The Darjeeling Limited

[martinthewarrior]

Just saw this in Chicago. I have alot of thoughts, both negative and positive, that I need to get a handle on, but I will say that the comparison of PTA's career to that of Wes Anderson seems to miss the point on many levels. It doesn't make much sense to me.

If aquatic was the messy culmination of Anderson's first chunk of work, darjeeling felt to me like the messy onset of something different that I think he'll be heading towards. It's very Wes, but certainly not more of the same. Some pretty incredible things going on in this film, and by the same token, some things that are driving me up the wall.

[matt35mm]

PTA is an adult filmmaker, and by the negative, Wes is not

That's great. Wes is older but Paul is more of an adult. i guess

I'm tempted to argue t'other way 'round.  And so I will.

When you see PTA, he's really like kind of a big kid, kinda goofy, kinda charming as he flops down, takes a step back, and covers his quiet laugh with his hand when he's nervous, and so on.  He seems more in touch with the FUN of all of it.  His inspiration is DRACULA!  And I think it's a childlike quality (in a great way) to want to explore new territory, and grow and grow and grow.

I don't really feel comfortable comparing the two Andersons, but I said I'd try to argue the other way around, so I'll say that when I see Wes, he seems more keen on presenting himself as an adult than Paul does, with the suits and the generally calm demeanor.  Also, I find that an ironic sense of humor and sometimes detachment seems like more of an adult quality than the unabashed emotion that Paul excels at.  Just try to imagine a character in a Wes movie saying, "I have a love in my life, and it makes me stronger than anything you can imagine."  Also, Punch-Drunk Love felt like watching a kid with a big box of crayons coloring furiously and outside the lines... I can't say that any of Wes's movies felt like that.

But these things don't REALLY mean very much.  I think that they both have a childlike quality that they can tap into, which I think is really wonderful, and they both can tap sophisticatedly into mature subjects.  I think that's why both Andersons are admired by people of all ages, really.  I was but a young'n when I first saw their movies, and there was a lot for me to latch onto even then.  There are also, of course, much older fans as well.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that calling Wes more childlike and Paul more adult seemed incorrect to me.  I think the comparison is unfair to both of them, but if I had to compare, I'd totally choose Paul as the more childlike of the two.  Though, I'm interested to see if/how fatherhood for Paul will shift the scale.

[Sunrise]

PTA is an adult filmmaker, and by the negative, Wes is not

That's great. Wes is older but Paul is more of an adult. i guess

I'm tempted to argue t'other way 'round.  And so I will.

When you see PTA, he's really like kind of a big kid, kinda goofy, kinda charming as he flops down, takes a step back, and covers his quiet laugh with his hand when he's nervous, and so on.  He seems more in touch with the FUN of all of it.  His inspiration is DRACULA!  And I think it's a childlike quality (in a great way) to want to explore new territory, and grow and grow and grow.

I don't really feel comfortable comparing the two Andersons, but I said I'd try to argue the other way around, so I'll say that when I see Wes, he seems more keen on presenting himself as an adult than Paul does, with the suits and the generally calm demeanor.  Also, I find that an ironic sense of humor and sometimes detachment seems like more of an adult quality than the unabashed emotion that Paul excels at.  Just try to imagine a character in a Wes movie saying, "I have a love in my life, and it makes me stronger than anything you can imagine."  Also, Punch-Drunk Love felt like watching a kid with a big box of crayons coloring furiously and outside the lines... I can't say that any of Wes's movies felt like that.

But these things don't REALLY mean very much.  I think that they both have a childlike quality that they can tap into, which I think is really wonderful, and they both can tap sophisticatedly into mature subjects.  I think that's why both Andersons are admired by people of all ages, really.  I was but a young'n when I first saw their movies, and there was a lot for me to latch onto even then.  There are also, of course, much older fans as well.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that calling Wes more childlike and Paul more adult seemed incorrect to me.  I think the comparison is unfair to both of them, but if I had to compare, I'd totally choose Paul as the more childlike of the two.  Though, I'm interested to see if/how fatherhood for Paul will shift the scale.

