now playing : 23 June

Soundtrack, The Darjeeling Limited, 2007

My wife and I have very different tastes when it comes to a lot of films. I'm an Apocalypse Now: Redux, The Conversation, Blade Runner, Conan The Barbarian, Planet of the Apes, City of Industry, The Big Sleep, Sweet Smell of Success, Night and The City kind of guy. She's more Apocalypse Now (the Original), The Hours, Atonement, Blazing Saddles, Manhattan, An American In Paris. I loved the 70s but they made her gag. You get the idea.

Anyway, we both love Wes Anderson's films. In fact her favourites, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited, are mine too. In the (unprecedented) four month run that Darjeeling had at our local theater I think we saw it six times, even two nights in a row at one point.

A lot of the critics said Darjeeling was derivative of earlier work, unoriginal, blah blah blah. Per usual they pretty much had their heads ... ahem, where the sun don't shine. It's a beautiful film, simultaneously surreal and poignant, fully embracing and celebrating the humanity of the characters and having a little poke of fun at them too.

The difference between Darjeeling and your average run-of-the-mill American release is like the difference between Coke and a lot of good French wines: Coke is what it is straight out of the can, but the wines sometimes need a while to breath. Then they can be something extraordinary.

Anyway, the soundtrack: excellent, and very evocative of the film. Which is pretty much what a great soundtrack should be, IMHO.