Tea Time

My past experiences with Wes Anderson movies have been odd to say the least. The Royal Tenenbaums royally freaked me out (this may have something to do with the fact that I watched it when I was about 12) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou achieved a place in my mind somewere between a movie by the creators of This Is Spinal Tap and Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami (which ranks it with the strangest artistic experiences of my life). Still, I keep coming back to his movies, because there's something there, maybe hidden behind the dry humor and David Sedaris-like family commentary, that's striking and important.

So I embark on my journey through The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's latest full-length. I plan on seeing this movie in theatres, and fully engaging in the experiences of the three brothers (Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson). I hope this adventure will be a less-depressing spiritual journey than Into The Wild. If the soundtrack is any indication, which it usually is, The Darjeeling Limited will be exponentially more enjoyable than that Sean Penn drama. Every song on the Into The Wild soundtrack is an ode to isolation, with Eddie Vedder sobbing about some kid with no common sense, while The Darjeeling Limited soundtrack is as varied a collage as India itself and soaked in humanity.

Most of the music found in the 22 songs on the album comes from other movies. These movies are Indian in origin, and not contemporary; the kind of movies that are best viewed in a theatre, where you can be immersed in the story. Among the other songs on the soundtrack are some classical pieces that lend a little drama, and a few rock songs by The Kinks and the Rolling Stones that define the experience as Western while celebrating the influence of Indian sound in rock-psychedelia. The album opener and closer are almost polar in their opposition. "Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt is minimal (guitar and voice alone) with sweet, offbeat, pop lyrics and a slightly depressing folk air; an appropriate beginning to a movie that opens with a death. The finale is "Les Champs-Elysees" by Joe Dassin, a bouncy French jazz song with plenty of horn and piano, and a playful approach to music-making. In between, as I described above, are the songs and sounds of India which I've always found intoxicating and uplifting. The campy "Typewriter, Tip, Tip, Tip (From Merchant Ivory's film 'Bombay Talkie')" makes you feel like you've stepped into the 1960s and 1970s in India. "Title Music (From Satyajit Ray's film 'Teen Kanya')" is instrumental and lush. "Charu's Theme (Satyajit Ray's film 'Charulata')" sounds like an improvisation on scales from a child's music class: plain and unsteady, but perfect. "Prayer" by Jodphur Sikh Temple Congregation and "Memorial" by Narlia Village Troubadour are two locally flavored songs that are yearning and spiritual.

Overall, this album is a collage of sounds and culture, and a collage that succeeds in matching bits of the past and the present with bits of Western and Eastern culture. I ask myself what more important spiritual journey you could encounter than such a magnanimous union of disparate sounds and feelings? Where Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder celebrate Chris McCandless's inability to live in the real world, inability to embrace all of humanity and come to spiritual enlightenment by really getting his hands dirty, Wes Anderson seems to do the opposite. He throws his characters into the quirkiest, dirtiest, and most uncomfortable celebrations of human existence (albeit the most unlikely and fantastic). This is my kind of spiritual journey.