The Grand Budapest Hotel's
elegiac nostalgia left me wanting more. Cue
The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's “
precious” 2007 release, which is not a film about India. It is American. The main characters are so self-centered, yet they manage, by the end, to shed their baggage and love each other. The fairy-tale setting is hardly needed. It's beautiful, though. I love to watch the opening sequence. It's unreal, just off-kilter enough to make us believe it might be true, and then remind us that it isn't. Look past Bill Murray’s grandfatherly worry and mad dash at the still, clean, imaginary India. The sun-bleached buildings, the colors of the clothes are right. Yet there are no hooting buses, no “Horn OK Please” trucks, no crowds, at least not by Indian standards. The immaculate cream-colored bullock stands stock-still. There is no scrap of trash in the gutters, Murray's taxi races past no open sewer. The railway station — spotless. But it’s almost India. It's a film that lets you dream about how India could be, if only.
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