Talk about a quote taken out of context...sorry you got that impression. I would tend to agree with a lot of what you wrote, Matt. I was simply trying to bait Stefen into defending his statement. It didn't work.

[matt35mm]

PTA is an adult filmmaker, and by the negative, Wes is not

That's great. Wes is older but Paul is more of an adult. i guess

I'm tempted to argue t'other way 'round.  And so I will.

When you see PTA, he's really like kind of a big kid, kinda goofy, kinda charming as he flops down, takes a step back, and covers his quiet laugh with his hand when he's nervous, and so on.  He seems more in touch with the FUN of all of it.  His inspiration is DRACULA!  And I think it's a childlike quality (in a great way) to want to explore new territory, and grow and grow and grow.

I don't really feel comfortable comparing the two Andersons, but I said I'd try to argue the other way around, so I'll say that when I see Wes, he seems more keen on presenting himself as an adult than Paul does, with the suits and the generally calm demeanor.  Also, I find that an ironic sense of humor and sometimes detachment seems like more of an adult quality than the unabashed emotion that Paul excels at.  Just try to imagine a character in a Wes movie saying, "I have a love in my life, and it makes me stronger than anything you can imagine."  Also, Punch-Drunk Love felt like watching a kid with a big box of crayons coloring furiously and outside the lines... I can't say that any of Wes's movies felt like that.

But these things don't REALLY mean very much.  I think that they both have a childlike quality that they can tap into, which I think is really wonderful, and they both can tap sophisticatedly into mature subjects.  I think that's why both Andersons are admired by people of all ages, really.  I was but a young'n when I first saw their movies, and there was a lot for me to latch onto even then.  There are also, of course, much older fans as well.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that calling Wes more childlike and Paul more adult seemed incorrect to me.  I think the comparison is unfair to both of them, but if I had to compare, I'd totally choose Paul as the more childlike of the two.  Though, I'm interested to see if/how fatherhood for Paul will shift the scale.

Talk about a quote taken out of context...sorry you got that impression. I would tend to agree with a lot of what you wrote, Matt. I was simply trying to bait Stefen into defending his statement. It didn't work.

Oh no no no, it was my fault.  I was just lazy in what I chose to quote (I just quoted the whole last post on the matter), but I knew that it wasn't you who put forth that argument.

[pete]

This movie was great!  It exceeded my expectations.  I haven't not loved a Wes Anderson film yet, so my recommendation might not come off as strong as somebody else's.  Like the Royal Tenenbaums, this film has a clearer delineation of sad or funny moments.  I still believe that Life Aquatic confused some viewers because they weren't sure what scenes were funny and what scenes were sad.  This film should be more accessible to the Zissou haters.    For example, Max has only very nonchalantly mentioned the death of his mother, Chas's wife was brought up a few times as morbid jokes, Zissou's loss was upstaged by whoever that characters was, played by William Dafoe.  But in this film, the father's death is more drawn out.  There are also a lot more obvious set ups, payoffs, and external changes, both dramatic and comedic, than Wes's other films.

As for the ethnocentrism, I don't think so.  The characters have developed a genuine connection with India, they're not tourists, and the Indian characters are not mere backdrops.  The white characters seem awkward, but they don't appear to be particularly perplexed or puzzled by their differences, nor does the film ever pause to widen the differences.  Other words, this is not at all like that other movie that I hate so much.

[Pubrick]

The detail to attention

diffrection directions

classic horse. you rival GT in bizarre linguistic anomalies.

these positive reviews are refreshing. i must admit i kinda liked zissou.

[MacGuffin]

As for the ethnocentrism, I don't think so.  The characters have developed a genuine connection with India, they're not tourists, and the Indian characters are not mere backdrops.  The white characters seem awkward, but they don't appear to be particularly perplexed or puzzled by their differences, nor does the film ever pause to widen the differences.  Other words, this is not at all like that other movie that I hate so much.

