watching this on india's 80th independence day was... something. anderson captures india through such a native lens. i haven't watched a satyajit ray movie til date but the style of film just felt like something ray would cook. the visuals are just so reminiscent of indian filmmaking; i have to applaud wes anderson for embodying it while still infusing the direction with his signature directing style. this was my third anderson film, the first two being The Grand Budapest Hotel (top 10 of all time) and The Phoenician Scheme (hilariously done), but Darjeeling Limited is so vastly different from the other two. the first two have a lot of usage of stationary framing and shots; they feel very much like flipping through a vibrant picture book. but DLtd. is so much fuller. it's three-dimensional and utilizes its environment, here being india, to the fullest it can. i can't remember if the aspect ratio of the former two movies was vertically wider but this is again different. i could just go on and on about the visuals of this movie. even the cinematography is phenomenal and wonderfully dynamic.
and then there's the story. three sort-of estranged brothers on a journey through india trying to deal with the death of their father and the absence of their mother, very interesting. though i can't say i resonated much with it. the characters definitely feel fully realized, that's the best thing about them. francis is the mildly infuriating, micromanaging eldest (severe mommy issues, this one), peter is the almost normal middle child who's still grieving his father who died in his arms (probably scared of having a son and messing him up, which is why he doesn't tell alice he's going to india a month before she's due), and then there's jack, the youngest who's desperate for love and connection (it's smoke through his fingers with the women in his life). one of the last scenes where they throw their father's baggage, that they'd been carrying around all throughout their journey, to get on a train to go home—that was transcendent, an absolute marvel of a visual motif.
irrfan khan's appearance in this movie was surprising, but welcome. somehow the indians with speaking lines in this movie spoke with a perfect american accent lol. sweet lime girl was so cool. i love that the steward on the DLtd. kept the poisonous snake haha. why did peter even buy it in the first place. speaking of, the brothers were moving through india like they were born there, like damn white boy u graduating from gora pakora to chhole bhature soon. aaand i think i don't got much more to say now. there was a natalie portman jumpscare at the end.
