ON CIRCUIT: The Darjeeling Limited and The Martian Child
The Darjeeling Limited
Wes Anderson’s latest film is a precious, self-admiring and fatally misjudged serio-comedy about three brothers (Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody) who, to gain emotional healing and closure after the death of their dad, travel across India on a train that, at one point, zanily gets lost, having taken the wrong rail. (Oh, these silly Indians!)
There is Anderson’s traditional dysfunctional-comedy motif and homage cameos for Bill Murray and Barbet Schroeder. The film admittedly has funny lines, elegant and eccentric compositions, and one good visual gag. But it is on the wrong side of condescension about India and Indians and it makes a grotesquely clumsy lurch into tragedy, followed by a supercilious switch back to the usual love-me-I’m-so-quirkily-vulnerable comedy, which kills the laughter. Like his wacky train, Anderson needs a change of direction. — Peter Bradshaw