Unbearable Whiteness
That queasy feeling you get when watching a Wes Anderson movie.
By Jonah Weiner; The Slate

*READ AT OWN RISK*

The first time Owen Wilson met Wes Anderson, at a college playwriting class in Austin, the future director made an immediate impression. "He walked in wearing L.L. Bean duck-hunting boots and shorts," Wilson recalled, "Which I thought was kind of obnoxious."

In every film he's made, even the best ones, there's been something kind of obnoxious about Wes Anderson. By now, critics have enumerated several of his more irritating traits and shticks: There's his pervasive preciousness, exemplified by the way he pins actors into the centers of fastidiously composed tableaux like so many dead butterflies. There's his slump-shouldered parade of heroes who seem capable of just two emotions: dolorous and more dolorous (not that there haven't been vibrant exceptions to this). And there's the way he frequently couples songs—particularly rock songs recorded by shaggy Europeans between 1964 and 1972—with slow-motion effects, as though he's sweeping a giant highlighter across the emotional content of a scene. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Richie can't watch Margot get off a bus without Nico popping up to poke us in the ribs: "He loves her! And it's killing him! See?"

The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson's latest movie, 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. The plot concerns three brothers, Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) who set out on a "spiritual journey" across India by rail. Brody and Schwartzman stalk the film somberly, their eyes glazed with melancholy, their laconic exchanges one part deadpan, one part night of the living dead. They are zombies in fitted blazers, suffering quietly but profoundly from the same vague, paralyzing, leisure-class malaise that has plagued Anderson's heroes ever since Luke Wilson checked himself into a mental hospital for "exhaustion" in Bottle Rocket. Owen Wilson (despite his recent personal ordeal) is the trio's winningly dopey optimist, convinced that the Indian sojourn is exactly what the brothers need to get closer together—they haven't spoken since the death of their father, one year earlier. 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.

From the Beatles' 1968 hang with the Maharishi to the recent "Imagine India" flower show at Macy's, South Asia has long been a hotspot in the American and European orientalist imagination. But for a director as willfully idiosyncratic as Anderson, it's surprising how many white-doofuses-seeking-redemption-in-the-brown-skinned-world clichés Darjeeling Limited inhabits. Early on, Adrien Brody ascends through the various classes of the film's titular train, leaving behind the goats and peasants of the luggage car and the drab denizens of coach before arriving at the private sleeper Francis has reserved for the trip: This spiritual journey comes equipped with a locking door and private bathroom, thank you. A comely stewardess named Rita soon enters, draws a bindi on each brother's forehead, and offers up "sweet lime and savory snacks." Jack decides to interpret this liberally and shortly makes love to her in the bathroom. Rita isn't a character so much as a familiar type: the mysterious, exotic, dark-skinned beauty. Jack hardly exchanges a word with her, but, reeling from a bad breakup, he begins pestering her to leave her Sikh boyfriend, convinced for no good reason that she can turn his life around.

Sometimes Wes Anderson winks at the brothers' fetishistic attitudes toward India, but he eventually reveals his own. When Francis grandly declares, "I love these people"—minutes after a shoeshine boy has run off with one of his "$3,000 loafers"—or when Peter says, "I love how this country smells; it's ... spicy," Anderson must be chuckling at them. But he runs into trouble when he tries to stage their genuine awakening. The plot contrives to get the brothers kicked out of the Darjeeling, where Francis' personal assistant has been drawing up laminated daily timetables, and out into the countryside, where they might enjoy the sort of unmediated revelation you just can't plan with TripAdvisor.

This revelation comes soon enough. After a series of pratfalls, the brothers throw up their hands, deciding to go their separate ways. (What follows is no movie-ruining giveaway, but I should insert a spoiler alert, just in case.) As they walk alongside a canal, they see three adolescent Indian brothers attempting to cross it on a raft attached to a system of ropes and pulleys. A pulley snaps, and the boys are flung into the raging currents. Francis, Peter, and Jack dive in—one set of flailing brothers trying to save another—but one of the adolescents is killed. They're invited to the child's rural village for his funeral (which Anderson cannot resist presenting in slow motion and setting to a Kinks song), where the Whitman clan realize that they need to stick together and see out the rest of their journey. Turns out that a dead Indian boy was all the brothers were missing.

