It’s a movie about luggage.

I just got back from 3 weeks camping in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. I have a lot of movies to catch up on. This means 2 movies a day and I’ll still be behind not seeing the really awful ones that I usually see anyway.

But first a word of advice: Don’t go to Rwanda! They don’t like white people there. I found out why and maybe they have a good reason. They still resent the Europeans for colonizing them (and the Germans for making their women sex slaves).* They never asked for it. And they are still pissed off that white folks didn’t help with the genocide of ten years ago that slaughtered 1 million people in 100 days. I learned all this at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum.

Every day 60 white folks come into Rwanda specifically to visit the mountain gorillas and the local people get none of the revenue. The hostility was obvious.

Since I lived long ago in Munghr, Bihar, India studying Kriya Yoga at an ashram and considering renunciation (we all did back then), I was eager to see Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited.”

But first, there is a 13-minute short film titled HOTEL CHEVALIER, about a young man, Jack (Jason Schwartzman), lounging around a fabulous Paris hotel room. His ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) comes to visit him. Portman, who refused to bare any flesh as a stripper for respected director Mike Nichols, shows off more nudity here than the script required. This little film looks like a reenactment from Anderson’s personal life. How vain and self-centered is this? Most of us are taking photos or digital movies as personal mementos. Anderson makes us watch HOTEL CHEVALIER. It’s his way of getting even with someone.

I’m all for helping out deserving relatives, but THE DARJEELING LIMITED is a selfish project designed for the sole purpose of taking Anderson’s friends on an all-expense paid vacation to India and getting a complete, vulgar set of custom luggage designed by Louis Vuitton’s artistic director Marc Jacobs.** Every piece is painted with little animals and a palm tree drawn by the director’s brother, Eric Chase Anderson. Anderson’s mother supervised the catering, his father handled security, and another brother held a walkie-talkie.

If you loved RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, stay clear of DARJEELING. It will stain your love.

Francis (Owen Wilson), cocooned in bandages and bragging endlessly about his wealth, has gathered his two younger brothers, Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), for a spiritual quest to reunite them and visit their mother (Anjelica Huston), who has escaped after the death of their father to India, where she has taken on the visage of a mother-superior-slash-sainted-lady.

Jack is formless, indulgent and not very likeable. Peter’s girlfriend is having a baby in 6 weeks and he could care less. Francis is domineering. No wonder their mother ran off without even sending a forwarding address.

Bringing along a bald, flunky-boy-slash-assistant, Francis has reserved two first class sleeper cars on the Darjeeling train for himself and his brothers and has outlined a detailed itinerary marked out with holy sites along the way.

None of them really cares about family bonding or spiritual enlightenment.

Given that Schwartzman co-wrote the screenplay with Anderson and Roman Coppola (Wes gave Roman a vacation and job as well), Jack immediately has sex with the train’s Indian stewardess, Rita (Amara Karan). That’s two sex scenes for Schwartzman, none for Wilson and Brody.

This “comedy without laughs” veers in a weird direction when the brothers try to rescue some boys on a fast-moving river and one of the boys drowns. Huh? Well, that sure killed the festivities!

But it is the 20 pieces of luggage, prominent in every scene, which dominates the film. Whatever it is meant to represent – I know, I know, its family baggage you carry around – when push comes to shove and the brothers need to hightail it home, they throw away every piece of luggage.

* The Germans claimed Rwanda as a part of German East Africa from 1890. The Belgians occupied Rwanda without opposition in 1916, and the League of Nations created Ruanda-Urundi as a Belgian mandate in 1923.

** Each piece of luggage was put up for auction benefiting UNICEF healthcare programs, as well as the Rawal Mallinathji Foundation, a medical treatment charity in India, where the movie was filmed.

Buena Vista Pictures / Touchstone Pictures presents an American Empirical picture
MPAA rating R / Running time — 119 minutes

QUOTE: Smug and slow moving. Who cares about Steve Zissou? For Anderson, it was all about the boat.

Here is what Glenn Kenny said in a capsule review of “Life Aquatic” (Premiere magazine, Dec. 2004/January 2005): “There are those who hold that Anderson is some kind of snooty postmodern ironist; I find his pictures full of actual emotion, albeit emotion modulated by a wry sometimes rueful whimsy. (I can’t imagine how anyone could see “Rushmore’s” fadeout, to the strains of Faces’ “Ooh LaLa,” as anywhere near snarky.) This picture, more than anything Anderson’s done, privileges imaginative exuberance over ham-fisted emotional “impact”; I savored every frame and gorged on every sound (being a fan of ‘70s Bowie helps).”

Well, there you have it! I have no frame of reference for “a wry sometimes rueful whimsy” or “snooty postmodern ironist.” If you do and can, like Kenny, compare “Rushmore” to “Rome, Open City,” please let me know. My personal email address is below.

