The Darjeeling Limited was the only Wes Anderson film I had yet to see. Thanks to Criterion, I can now scratch that stat off my list, though I’m not sure I’ll ever be returning to it. I don’t say this because I hated it, simply because I don’t feel there is much need to see it twice. I’ve seen it, I’ve moved on and there are far too many films I have not seen and others I’d much rather watch again to really give this one much of a second thought.
It should be mentioned I am not one of Anderson’s die-hard followers. As much as I love Bottle Rocket and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, most of Anderson’s other work (yes, even Rushmore) has done very little to interest me. That said, I can see why his fans are so loyal as most of his work follows a similar tone and it’s only when I find one of his films exceptionally funny that I seem to take an advanced interest. For those of you out there that are big Anderson fans, Criterion has put together an excellent package for what may be the director’s least seen film as Fox Searchlight didn’t exactly give it a big theatrical push in 2007 or a feature filled DVD release the following year.
The Darjeeling Limited centers on three brothers — Jack (Jason Schwartzman), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Francis (Owen Wilson) — as they travel by train across India, one year after their father’s death. Their trip is intended as something of a spiritual journey, but just as much as that is true Francis has a few other plans along the way.
The benefit of the film’s transition to Blu-ray is in taking advantage of the highly colorful palette India has to offer and Anderson and his cinematographer Robert Yeoman take advantage of. The transfer is excellent and as far as the audio goes, I have no complaints, though this isn’t an audio intensive film so the fact Criterion includes a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track certainly suffices.
This Blu-ray release, however, serves as a remedy for those that felt something was missing from your previous Darjeeling release. This includes an audio commentary with Anderson and co-writers Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, Anderson’s American Express commercial (which you can watch to the right), one deleted scene and two alternate scenes (the scene on the tarmac I enjoyed primarily because I now know they were speaking jibberish and not actual words as the plane jets drown out the dialogue). The audition video for the young actro Sriharsh Sharma’s make an appearance, plus a short video sketch by Roman Coppola and a 12-minute video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz. However, that’s the small stuff.
In my opinion the best features begin with Barry Braverman’s making-of documentary that plays without narration, and just a bunch of raw footage. The lack of generic interviews makes it much better than traditional behind-the-scenes features. This isn’t to say you’ll be blown away by what you learn, but at least you won’t be getting the standard talking heads interviews we’re so used to seeing we basically know what they’re going to say before they say it.
Next is a conversation between Anderson and James Ivory, which turns out to be a discussion of the music in the film seeing how a lot of the film’s score derives from Ivory and Satyajit Ray films. Anderson used music from such films as Bombay Talkie, The Guru and The Music Room. Finally, there is a strange video diary shot by Waris Ahluwalia broken up into 11 segments with titles such as “Animals,” “Fitness” and “Food”, and his descriptions pretty much tell you exactly what you’re going to see, but it’s a bit more interesting than it sounds on paper.
Other than that you get the standard trailers, stills gallery, a goofy “trophy case” and a booklet that contains an essay by Richard Brody.
Even though I remain pretty much unmoved by The Darjeeling Limited, Criterion has certainly put together an impressive package for what is obviously one of their favorite directors. Anderson fans can feel free to buy without concern. It now only stands to question whether Fantastic Mr. Fox will become Criterion’s first animated release considering all of Anderson’s previous films have a spot. Only time will tell.