This isn't just heavy-handed, it's offensive. In a grisly little bit of developing-world outsourcing, the child does the bothersome work of dying so that the American heroes won't have to die spiritually. There is no wink from Anderson here. He plays the whole funeral sequence for pathos. Later on, in a celebratory moment, we get a classically offbeat Anderson image. The three brothers squeeze together onto a moped and ride, liberated, in some gorgeous late-day sunlight. The camera slowly zooms out to reveal a cartload of Indian porters behind them, carrying the brothers' considerable baggage (nudge-nudge). Any implied critique seems unintentional, though. Anderson's just doubling the sight gag.

Although the issue of race has never been as prominent as in Darjeeling Limited, it's cropped up continuously in Anderson's films. In Bottle Rocket, the Paraguayan housekeeper Ines is a direct precursor to Rita—a service-industry hottie with whom a depressed Anderson hero (in this case, Luke Wilson's Anthony) becomes obsessed. Helping this obsession along is the fact that Ines can barely speak English, making her a convenient projecting screen for Anthony's fantasies about purity and true love. Their romance is sweet, but its subtext is laughable. Anthony's last girlfriend sent him into a psychological tailspin, we learn, when she made a bourgeois proposal: "Over at Elizabeth's beach house, she asked me if I'd rather go water-skiing or lay out. And I realized that not only did I not want to answer that question," Anthony explains, "but I never wanted to answer another water-sports question, or see any of these people again for the rest of my life." So it's barefoot, towel-folding Ines to the emotional rescue.

Anderson generally likes to decorate his margins with nonwhite, virtually mute characters: Pelé in Life Aquatic, a Brazilian who sits in a crow's-nest and sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese; Mr. Sherman in Royal Tenenbaums, a black accountant who wears bow ties, falls into holes, and meekly endures Gene Hackman's racist jabs—he calls him "Coltrane" and "old black buck," which Anderson plays for laughs; Mr. Littlejeans in Rushmore, the Indian groundskeeper who occasionally mumbles comical malapropisms (Anderson hired this actor, Kumar Pallana, to do the same in Royal Tenenbaums and Bottle Rocket). There's also Margaret Yang, Apple Jack, Ogata, and Vikram. Taken together, they form a fleet of quasi-caricatures and walking punch lines, meant to import a whimsical, ambient multiculturalism into the films. Anderson frequently points out his white characters' racial insensitivities ("Which part of Mexico are you from?" Wilson asks Ines in Bottle Rocket. She shakes her head. "Paraguay." "Oh, Paraguay ... that's over ... under ... Guatemala. ..."), but he presents them, ultimately, as endearing quirks.

Like his peers Zach Braff, Noah Baumbach (who directed the excellent Squid and the Whale and co-wrote Life Aquatic), and Sofia Coppola (whose brother Roman helped write Darjeeling Limited), Wes Anderson situates his art squarely in a world of whiteness: privileged, bookish, prudish, woebegone, tennis-playing, Kinks-scored, fusty. He's wise enough to make fun of it here and there, but in the end, there's something enamored and uncritical about his attitude toward the gaffes, crises, prejudices, and insularities of those he portrays. In The Darjeeling Limited, he burrows even further into this world, even (especially?) as the story line promises an exotic escape. Hands down, it's his most obnoxious movie yet.

[w/o horse]

The detail to attention

classic horse. you rival GT in bizarre linguistic anomalies.

I read over that one three or four times before I realized what I'd done.

[Pubrick]

The detail to attention

classic horse. you rival GT in bizarre linguistic anomalies.

I read over that one three or four times before I realized what I'd done.

symptom of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia

can be cured with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

[SiliasRuby]

Spoilers kind of, I guess

I loved this!!!!! Well, I guess that is a god damn no brainer since everyone here thinks I like everything, which I don't. I hate rush hour movies, predictable romantic comedies and the 'friends' TV show, but I digress.

