The A.V. Club loves lists. Previously a subsection of The Onion, The A.V. Club has since come into its own producing a pretty overwhelming number of critiques and feature articles, most of which come down to lists of songs or movies centered around a specific topic.
The first list, films predating Wes Anderson, sprung to mind as I finished Jack Nicholson’s Five Easy Pieces. Including it in a list of films necessary for the existence of Wes Anderson might be drawing too strong a thread of causality from one to the next, but I couldn’t help seeing shades of Wes Anderson, especially The Royal Tenenbaums, through the entire movie.
Maybe there’s universal appeal to the story of a son who flees his socially dysfunctional family of post-upper class savants, especially driven away by the impossibly distant father figure at its head, and goes in search of something different, something other. (Monomyth, possibly?)
Even so, the minor characters have quirks and unsettling misbehaviors that add more to the movie than just advancing Nicholson’s reassociation with his family. Does the brother need to be wearing a neck brace throughout? Probably not, and it’s in those quick details that the similarities to Wes Anderson stick out. At the same time those quick little pieces of life infuse the movie with a greater life, and elevate well beyond the other more standard late-60s paeans to the counterculture.
I’m not sure this should be as highly regarded as it is, but it can’t hurt to use this clip here to highlight the movie’s most famous scene:
Word from The New York Times is that the previously ambiguous ending of Blade Runner, an ending I very much liked, has been dropped in favor of a darker and more concrete ending. That’s strange because I thought the ending of the Director’s Cut, though implied, was still fairly unambiguous.
I’ll reserve judgment on whether this was a good or bad move on Ridley Scott’s part until after I’ve seen the new(est) version. Regardless, the following two paragraphs from an article in the Times did both confuse me and pique my interest:
The clue to Deckard’s true nature comes in a scene that was cut from the original release and only recently unearthed by Charles de Lauzirika, Mr. Scott’s assistant and the restoration’s producer[.] In the film, Deckard falls in love with Rachael (played by Sean Young), a secretary at the Tyrell Corporation, the conglomerate that makes replicants. She discovers that she’s a replicant too. Her memories of childhood were implanted by Tyrell to make her think she’s human.
In the last scene of Mr. Scott’s version, Deckard leads Rachael out of his apartment. He notices an origami figure of a unicorn on the floor. A fellow cop has often left such figures outside replicants’ rooms. In an earlier scene, Deckard was thinking about a unicorn. Looking at the cutout now, he realizes that the authorities know what’s in his mind, that the unicorn is a planted memory, that he’s a replicant and that he and Rachael are both now on the run. They get into the elevator. The door slams. The end.
Which of Mr. Scott’s versions is the article’s author referring to here? I haven’t seen any version of “Blade Runner” in several years, but I could have sworn that this is the end of the Director’s Cut (not to be confused with the upcoming Final Cut). So if this is the ending from the Director’s Cut, what could they possibly have added to the Final Cut to remove any ambiguity? And if this is from the Final Cut, why do I think that I’ve seen it before?
Maybe I’m simply confusing myself. Altered endings not withstanding, it sounds like the movie will be worth seeing again for the newly restored film alone, and I look forward to seeing this at the Ziegfield soon.
(”Blade Runner” Poster Comparison via Posterwire.)
I watched Hotel Chevalier once it was released on itunes, but refrained from commenting on it until after I’d seen The Darjeeling Limited. I’m glad I gave it that two or three day waiting period, and the addition of some context didn’t hurt.
I think.
You see, I’ve had a running problem with a few of the popular indie/twee films of the past decade (e.g. Lost in Translation and Rushmore). It seems actors like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman have discovered they can under-act to the point of sleepwalking through a role and still receive fairly flattering commentary from the critical base. (Note: I have no actual proof of their critical success. Just go with me here.)
I know that both Murry and Schwartzman are talented and have shown a more dynamic range of emotion in other movies. So when Hotel Chevalier was 13 minutes of Jason Schwartzman looking implacable, my hopes for The Darjeeling Limited were seriously undermined.
Perhaps because of those slightly lowered expectations, I was pleasantly surprised at the liveliness of The Darjeeling Limited. Of course, like most of Wes Anderson’s films it still left me with a strange desire for more information, more exposition. But alas, it was not to be. I suppose that, also like most of Wes Anderson’s films, I should be satisfied with the fact that I enjoyed it and not second-guess the details.
And thats what makes me think that focusing on Jason Schwartzman as a walking advertisement for lithium might be missing the forest for the trees. The characters fuction in the first as focal points for Anderson’s preciously organized sets and in the second as a sound board for dialogue which propels the plot forward towards more preciously organized set-pieces (and the occasional rumination on the difficulties of escaping the past).
Maybe focusing on any particular part of this movie (especially the actors, like we reflexively do on most other movies) really misses the point. Maybe Schwartzman, as an actor, is just as important as the luggage he carries.
