A short film–linked by one character, and I hear a prequel(ish) to the upcoming Darjeeling Limited–is available for free at iTunes, for a short time. I grabbed it, but wanted to let people know if they wanted to see it….
A short film–linked by one character, and I hear a prequel(ish) to the upcoming Darjeeling Limited–is available for free at iTunes, for a short time. I grabbed it, but wanted to let people know if they wanted to see it….
What is it called? I don’t see it by searching for Wes Anderson.
Found it: Hotel Chevalier
And here is a fairly astute critique of Anderson’s unblinking, seems-to-be unthinking whiteness.
I think there’s enough evidence in Anderson’s films to make an even broader case than Jonah Weiner makes in that Slate piece. But I wonder if he is (unknowingly) using the most recent Anderson film as a lens through which to judge Anderson’s previous films. After reading through Weiner’s piece, and thinking about the Anderson films I’ve seen, I’ve conlcuded only that either Anderson is much more obnoxious than Weimer suggests, or much less.
Yes, but although Rushmore‘s protagonist was decidedly lower-middle-class, and although he has many encounters with the actor Dipak Pallana (who has appeared as virtually the same character in every Anderson film) that fit the bill Weiner has typed up, I’m not sure if this counts. “There’s no wink from Anderson” in Darjeeling, we’re told. I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve always read the Pallana character as a wink–more so in Rushmore than anywhere else; a wink that directs us to see the idiosyncracies of the main characters as idiosyncracies–in spite of the seriousness, the earnestness, the blood sweat and tears, with which they (selfishly but sweetly) generalize them, project them as universal dramas in which all play a part.
Pallan’s character is given a name only at the end of the film (the script lists him as “Indian groundskeeper”): Mr. LittleJeans. His only line is “best play in ever, man” and I think it is supposed to delight us in some way. What puzzles me is his name. Anderson surely knows that Pallan (whose son he casts as the geometry professor) is South Asian, not Native American. Why the Native American name? Is this unthinking whiteness? Or a whiteness staged as unthinking?
We never get an explanation of why Anthony falls for Inez in Bottle Rocket. We don’t have anything along the lines of “she reminds me of a delicate Paraguayan flower” or shit like that. It’s just love at first sight. Fine, says Weiner, but isn’t this also what is supposed to make him “quirky”? That he falls head over heels for Mexican laborer (the actress who plays Inez, Lumi Cavazos, is Mexican, not Paraguayan)? Weiner accounts for Anthony’s obsession by means of a quick primer in orientalism. But Weiner also detects in this scenario a laughable subtext (isn’t it a bit ridiculous that Anthony’s love for Inez is tied to his desire to drop out of white, upper middle class society). A laughable subtext indeed, but placed there by whom?
Yes, they function less as “foils” do (as Weiner claims earlier in the piece) and more as a chorus does. Clearly these non-white characters are meant to shape audience responses. For example, Mr. LittleJeans often shakes his head disapprovingly at characters. Sometimes he’s laughing hysterically when no one else isn’t.
And I guess the question (a question Weiner never poses, though it’s one worth posing) is this: why is the chorus always non-white? Is it to call attention to the obnoxiousness of “quirky whitenessâ€? If so, isn’t it even more obnxious to think that, say, by casting an Indian in such a role, the director has sufficiently critiqued “quirky whitenessâ€?
Even more puzzling is that the chorus in Anderson’s films persuades us to withhold judgment as often as it compels us to cast it.
Weiner is certainly right about one thing: this aspect of Anderson (and of the new breed of indy filmmakers in general) is seldom discussed.
Wow–great, great reaction, rejoinder, sometimes refutation. Smart reading.
I think Weiner is out to burn the whole field, so I appreciate your far more careful attention to the earlier films, in particular. You noted some of the engagement with class in Rushmore, and you see that in Bottle Rocket as well, where Dignan (O. Wilson) is clearly dispossessed from the kind of casual privilege which seems to tire out Anthony (L. Wilson) or just confuse the already-addled Bob (R. Musgrave). There are more interesting distinctions drawn. The fatigue felt by someone inside the privilege which allows, yes Weiner gets it sort of right, a kind of privileged touristic engagement with difference (play with crime, screw with the workers, see the people of color)… but it also invites a kind of openness and empathy and a desire for connection which (ideally) breaks a person out of their closed worlds. Anthony is not Bob, nor (worse yet) the terrible Futureman/older brother. Kumar Pallana’s in this one, too–and seems to be an expert in burglary, constantly bubbling about what it takes to break a safe, who freezes hilariously mid-crime; I’m not sure how to read this (his son also shows up, as a victim in the bookstore that Dignan/Anthony rob earlier)… but again, it’s not exactly the homogenous representation Weiner slams.