I went to the official LA premiere on thursday night with Natalie Portman, Wes Anderson, Jason S, Adrien B, Owen W, and Roman Coppola in tow. It surpassed my expectations and the characters made me smile throughout the whole movie. There were so many memorable moments it's hard to pick just one. But my fav. probably has to be when Jack puts on the song as soon as the indian girl went into the all three brothers'  compartment to get himself ready to woo her again. It's a heartbreaking movie that really is going in a different direction for wes.

The afterparty was ok, I saw peter bogdonavich that creepy guy who trapped jake g. in his basement in the movie zodiac and James Van der beek among others. I got a poster and the soundtrack free.

[MacGuffin]

that creepy guy who trapped jake g. in his basement in the movie zodiac

You mean, Roger Rabbit?

[SiliasRuby]

ya.

[pete]

Let me disagree with this for a second: he's pointing out pretty much what every movie and tv show has been doing for the last thirty years, which is that white characters don't really interact with non-white characters who are less fleshed-out except mostly through service and retail situations.  come to think of it, I guess that is quite ethnocentric, but I'm not sure if it is any more "unbearably white", than anything else Jonah Weiner has to endure in his long and storied career.  He also just straight made up parts of the story and ignored the other parts for the sake of his article.  I'm getting queasy defending this movie with a guy who ain't never gonna come to his board, and his name is Jonah Weiner and he writes for Slate magazine, two things that are a hella whiter than me.

Ravi come say something for or against this movie, you lover of Indian films!

Unbearable Whiteness
That queasy feeling you get when watching a Wes Anderson movie.
By Jonah Weiner; The Slate

[Stefen]

I saw an interview with Wes and he pronounced Paris as Pair-EE. The douchebag way to pronounce it.

Let the backlash begin.

overrated.

[modage]

Wes Anderson
Source: The Onion AV Club
October 10th, 2007

Never say the MTV Movie Awards are entirely useless: For many, the left-field award given to Wes Anderson's 1996 debut feature Bottle Rocket was a first introduction to one of American film's most distinctive stylists, comic or otherwise. Written with longtime friend and collaborator Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket established Anderson's knack for lacing whimsical comedy with a touch of melancholy, and launched Wilson's stardom. Anderson's reputation didn't take off until his 1998 follow-up Rushmore; from there, he made two ambitious ensemble pieces about family, the bittersweet New York tale The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, his eccentric first crack at a major studio production.

Anderson has returned to family themes with The Darjeeling Limited, a typically luxuriant travelogue about three estranged brothers (Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Rushmore star Jason Schwartzman, who also co-wrote the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola) crossing India by train. Anderson recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the pleasures of Indian "chaos," his acclaimed commercial work, and why his movies seem to improve on second viewing.

The A.V. Club: Darjeeling Limited's basic premise could be set against any number of backdrops. Why India?

Wes Anderson: In the end, India is really the subject matter of the movie as much as anything else is. I wanted to go to India because of movies I had seen that were set there, which I had watched over the years, and one particular book called The Photographs Of Chachaji by Ved Mehta. He used to write for The New Yorker pretty frequently, and it's a very good book. I sort of developed a fascination with India after reading it.

But along with my own interest in India, and my own affection for the country, the story that Jason, Roman, and I dreamed up together is about these three brothers who want to take a very programmed, spiritual journey of enlightenment, with laminated itineraries. And for somebody who would like to do that, and thinks that that might work, India might be at the top of their list of places to go and try it.

AVC: It would also be a place where a precise itinerary would be impossible to follow.

WA: Well, I don't know if it would work anywhere, but India would be the last place in the world it would. India is a place where one of the great pleasures for a foreigner is that you're constantly surprised. Everywhere you look is something that is either funny, or very moving, but there is always so much that is so unexpected. That's part of the reason why people who like it tend to love it.

AVC: India tends to evoke chaos, but your movies are very orderly. Was there a conflict there?

