Dual review of Darjeeling and Renoir's The River
If I had seen Renoir's "The River" prior to viewing Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited I may have written this piece much earlier and been just slightly less impressed with Anderson's film. As it is, I've only just finished watching "The River" and I'm pleased that my own previous ignorance left me to enjoy Wes's film all by itself.
I was already a fan of Renoir's classic "Grand Illusion" when I read that Martin Scorsese had recommended 'The River" and screened it for Anderson before he shot his India film, and so, having already seen "Darjeeling...", I was impressed with Scorsese's opinion and fascinated by the prospect of another Renoir film I hadn't seen. I wanted to see where Wes was coming from.
Well, I have not been disappointed, and I don't think you will be either. Not only is "The Darjeeling Limited" a tribute as beautiful as "The River" to India and an lovely exploration of human notions of existence, but it is in fact the brother to it's sister film "The River".
I am already familiar with both Hindu and Taoist perceptions of existence: of human life as an extension of the natural world and it's gentle rhythms and happier when it follows that ebb and flow, as I am also familiar with the criticisms of traditional Western perceptions, particularly the overwhelmingly masculine facets of those perceptions regarding machinery as a solution to human problems and as an object of reverence.
That women have it within their souls to more easily follow the natural way of life as men find it more to their preference to master it and control it is, I find, self evident. The most simple archetypal example of what I mean is that of the mother-gardener versus that of the father-mechanic (both of whom I've lived with, incidentally). Both Anderson and Renoir would seem to agree as is apparent in their films respectively.
"The River" is not only filled verbally with this gentle and simple philosophy but it also portrays this through it's characters, characters who despite living closer to nature and their river (the film's natural and therefore feminine metaphor for existence) are troubled by their passions and desires simply because they are human. These motives are mainly portrayed as empirically pure, though potent enough to create discord, and so allow the film to offer it's message without delving into crassness for sensationalism's sake to maintain the audience's interest.
"The River", with it's apparent absence of a cohesive plot and composition of episodic vignettes, is clearly the forerunner of the modern so-called "chick-flick" and because of this I find it no surprise how many detractors the movie has among male reviewers at Amazon and at IMDB. The "chick-flick" has taken abuse for often being trite, vapid and directionless, but how many films aimed at a male audience have been pretentious, self-righteous and contrived? The feminine cinematic format has been developed over the last three decades, sometimes well - sometimes not, but here in it's pure form it is honest, clear and beautiful. It does not matter that it's creator was a man, Jean Renoir; some of the most masculine films have been produced by women such as Gale Anne Hurd.
Where irony peeps in is in that Renoir, a most masculine fellow, created this most feminine film - yet a sensitive director like Anderson created "The River"'s very male-oriented counterpart in his "The Darjeeling Limited".
"The Darjeeling Limited"'s existence has it's foundations in it's imagery and metaphors: In Anderson's film the metaphor for life is a train, a man-made machine whose direction and course, unlike the river in "The River", is directed and controlled in the main by men. That it gets lost from time to time is simply nature's way of affirming itself.
"The River" focuses on the lives of three fresh and enthusiastic young women, all virgins and strangers to romantic love, while "Darjeeling..."'s protagonists are three brothers who are worldly and jaded. In this we have a sense of society's expected form regarding men and women: that women should be fresh, bright and unspoiled and men should be serious and experienced. Both ideals are in evidence as their stories unfold in either film.
Each film portrays it's characters in opposite scenarios: The girls are stationary in "The River"', seeking yet land-bound. The brothers in "The Darjeeling Limited" are constantly mobile, in fact, they are all presumed to take flight at the crisis point. Here, again, we find the dichotomy of male and female clearly shown.
As for India, being used in each film as a place where spirituality is more concurrent with everyday life than anywhere else, we find the young women already residing there in "The River" - that is, having grown with the natural and spiritual they are part of it. They grow with it at an even pace, a natural and feminine notion. In "The Darjeeling Limited" the brothers are strangers to India, they have no clear idea how to access the spirituality there, so they blunder about and 'go through the motions' until it 'works' for them, a most masculine notion where religion, 're ligio' - 'linking back' in Latin, linking back to the All - Nature, is concerned.
The male of our species often feels cut off and separate from the natural world and it's tides, more so than women whose lives are tied inextricably to it's rhythms, and so in Anderson's film the men are simply tourists at first until they are confronted by death, a death which makes their being there in India all too real and poignant. It is death that ties them then to life, and they grow spiritually.
A centerpoint in either film is the cobra and death. True to the nature of masculine and feminine in each film respectively, death is simply an event that occurs during the course of "The River", as natural a thing as living though grievous, while in "The Darjeeling Limited" it is a catastrophically defining moment that shakes it's protagonists to their cores and stalls their worlds until, through the catharsis of mourning and the male-defining element of purposeful action in defiance of death and nature, they continue on their life-paths and face the source of their pain (the absence of their mother). In each film the notion is portrayed with genius and sensitivity with complete sincerety.
There are, of course, many elements in each film that are their own and entirely original. The notion of carrying around "baggage" is central to Anderson's film and it's most wonderful and defining moment is when the brother's leave it behind and get on with their lives, just as surely the most sincerely beautiful moment in "The River" is when the youngest girl (also the film's narrator), having at last drawn socially even with her sister, reveals that the profound wisdom she has just been offered by the object of her affection, a young maimed army captain, is something she has heard before - from her toddler sister!
Just marvelous and beautiful ...
In today's American society the lines that have stood drawn for thousands of years between the sexes and their roles have been blurred, as has the knowledge of the masculine and feminine nature of things and places and existence itself. Each film explores this. In "The River" this nature is self-evident. "The Darjeeling Limited" delves into these notions much more self-consciously, as it should, having come after Renoir's film and also in that much of the masculine nature of life is almost reactionary to existence - that is, the world could go on much the same without the male of the species here to enforce his will and attempt to change the course of rivers and trains.
I don't know what draws people to India, what draws Western foreigners. I am drawn to India. Not perhaps, to the worldly India, the India of industry, tourism and politics, but to the India that has clearly so much to offer in terms of an empirical sense of truth: truth in religion, truth in spirituality, truth in existence itself.
When life has been stripped down to essentials, asceticism remains. Perhaps only in India is this emulated, admired and adored and maybe this is why men of the West are drawn there, to a place where a life without frills may still function.
I don't think it would really make a difference to either film if they were set in an imaginary land, but the locations of either film would have to be places where personal judgement is suspended and lessened by humility, where the modern and the ancient live side by side almost to the point of timelessness, where community in it's most abstract sense is felt in the soul if not always in the head and heart.
Watch them both. Watch them each with someone of the opposite sex. Both films are not only beautiful but works of genius: sincere and lyrical and full of simple truth and gentle humor.