There’s also a scene in Tenenbaums where Hackman’s Royal confronts, sort of (his back turned, his face forward towards the camera/audience), his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. Now Danny Glover’s almost part of the production design in the film, alas, strapped into his Kofi Annan costume — yet he has a couple of moments, and this one in particular, where something challenging bubbles to the surface. Royal mutters something about Henry being the new “black buck,” and it is a testament to both actors how this small, seemingly apposite scene captures a rage and fury and (for this viewer) reflexive attention to the markers of class/race ostensibly being fetishized or ignored…
I’m now officially rambling–I think Weiner scores some points. I think John takes those few points and finds a far more interesting essay which he begins writing here. That more careful critique of this indie whiteness I really want to read….
(And I’m tempted to wonder about Altman, Allen, Scorsese, Spielberg–and we could probably keep going–and the ways so many great American white film directors so rarely tackle race, or maybe “whiteness,” head-on. Anderson seems, to me, less a marker of a new kind of ‘indie’ faux-innocent racism/blindness than yet another reminder of the deeply-racist history and institutional contexts of American film.)
another review.
i think anderson does tackle whiteness head-on, specifically the very particular white american male story of short-circuited boy-man’hood that he’s been filming over and over again. to make the kind of critique of anderson’s films that one might make of shows like friends seems to me to be a bit of a category error. what weiner does not recognize is that anderson highlights his awareness of the limited scope of his interest by turning it into a series of increasingly artificial tableaus, to the point that the staging seems to trump everything else. this, i think, separates anderson from other currently popular makers of comedies about white males (like, for instance, judd apatow). yes, anderson can’t imagine central roles for his brown and black characters–but he can’t write white women either (angelica huston covers up a lot of this in tenenbaums and the life aquatic through sheer force of persona).
and, at the nitpicky level, max’s asian american girlfriend in rushmore clearly flies in the face of weiner’s thesis; kumar pallana’s pagoda in tenenbaums (now there’s a name that suggests authorial detachment) is no more or less devoid of substance than the white characters who get more screen-time. and danny glover’s character doesn’t seem to me to be played simply for laughs, as weiner would have it (and in any case, who isn’t played for laughs in that film?). he is one of the points from which a critique of royal tenenbaum is focalized but he is also as ridiculous as everyone else–so i don’t see much condescension there. and it may be a minor point, but his south asian characters are never defined by their south asiannness–it is very hard, you know, to find a south asian character in american film or tv who isn’t simply an accent or a turban.
(john, i wasn’t sure what you were saying about inez and nationality–if i remember correctly, the character is indeed paraguyan; the actress may be mexican.)
I just watched the “Hotel” film, the short, and immediately watched it again, and it’s just a sweet, lovely, smart little film.
Dana Stevens, while bashing his new film as “twee,” called this an “amuse-bouche,” which effectively undercut any claim she had to complaining about twee-ness. A.O. Scott dug the short, had mixed feelings about the film. This made me want to see Darjeeling even more.
A.O.Scott’s description of Anderson’s films as “precious” (more accurate than “twee”) captures my reaction pretty well. I have admired a couple of his films, but I can’t say I have enjoyed any of them since Rushmore. They are utterly bloodless, inhabited by cold, awkward people whose behavior is so contrived that they are more like chess pieces moved around by Anderson than actors. There is craft, but to what end? If there is some spectrum of “aliveness” anchored at one end by the joyful opening scenes in Tarantino films (the diner robbery in Pulp Fiction, the church in Kill Bill II, the first car ride in Death Proof), Anderson’s films are all clustered at the other end. No wonder Owen Wilson attempted suicide. Sorry. That was tacky.
Yes, that’s what I was saying, Arnab.