WA: I love the feeling of chaos that you feel when you are in India, but a lot of making a movie is about order. You make a schedule, and you try to stick to it, and the better you plan, the better off you are in the end, in most cases. But our approach with this movie was very much that whatever went wrong, we were going to make that part of our story. If the hut was brown, and we left for the evening, and when we came back, the hut was painted blue with flowers all over it because somebody thought that it would be a good idea, that's the way we were going to use it in the story. That happened. And that is the sort of thing that happens all the time. The bumps in the road can be so peculiar, and that was what we wanted the movie to be about.

AVC: Did the film surprise you in how differently it turned out than what was planned?

WA: People seem to think that my movies are so carefully coordinated and arranged—and in a lot of ways, they are—but every single time I make a movie, I feel that every director makes these choices. You make choices about your script, you make choices about your actors, and how you're going to stage it, and how you're going to shoot it, and what the costumes are going to be like, and in every single detail, you make that decision. And for me, what ends up happening is, I wind up surprised at the combination of all these ingredients. It never is anything like what I expected. That was certainly the case with this movie. In the end, it doesn't resemble anything like what I had in my mind. And yet, piece by piece, they were all things we chose together along the way.

AVC: How well-schooled were you in Indian culture before embarking on this project? Had you spent much time there?

WA: I think I continue to be not well-schooled at all in Indian culture or history, because there is so much there. I've only been going there for a few years, and I started to go there because I wanted to work there. Satyajit Ray's films are part of what drew me to India, and I've seen and know a lot of his work. I know niches. But the movie's from the point of view of a Western tourist, and that's what I've always felt like there.

AVC: While this film has a luxuriant, exotic look that really isn't like Ray's work, you use a lot of wonderful music from his work. What kind of influence did he have on the film?

WA: For me, Ray was one of the ideal role models for the kind of director I would like to be. He's somebody who wrote his own scripts. He often adapted books, but he also created his own material. He was regional and had his own area in West Bengali, around Calcutta, where he worked. He had his own sources of money. He had a little family operation to make his movies, and he made a lot of movies. And they're often very personal.

Somewhere along the way, he started composing the scores for his movies, which I recently heard was for expediency, because he felt like he could turn them around a lot faster than what he was getting from the people he was working with. He didn't have enough money to wait for them to take longer. Anyway, I loved these movies. Somewhere along the line of writing this movie, I pulled one of Ray's scores I wanted to use at the beginning, and then realized there was a second one I wanted to use later on. We didn't really know how much we were going to use until we were in the cutting room. But the movie is wall to wall with music from Ray's films and from Merchant-Ivory's films up until [the three brothers] are kicked off the train.

AVC: You always collaborate on your scripts. Are there limits to what you feel you can accomplish on your own, or why do you feel the urge to collaborate?

WA: I think it's a few things. In the case of this film, one of my ideas was that I wanted to make a movie about India. Another of my ideas was that I wanted to make a movie about three brothers. And I thought I would like to do a movie on a train. But the biggest idea of any of those was that I thought I would like to write with Jason and Roman. The movie is really the combination of all three of our points of view, and I don't think it's anything like I would have done on my own. I enjoy working with collaborators, and I enjoy working with my friends. Part of the movie is about that process where one person is telling a story and it's connected to their own life. In this, Jason's character is able to move on to the next chapter in his life when he is able to finish the last chapter in his book.

AVC: The three of you traveled to India by train before writing the script. Was there role-playing involved? What sorts of things did you incorporate from that adventure?

WA: Mostly what we got out of that adventure were details. Those guys had never been to India at that point; they were just getting to know it. That was the main thing. We had the first part of the story figured out, but a lot of the movie is about traveling, and a lot of our experience as travelers went in it. I'm being vague because I can't think of anything specific.

AVC: Were there any stop-offs? In the film, the characters are stranded for a bit after they're booted from the train. Was there anything like that, where you were completely off what you intended to do?

WA: We planned a train journey, because we wanted to see what that was like. But we went there for two main reasons: So I could introduce those guys to India, and because we needed to write somewhere. So I thought this would be a good way to keep us together. Most of our time on that trip was spent writing, sitting in one room or another working on our story.

