NYFF preview. The Darjeeling Limited.

"Wes Anderson, we love you, but you're bringing us down," sighs Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog. "The hermetically sealed world of your films - the man-children, the inexplicable melancholy, the flat, wide shots, the fetishized artifacts of adolescence and carefully chosen vintage pop soundtracks - has always resonated so strongly for us. We shrugged off all accusations of tweeness, we defended The Life Aquatic against the most virulent of critics, we saw in that AmEx commercial promising signs of self-awareness and gentle self-mockery. But with The Darjeeling Limited you may have finally vanished into your own well-contemplated navel and, we're sorry to say, lost us entirely."

Updated through 9/27.

"I believe those who complain about the emotional indirectness of this film, that its carefully controlled visual style sterilizes material that would be better served raw, kind of miss the point," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "Withholding the prospect of a direct connection between the viewer and the brothers is evidence of Anderson's larger purpose - this movie is as much, if not more, about the construction of fictions as it is about its ostensible plot."

"Safe is the best way to describe Darjeeling, though a touch of laziness can also be discerned, especially by the umpteenth slow-mo shot of the men set to a from-the-vault pop song," writes Nick Schager at Slant. "Seeing Bill Murray is always nice, the fanciful Godardian pan through the train is enchanting, and the short prologue Hotel Chevalier that will not accompany the film in theaters but will appear on the DVD (featuring Natalie Portman doing her best Jean Seberg) is amusing, but Anderson needs to do like the film's brothers do during the (embarrassingly literal) climax and, once and for all, ditch some of his old baggage."

But for Jürgen Fauth, this is "his best work since Rushmore."

Earlier: Reviews from Venice.

Updates, 9/25: "Even a ten-year-old could point out the aesthetic and narrative similarities between Anderson's films, so consistently do they deploy the same visual tricks and emotional turnarounds, yet to observe The Darjeeling Limited from a simple evaluative distance would deny the immersive pleasures therein," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "Asking Anderson to change (or 'grow,' as some critics would call it) ignores everything that's right with the artistic fluidity from Bottle Rocket to here. If The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou seemed too mechanical, too locked-in to its director's gambits, then with Darjeeling Anderson has found a way to overcome his own limitations without forgoing his expected style."

"A companion piece to [The Royal Tenenbaums] more than a step in new directions, Darjeeling is a movie about people trapped in themselves and what it takes to get free - a movie, quite literally, about letting go of your baggage," writes Nathan Lee in the Voice. "We bring our own to the movies, so let me cop to mine. I was moved by Darjeeling, flaws and all, but if my job is to explain why, I find it difficult for reasons that are none of my business. From the minute Wilson walks onscreen, face covered in scars, eyes full of trouble, Darjeeling is warped by the gravitas of his recent suicide attempt. Anderson and Wilson are old friends and frequent collaborators, of course, and it's hard not to sense them working through more than one impasse here."

Update, 9/26: "[T]he director's films are mistreated by being rated or hated as a series of dioramas (even if you feel like someone explaining about a terminally fey friend that 'you just have to get to know him')," writes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine. "A tacked-on ending (starring Anjelica Huston as Mom) suggests that Anderson may think he's made a richer movie than he has, but the filmmaker's past grandiose efforts (and, like Tarantino, his enervating descendants) shouldn't condemn his latest, minor journey."

Updates, 9/27: The Darjeeling Limited "is foremost a male weepie (as one farseeing commentator wrote of 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums), chronicling an aching love lost and won between three men," writes Edward Crouse in Cinema Scope. "As a wigged-out affecting text built boldly on uncertainty, it takes cues from other odd melodramas: Renoir's The River (1951) (accidental epiphanies in a ribbony freefloat); Cassavetes's Husbands (1970) (the grief of three professional men gangways into a surreal Olympian bender, pushing women away and around); and Rossellini's Voyage to Italy (1954) (ugly, petty tourists stumbling onto a vision about themselves via some earthy, 'spicy' place)."

"The Darjeeling Limited... showcases an obnoxious element of Anderson that is rarely discussed: the clumsy, discomfiting way he stages interactions between white protagonists - typically upper-class elites - and nonwhite foils - typically working class and poor," writes Jonah Weiner at Slate. "The film is gorgeous to look at: The color palette is riotous, and Anderson's rapacious eye for bric-a-brac binges on the Hindu prayer altars and crowded street markets of Rajasthan. But needless to say, beware of any film in which an entire race and culture is turned into therapeutic scenery."

"The Darjeeling Limited is more than a movie-buff's grabbag," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Instead, the film's premiere at this week's New York Film Festival reaffirms the importance of a filmmaker's personal sensibility - an often-forgotten essence in contemporary film culture."

Online viewing tip #1. Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman are on ReelerTV.

Online viewing tip #2. Jason Kottke's got your Hotel Chevalier link.

Posted by dwhudson at September 21, 2007 11:52 AM