Well, Arnab, you snuck your critique into a post I assumed was done, so I only just now saw it, after reading John’s otherwise cryptic reply. You make many excellent points, as well, but I’d zero in on the framing of his elaborate framing — the obsessive production design/tableaux as an actualization of the characters’ constraints. That’s a great point.
Especially since, in thinking through a reaction to Chris, I got to recalling how a kind of rage bubbles underneath so many of these characters. They are so fearful of the world not conforming to their ridiculous idealized dreams that they incessantly map/plan/organize it. Dignan’s got his notebook with its five- and ten-year plans for his life of crime; Max runs the whole damn school, and is a director of Andersonian fussiness; Royal and even Steve Zissou are the adult version, bitterly and sometimes viciously pushing people into conformity with their visions. And there are flashes: Dignan smashes a car window and attacks Anthony; Max gets drunk, later attacks the ‘sluttiness’ of Olivia Williams’ character. Royal is rarely anything but bottled-up rage.
The films avoid preciousness because the characters are written, for me, with a kind of emotional force that resists the designs (the literal framing of the film *and* their own futile, foolish, arrogant imaginations) which constrain them. And, I think John and Arnab have argued this well, “whiteness” and class privilege are subject to this dialectic of fussy objectification and resistant tension, and not unreflectively.
Sorry for being cryptic. I was pointing out a small irony: Anthony thinks Inez is Mexican, she tells him she is Paraguayan. Anthony is embarrased (he should be sensitive to the differences between them) and clumsily compensates by saying he knows where Paraguay is. But the actress playing Inez is Mexican.
I just got back from The Darjeeling Limited, and I thought it was wonderful. I’m admittedly a skewed fan, so tuned to Anderson’s wavelength that I have been able to, would, will again defend even his most mannered of flicks–I get him, and they never fail to amaze, amuse, win me over.
That all said, I think this was a leap forward, and as good a film he’s made since Rushmore. He is, yes, still making the same movie, and all his tics are still present, but there’s an economy to the film lacking in all of his prior work, and there’s an openness to the ambivalence of images. I want to think more, and then talk more. So I’m going to sit on my reactions for a while, but–I don’t know if many of you were ever interested, or were at all dissuaded by various critical reactions when the film opened. I’d urge people to go.
simon and i wavered between this, rendition, and the susanne bier’s movie today, and rendition won. probably the worst of the three.
I’d mostly just echo Mike here. After the too-high expectations of Life Aquatic (Which were dashed on the first viewing, and revived/redeemed on the second), I am now perfectly content to just come along on Anderson’s rides, not really caring any longer if the themes are the same ones he’s already explored, or if women or non-whites are treated too casually, or if the slow-motion medium shots with 60s tunes blasting just keep coming one after another. Don’t care. Go for it Wes.
A leap forward? I don’t know. I didn’t see that, but was glad not to really have to go through (What I imagine to be) a style/story/theme leap forward, because we know that they fail much more often than they succeed.
I had doubts about Adrien Brody – esp. after he butchered a rather decent movie starring Diane Lane and Ben Affleck, but he was good here too.
Briefly: I agree with Mauer. This is a very good film. And beautiful, too. Having thought through Weiner’s argument before seeing it, I was pleased to find that Darjeeling is not unthinking, and that Weiner is pretty much wrong. Pallan is, once again, comically obtrusive. And the Indian characters (really nice performances by Amara Karan and Waris Ahluwalia) do little to conform to indie whiteness–I, at least, could never anticipate what they would do, how they would respond. In an Anderson film, you never really know how anyhone will act and respond. I also enjoyed Part I, Hotel Chevalier. Natalie Portman has a nice hiney.
SPOILER
Even as I cringed at the cliched potential of the moment on the river–the (brown) boys in peril, rescued or not by the (white) boys–I was also utterly impressed and intrigued by the subsequent sequence in the village. The grief of the villagers, particularly of the father (the reliably great Irfan Khan), is never translated, and never subsumed into the protagonists’ own mourning. There’s a nice flashback that does do the direct work of connecting how the Whitmans’ trauma is being worked through or evoked at the moment of this local death, but the film seems to avoid spectacle, appropriation. There’s very little English dialogue, very little dialogue at all, throughout that whole sequence, until they finally leave on the bus.
