This guilelessly vague dramatic comedy is a warm, engaging, funny film, very immersed in India, a land and culture of baffling beauty, and thus a brilliant opportunity for the stunning showcase of an art director. This Venusian journey of materialistic and tangible beauties begins with Bill Murray (I just contradicted myself, didn't I?) racing to catch a train in the Indian countryside. As he is about to lose the train we see Adrien Brody following the same desperate intention. Brody makes it, Murray doesn't. Brody makes his way to his compartment, where he finds his brothers, played by Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson. Wilson's head is heftily bandaged, as he was in a serious motorcycle crash. Brody and Schwartzman have come to India, apparently at Wilson's proposal, on the Darjeeling Limited, on what he wishes to be some kind of spiritual excursion.<br /><br />This is a great beginning which demonstrates the very character sustained throughout the film. Wilson plays an obsessive sort, which is why his younger brothers find it grueling to be in his company, which tugs the easygoing movie along. One of the film's draws is its Indian framework. Wes Anderson and his co-writers Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola avoid clear inducements of the exotic by surprising us. The stewardess on the train, for example, speaks standard English and seems American.<br /><br />Anderson employs India thankfully not as if he and his audience are tourists, but as a surrounding that is extremely palpable, a testament to the true power of cinema without the vain aide of Blu-Ray and Hi-Def revolutionizing, as we can practically smell India and dread the ferocious sun and the feeling of sweat. Take into account a long-lasting scene in which Wilson, Brody and Schwartzman sit at a table in the diner car with an Indian stranger with whom they do not trade a word. He keeps to himself. The brothers confront each other directly and overtly about their points of conflict and reservation. The Indian does not react in any apparent way. Then again, nobody ever does in a Wes Anderson film. But his tranquil being there is a camouflaged concentration of scene nicety, because all four of them could probably converse in English very well. But I think the world learns a great deal from Americans when we travel and assume that foreigners are not fluent in English. You think you like people-watching, it's people across the globe such as this Indian who take it to a whole new level.<br /><br />I also like how Wilson, Schwartzman and Brody elbow one another in an intimate, familial way. Yes, the film is competent with great presence and simple being and possession of itself, but it does wander. But it doesn't have an ultimate objective, other than perhaps a visceral experience of existence. Anderson may not have used a straight, constantly progressing story structure before either, but he clearly knows it, because the humor and poignancy come in the way he meddles with non-sequiturs and inconvenient interruptions of rambling.<br /><br />Note: Watch Hotel Chevalier with The Darjeeling Limited. Hotel Chevalier is the short film that precedes this story. It is a fun way of feeling more deeply in the know with some characters and more informed than other characters. It also has that Venusian subtlety of touch that Wes Anderson seems to bring to everything.