The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) is a beautiful film that never quite earns its emotional weight. Despite strong performances and flashes of Wes Anderson’s usual brilliance, it’s the one entry in his filmography that feels fundamentally unsure of itself. It gestures at meaning, but never quite lands it. For all its intricate staging and artful compositions, it lacks the connective tissue that makes his best work resonate. It’s not a disaster, but it’s far from essential.

‘The Darjeeling Limited’ Movie Review

Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited remains, even after multiple viewings, the most frustrating film in his otherwise consistently distinct and stylized filmography. It’s not without Anderson’s usual hallmarks—precise compositions, sharp production design, emotionally stunted men in tailored suits—but for perhaps the only time in his career, those signature touches feel like they’re in service of a story and setting that he never fully understands or connects with.

Starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman as three estranged brothers reunited for a train journey across India one year after their father’s death, The Darjeeling Limited attempts to blend themes of grief, spiritual searching, and familial tension with Anderson’s whimsical tone. While the performances are dialed into the Anderson mold—Wilson’s bandaged, self-appointed leader type; Brody as the aloof middle child; Schwartzman playing his now-familiar smarmy cynic—it’s hard to ignore how surface-level much of the emotional content feels. Unlike Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, where dysfunction and heartbreak are met with layers of narrative depth, The Darjeeling Limited revisits those themes but flattens them, offering little in the way of new insight or progression.

The film’s biggest weakness is how it engages—or fails to engage—with its Indian setting. Anderson’s aesthetic precision is still present in the location work and visual storytelling, but the way India is depicted feels more like a backdrop for Western self-discovery than a place with its own narrative agency. While some critics have raised valid concerns about the film’s cultural insensitivities, even beyond that critique, the country and its people are too often reduced to set dressing, spiritual metaphor, or anecdotal encounter. The Darjeeling Limited treats its setting less like a world to be explored and more like a prop to be arranged.

When the action stays confined to the train—the actual Darjeeling Limited—the film briefly comes alive. In that cramped, moving space, the brothers’ dynamic has room to breathe. The tension, humor, and resentment between Wilson, Brody, and Schwartzman is believable and at times touching. You can feel Anderson’s comfort in this more controlled, confined environment, where his tight framing and symmetrical blocking enhance the drama. Once the narrative veers off the rails—literally and figuratively—the film starts to feel aimless, meandering through picturesque villages and spiritual detours that don’t add much depth to the characters or their arcs.

There’s no doubt that The Darjeeling Limited is still more visually assured and thoughtfully constructed than many filmmakers’ best efforts. But Anderson has set a high bar for himself. With subsequent films like The Grand Budapest Hotel or Moonrise Kingdom, he shows how to expand his worlds without diluting his voice. Here, though, the blend of Anderson’s tightly wound emotional themes and the loosely sketched spiritual journey never quite gels. The movie looks like a Wes Anderson film, sounds like a Wes Anderson film, and moves like one—but at its core, it feels strangely hollow.

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Ultimately, The Darjeeling Limited is a beautiful film that never quite earns its emotional weight. Despite strong performances and flashes of Anderson’s usual brilliance, it’s the one entry in his filmography that feels fundamentally unsure of itself. It gestures at meaning, but never quite lands it. For all its intricate staging and artful compositions, it lacks the connective tissue that makes his best work resonate. It’s not a disaster, but it’s far from essential.

Score: 5/10