This bit is one reason I thought the film an intriguing shift–Anderson seemed to trust in a montage NOT wholly governed by the soundtrack. Despite one great Kinks song [I think it was the Kinks] in the middle, much of the sequence just plays out, without much talking, without a clarifying score. Emotions played out, and weren’t explained. I think Anderson’s always been emotional, but you could lose sight of that in the characters’ own attempts at avoidance–jokes and crazily elaborate plots/plans and slow-mo song-studded soundtrack.
A further sequence is equally stunning: they finally find Mom (the reliably brilliant Anjelica Huston), and drum up the nerve to call out their sense of betrayal. She gets them all to sit and stare at each other, and the camera pans around the circle, closing in on the faces, and Anderson cuts to an imagined train where compartment by compartment we see others–Karan and Ahluwalia and Wolodarsky and Portman and Murray–going on with their lives, in their own ways. I loved the Andersonian vision here, and while the train as metaphor recalls the Tenenbaum home, the Zissou ship, this enactment clarified and complicated what I think Anderson is concerned with: an elaborate staging of a community dreamed but not concretely achieved. The image is sharper and more clearly realized here; we know how disconnected these people, on the train and at the nunnery, are. And, again, the sequence with the boys and their mother and the imagined train is played without much dialogue at all; we have to make sense of the images, the imagination at play.
Those are among the reasons I think Darjeeling shows a small but significant shift: the visuals are not merely a (fussy, packed, beautiful) complement to the characters and dialogue and score. I could almost imagine the film without sound–that it would make sense silent, that we’d still know everything about these characters and their journey.
reynolds, do you think the “I didn’t save mine” comment clips the cliched potential of the rescue scene? Just as Jack’s comment to Rita, “thanks for using me,” undercuts any straightforward Orientalist critiqe of Jack? Weiner, in his Slate piece says Jack pesters Rita to leave her Sikh boyfriend, but I don’t recall this. Nor do I recall any moment in the film when Jack says Rita will turn his life around. Finally (I’ll just let it go after this), Weiner says “turns out a dead Indian boy was all the brothers were missing.” Really, this is way off, since the tragedy doesn’t galvanize the brothers at all. I didn’t see the tragedy in the river as part of their journey, at least not the way Weiner does. But maybe I’m fooling myself. For me, the film is chock full of gestures, big and small. Some don’t achieve their intended effect, some cause damage, some are accepted graciously, others are almost immediately withdrawn or retracted.
I guess Weiner might well ask “why make this film at all?” Since, in his mind, it probably can never be made properly.
“reynolds, do you think the “I didn’t save mine†comment clips the cliched potential of the rescue scene?”
Definitely. On the one hand I was moved at that moment, but that line–and the line reading–undercut, reframed my perspective and the conventions of such a “rescue.”
And I think your critique of Weiner’s critique is persuasive, right, and worth pursuing. Either he’s terribly ungenerous or he’s a terrible reader, and either way he’s not worth reading. I was wrong-headed to say he was anything like astute. I think I was tracking back some of my own anxieties about my viewing, and maybe–if I’m generous–actually trying to engage with the ways race and ethnicity are (and are not) represented, interrogated, complicated by various filmmakers. That is a question worth pursuing. And Anderson maybe is open to a jab or two… but your readings above and on down through your actual viewing are so much more invested, interesting, insightful. Can I marry you, John? But, seriously, can I? No, seriously–smart readings. I think I was already married to Mauer, and it ended abruptly with his untimely death, from consumption, in 1996. Alas.
i hated this movie. predictably. bah.
I hated it as well.
Well, then, I hate it, too.
No, wait, I love it.
Let’s stop saying why, or giving any account. Let’s just post an opinion, ideally as concise an opinion as one can name, perhaps most to be preferred merely a symbol.
I hate responses like this. Of course, I want everyone to love what I love, but that ain’t what we’re up to here. And I’m actually excited when our respective tastes and judgments are forged against one another–some of the best threads we’ve had have been pitched battles, bound up in trying to persuade on grounds of love and hate. But, sheesh. When either of you write your review of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, I promise to post more than five (or six) words why it sucks or to just assume that my predictable dismissal wouldn’t be all that intriguing.
okay mike, you win, as always:
boring. unfunny. boys overload. boys being boys. silly boy humor. stunning cinematography wasted on unfunny dialogue. didn’t care what happened to them. didn’t care about them at all. natalie portman way too thin. boy bitchiness elevated to rank of supposed funniness. very boring.
