indiaphile's perspective, it was a bit disappointing. If you knew nothing about India, it might have been much more palatable. But as it is a self-proclaimed comedy-drama, it's often hard to discern the funny parts from the culturally uneasy parts. If they had of entitled it 'Three Cough Syrup Guzzling Jerks on a Train' it would have been more apropos because it really has nothing to do with Darjeeling that I could ever see.

Even the part when they finally locate their mother (who is suppose to be living in the foothills of the Himalayas) - is obviously filmed in Rajasthan. The carriage compartment scenes are very good but there is absolutely no sense or feel that they are ever traveling across the Indian subcontinent which the plot(?) suggests. This is basically because the train set is restricted to one small area location outside of Jodhpur.

All of this no big deal for the fan of Wes Anderson's work/style ... but he/they might have invested just a little extra time, effort, budget & clearances into making it much more of a pan India & much less of the predominant Jodhpur parking lot production that it came acrossed as.

Hm.. I've the impression that Wes Anderson's movies are to some extent a love/hate thing.

I don't think it's a good idea to watch the Darjeeling Ltd from a Indophile point of view so to speak. And I definitely think people should avoid attaching any meaning to the title of the movie vs the actual plot. I've never really been bothered by the fact that they're on the complete opposite side of India. I think that might be explained as one of many weird characteristics of Anderson's work. The movie has some references to some of his earlier work, as well as the general weirdness he often adds to his dialogues and plots.

It's one of my fave movies of all time, and you always have to watch it with the short film first, doesn't work without. We were actually joking about going to Jodhpur and reenact the opening scene were they run after the train.

I'm aware that it doesn't give a very accurate picture of what India is actually like, but I still feel it has managed to capture a small core of something indefinable Indian. For instance the anarchy situation of the pharmacies where you can buy anything, nicely illustrated with their abuse of painkillers.

However, I kinda agree that it's a little weird that they shot the "Himalaya foothill" scene in South-Eastern Rajasthan. I guess they could have spent some money on actually going to Shimla/Mussoorie or whatever and shot the scenes there, but I remember Anderson talked about lack of resources in the making of bit. This applied to the train scenes as well.

Couldn't they have used an Indian actor/actress for the steward/stewardess parts? The accents were out of place & unfortunate since they admittedly went to great lengths ensuring that everything (else) on that train was so unequivocally Indian. Or is that part of Anderson's shtick as well .... the element of surprise?

He jumped the shark with "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou."

I'm guessing it would have created a major stir in India if the stewardess was played by an Indian actress due to the sex scene in the train's toilet. But they tried to cast Bipasha Basu for the role.

The steward is a personal friend of Anderson, also appearing in Life Aquatic, and amusingly as the head of security in the credits of Hotel Chevalier (the short before the Darjeeling Ltd). So I guess at least he's a part of Anderson's shtick.

I can understand that people may get upset by the ingenuity of this movie, but I feel it is a total distraction from the plot. To me it's more about the story of all the weirdness that goes on between the three brothers, the setting could have been almost anywhere. But I really enjoy the Indian aspects of it even though they don't make sense all of the time.

I just got back from a trip to Rohet and some of the Bishnoi people that I saw while there look incredibly similar to some of the extras in this movie during the child's funeral scene...anybody else pick up on this? I read that Anderson was staying in Rohet when he made this movie.

I have watched the making of and they did shoot the movie in an actual village, so probably that area you refer too. A fun fact about the village they chose is that they did some research/inspection of villages before they decided where to shoot the scenes. When they found the village they agreed with the villagers when to do it, and I think they chose the specific village because of the rustic look or something like that. When they returned some weeks later for the scenes the village was painted blue like you see in the movie, something Anderson was not prepared for, but I think he liked it.