Reading Kenny’s capsule take on “Life Aquatic” in Premiere made me want to hate the film without even seeing it. But I threw away my Kenny-induced prejudice after Touchstone Pictures sent me a Life Aquatic red cap, sky blue Speedo, and official Team Zissou I.D. card (with place for photo). I like Bill Murray ever since he finally, last year, grew tired of all the honors Sofia Coppola got for her body of work (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES and LOST IN TRANSLATION) and addressed it publicly. But, what was Esquire magazine’s The Genius Issue thinking when it put on its December 2005 Bill Murray cover, “Will Somebody Please Give This Man An Oscar?”

Are Oscars gifts or awards?

In Wes Anderson’s THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS the patriarch is ruthlessly self-centered yet so glib and fascinating to Anderson that despite Royal Tenenbaum’s self-loathing flaws, his quirky family are satellites revolving around him – the lynchpin of the drama torturing their lives. Anderson’s “I Was Neglected By My Father” obsession continues. This time the lynchpin is 52-year old “cold-as-a-fish” oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray). He has a rich indulgent wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) and a devoted group of researchers. Zissou documents every moment of his life and he is very involved in filmmaking. He might be a self-centered scientist, but he knows the right camera lens and how to match shots. Anything that might be emotionally interesting for his documentary must be filmed or re-enacted. He knows all about cutaways and close-ups.

Team Zissou consists primarily of Klaus (Willem Dafoe, the only funny character in the movie), a jealous, insecure German engineer; Pele dos Santos (Seu Jorge) a guitar-playing crew member who sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese; an Indian cameraman, assorted staff, and a troupe of unpaid interns. Suddenly a pregnant British journalist, Jane Winslett-Richardson (pregnant Cate Blanchett, adopting a weird accent. Doesn’t her husband ever work?), turns up to do, as Zissou insists, a puff cover story on Zissou. Tennessee co-pilot Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) believes he is Zissou’s long-lost son. Zissou invites him to join Team Zissou since a father-son sub-plot will work well in the making of Part Two of his documentary.

In Part One, Zissou’s lover – I mean, friend – Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel) is eaten alive by a strange sea creature. Zissou vows to find the “Jaguar Shark” and kill him, revenging his friend’s death. Along for the adventure aboard Zissou’s converted World War II ship, The Belafonte, is a bond company representative, Bill Ubell (Bud Cort), who Zissou keeps mocking. Zissou decides he might be interested in the journalist even though he is too old for her and she favors his “son.” Eleanor doesn’t want to kill the shark so she deserts him for the island retreat of her possibly bi-sexual ex-husband, Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum), a rich oceanographer with a Nazi-youth staff.

This comedy then turns ugly but, respecting those who complain I give away too much plot, didn’t make any sense to me. Unless, of course, Anderson is still harboring some unresolved family conflicts and this was his way of punishing Daddy. I struggled to find a satisfactory explanation for the fate of Ned.

Anderson loves his cutaway ship set and it is the star of THE LIFE AQUATIC’S $50 Million budget. Anderson assembled his cast for an extravagant holiday in picturesque locations but neglected to direct his actors. Everyone is self-directing. Murray does awkward, stale line-readings; Blanchett has an affected accent (I hope is not her own); Wilson does a bad Southern accent; Dafoe pulls out a lousy German accent; and that constant interruption to listen to Bowie’s songs in Portuguese (it was nicely done in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY but not here), served no cute purpose.

I did love the fabulous brightly colored underwater scenes that Anderson lavished attention on. But, oh my God, the ending shot was something a first-year film student would avoid at all costs: When Zissou and his clan see the phantom sea creature, each person places a hand on Zissou’s shoulder. Why? Did Zissou have an epiphany? Did he see a piece of Esteban hanging out of the shark’s mouth and needed the reassuring touch of each member of Team Zissou? Did, as Zissou opines, the shark recognize him?

Credits:
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach
Producers: Wes Anderson, Barry Mendel, Scott Rudin
Executive producer: Rudd Simmons
Director of photography: Robert Yeoman
Production designer: Mark Friedberg
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh
Co-producer: Enzo Sisti
Costume designer: Milena Canonero
Editor: David Moritz

Cast:
Steve Zissou: Bill Murray
Ned Plimpton: Owen Wilson
Jane Winslett-Richardson: Cate Blanchett
Eleanor Zissou: Anjelica Huston
Klaus Daimler: Willem Dafoe
Alistair Hennessey: Jeff Goldblum
Oseary Drakoulias: Michael Gambon
Bill Ubell: Bud Cort
Pele dos Santos: Seu Jorge
Esteban du Plantier: Seymour Cassel