Ouch, should I read sexism in your comment on Sisterhood, which, as far as I can remember, I posted a few words on a year or two ago. Or maybe it’s my own painful memories of being called ugly names as a teenager that floods forward in my head.
Okay, I give Darjeeling one star for its fabulous use of Louis Vuitton luggage.
Sexism?
No. You liked that movie. I doubt I would, so I haven’t seen it. If I did see it, and predictably didn’t like it, I’m not sure I’d post, but it almost certainly wouldn’t be me saying merely “I hated this.” On your post (about a film you were admittedly far less passionate regarding than I am with this one), you got a couple responses, some teasing around–but we didn’t simply snipe that the film sucked. Maybe another example would work better–even ‘though you and Arnab seem miles apart on Goodbye Dragon Inn, and even ‘though A’s dismissal can be aggressive, the (limited) discussion of that film was not you putting some time into why you liked it and then him flatly dismissing it. He put some time into being Chakladarish back.
I’m in a pissy mood, so I apologize for seeming thin-skinned or simply cantankerous. And I’m probably more pissed at what passes for discourse and debate on my (our) campus at the moment. But I liked Darjeeling, and I’m excited when others really dislike and then push forcefully on that dislike in ways that engage–so that I either have to reflect on (and joyfully, and I hope more artfully, reaffirm) my pleasure OR I step back and think about those well-defined, well-reasoned flaws. (Again, we do this well, when we do it: around Children of Men or Zodiac, for instance.) But it just seemed so patly dismissive, after a thread that circled ’round some interesting issues–and clearly signalled that a few of us enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s less that you and G disliked the film, and more that posting a casual notice of your respective hatred would seem a way to join the conversation. Go ahead and be a hater, but if all you’ve got to say is “I hated it,” why bother?
I too am in a pissy mood and apologize for seeming thin-skinned myself. The funny thing is I knew I would start “something” when I commented last night (and I can’t blame Gio). I started out writing, “I can’t say I hated it, but . . .” and then chose the more “pleasurable” option. I’m not sure why I was in such a passive-aggressive mood, but it has nothing to do with you or Gio or Anderson or Louis Vuitton (or maybe it does but, if so, only marginally). And we did talk in person about this film months ago where the discourse was more courteous and collegial (though we still disagreed). Still, I wish I felt something about this film that would lead me to want to join in the conversations above. Watching it was like receiving an ironically ambivalent postcard (airbrushed to perfection) from three self-absorbed frat boys who, on their gap year between Harvard and Wall Street, decided they needed to get in touch with their inner-children while wandering through a distorted vision of third-world authenticity shaped by their own limited, elitist perspectives (oh, yes, and let’s have sexy time with the hot and exotic stewardess on the train while we’re at it). The sad thing is that my frat brothers believe they’re being sincere.
I did, however, think Irrfan Khan blew everybody in this film out of the water (no pun intended) without even trying.
I’m sorry you are having trouble with your colleagues at Hamline. I feel so removed from so much at that school that I often wonder why I even work there.
i like brief dismissals. but they should be funny. like mine are.
i do realize this is really not about me and my proclamations of hatred for darjeeling, which i went on to flesh out as best i could, but about mike and jeff and their runaway love story (for the sharing of which i am actually very grateful to both of you, and i’m saying this with not a gram of sarcasm). mike, i scanned the conversation that preceded my comment but didn’t engage with it because i didn’t make it past 45 mins of the film, and this in three tries! simon gave up before i did.
so, really, all i had to say is that i was bored. it’s a pretty final thing to say — how can you engage with someone’s boredom? — and for this i’m sorry. i don’t mean to rain on your parade, mike. i just couldn’t finish the damn movie.
sorry things are being unhappy for you at work. this may be too public a forum to tell us why, but i am deeply interested. academic institutional dissatisfaction of the socio-political kind (i take this is more than “my colleagues smell bad”) fascinates me no end. this is said without a gram of sarcasm, too.