This week’s new spotlight DVDs:
Writer-director Wes Anderson’s aesthetically beautiful, emotionally layered fifth feature didn’t get the critical or commercial love that came with his Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Nonetheless, although The Darjeeling Limited ambles with a seeming meditative aimlessness more than its brethren, you can spot that distinctive and fanciful Anderson DNA they all share. The dryly comic director’s now-familiar eccentricities — the flip and deadpan tone, emotionally isolated and foible-rich characters’ jangled blend of feeling and intellect, the slow-mo pop music moments, the architecturally composed widescreen frames, the study of a family that bonds in its disunity — here move the brothers into new geographic and spiritual terrain.
The three estranged Whitman brothers (Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody) have not spoken to one another in a year. So they set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other — to become brothers again like they used to be. (”I wonder if the three of us would’ve been friends in real life. Not as brothers, but as people.”) Their “spiritual journey,” however, veers rapidly off-course and they eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer and a laminating machine. A new, unplanned journey of self-discovery begins, even though “We haven’t located us yet.” Also worth noting here are two other members of Anderson’s hand-woven repertory company — Anjelica Huston as the Whitman mom whose identity crisis has spirited her off to the Himalayas, and Bill Murray in a funny recurring bit.
On the DVD, preceding The Darjeeling Limited is Anderson’s fine 13-minute prequel short, The Hotel Chevalier (a.k.a. The One With Natalie Portman Nekkid). Also here is a behind-the-scene featurette, “The Darjeeling Limited Walking Tour” (21 minutes).

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