Art vs. Life

By Richard Corliss / Venice

It's a shock but not a surprise to see Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited, the new semi-comedy from Wes Anderson that had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3. As Francis, the eldest of the three Whitman brothers, he's clearly in physical distress. His head is wrapped in two thick bandages. His nose has a Band-Aid on it. His right hand and wrist are taped, and he uses a cane to walk.

He looks a mess--funny in the context of the film; not so, given Wilson's hospitalization on Aug. 26 for what was described as a slashed-wrist suicide attempt. Instead of walking the red carpet in Venice, reportedly the actor was in his Santa Monica home under 24-hour watch by friends and family.

In the movie, Francis is a man on a quest: to reconnect with his brothers Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman). "I want us to be completely open," he tells Peter and Jack when they meet up in India. O.K., then, Peter has an open question for him: "What happened to your face?"

He had an accident, Francis replies. He admits he has "some healing to do," to which Jack cheerleadingly says, "Gettin' there, though," and Peter offers the compliment, "Gives you character." Later Francis reveals more: "I smashed into a hill on purpose on my motorcycle."

This--along with the fact that Wilson is one of three brothers (Andrew and Luke are in movies too)--concludes the witness report on the coincidences between Francis Whitman and Owen Wilson. Enough with the creepiness already. What actually registers most strongly in Darjeeling is the sweet deadpan charm that Wilson has brought to all five of Anderson's movies.

But I fear Darjeeling, which opens the New York Film Festival Sept. 28 and will play in major cities shortly thereafter, is beyond even Wilson's powers of persuasion. It's the story of three well-heeled guys on one of those self-help vacations that upper-class searchers took in the '60s. They meet up with their mother (Anjelica Huston)--the source, we soon realize, of some of the boys' bad habits.

Picaresque movies often feel longer than they are. For them to work, they need an interior spring with more thrust than Darjeeling's attempt at reconstituted brotherhood. The problem is in Anderson's approach, which is so supercool, it's chilly. In his elaborate visual construct, virtually every shot is followed by the camera's point of view shifting 90-o or 180-o--geometrically groovy but quickly predictable. Same goes for his stories, which rely on gifted people behaving goofily. Anderson has the attitude for comedy but not the aptitude. His films are airless. Humor under glass.

There's one tiny bit in Darjeeling that shows what Anderson can do. The camera tracks along a corridor of train compartments. In each is a different character, glimpsed for just a few seconds: the Sikh trainman, the hostess, Peter's wife ... and Bill Murray as a businessman also seen briefly at the film's opening. It's a graceful series of snapshots into the lives of Darjeeling's subsidiary characters. Maybe Anderson could make a film about each of them. And perhaps collaborate on the screenplays with Owen Wilson. It could be therapeutic for us all.