On that trip, we did things we normally might not have done, because we were trying to act out the story to some degree. So in situations where we might have been more reserved, because the story is filled with ritual and religion, we were always going into temples. I was particularly obsessed with participating in any religious ceremonies I could get involved with. We joined a lot of groups that I would normally be to shy to get involved with, but India is a place where often people make you feel very welcome. That colored that trip.

AVC: So many people talk about your movies being more resonant on repeat viewings. Is that by design? Are there emotional cues that are maybe subtler than people tend to pick up on the first viewing?

WA: I have a hunch that might be right. Any time someone doesn't like one on the first run, I hope they will give it another shot. At least we'll get another chance. But I do feel, in my approach, I am not really a minimalist. I don't like to leave out ideas that I think could add something to the story. Sometimes, you can't quite pick up on all of it in one sitting. It's not by design. But maybe it's a side effect of my approach.

In the case of this movie, we withhold a lot of information. There are lots of things that we have figured out about our characters that we don't tell the audience. We consistently made this decision not to explain things, because I felt it seemed right for the movie that it would be spare in terms of the information, until a certain point in the story. There are a couple of points where we reveal everything all at once without explaining it. That's sort of our idea.

AVC: There's always an economy and concision to your work. People talk about your films as having the qualities of a short story, in that respect.

WA: Well, there certainly are short stories where you suddenly get what was going on the whole time. And that's what happens with almost every play. You're really supposed to read the program before it starts, and then it takes some time to figure out what is going on. There's this Harold Pinter quote which I can paraphrase, which we kept referring to because we felt like it applied to what we wanted to do. He was asked to explain the meaning of one of his plays. And he said, "This is what they said, this is what they did, this is what happened." That's his whole thing. He doesn't really want to go beyond that. I wouldn't say that our movie takes this to the degree that Harold Pinter has, but we definitely felt some connection to that quote. Or that misquote, anyway.

AVC: Many recent movies owe a debt to your work. Are you flattered by that, or does it bother you.

WA: I think I would be flattered by that. If someone pointed it out, I would like to think that it's true.

AVC: It doesn't take anything away from what you're doing?

WA: No, the only thing that takes away from it is when they steal some music from one of my movies and put it in a TV commercial. I am not crazy about influencing TV commercials. But if I legitimately influence someone making a movie, I think that is really flattering.

AVC: Speaking of commercials, you've been doing some interesting ones lately. Under what circumstances do you take commercial work? Is it tough to advance a personal vision while still satisfying your client's need to sell something?

WA: Well, mostly with commercial work, it isn't about personal vision. It's not a personal effort, it's work for hire. That's more my attitude with those. You just want to be a professional worker. I did the American Express commercial, and that was different. They went to me and said, "It's a commercial, but you can write something." And I had something I wanted to do, and I could put my friends in it. Sometimes it's fun to do a commercial. But I consider it to have no connection to my personal work.

AVC: Maybe the commercials just seem personal, but the style is so unmistakably yours.

WA: It would be hard to argue that I wasn't still trying to do my thing. But if I was going to write something, they wouldn't have to keep saying things into their mobile phones.

AVC: Your last film, The Life Aquatic, was at a budget level you hadn't experienced before. You've downshifted a bit with Darjeeling Limited. Is there a level where you start to get uncomfortable? Do the expectations and distractions get too much when the budget reaches a certain level?

WA: With The Life Aquatic, for instance, that's a complicated movie with big sets and ships, and it's kind of a giant thing. We were making it shoestring for the kind of story we had to tell, but it was a giant, giant shoestring. We ended up spending $58 million on that movie. But there was no real effort made to modify it so that more people would go see it than any other movie that I've done. It's the same kind of personal story. I just did what I wanted to do. And maybe that isn't the right way to approach something where you're spending $58 million.

The other thing is, it took us 100 days to shoot that movie. It was very difficult. I like to work more quickly. With this movie, we made a particular effort to move quickly and find a system to move quickly and to make it for a much, much lower budget. We made it for a third of The Life Aquatic, and it was a happier film experience overall.