THE CINE-FILES

issue one: the travel film

ABOUT The Cine-Files is a new Cinema Studies journal that aims to publish one or more issues per school year and is produced by the Cinema Studies Department of Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia. SUBMISSIONS We currently read submissions year round. Watch for our call for papers. Send all submissions or proposals as a .doc or .rtf file to tcox@scad.edu. WEBSITE INFORMATION To find out the latest news about SCAD’s Cinema Studies program or to read the latest issue of The Cine-Files, check us out at http://blog.scad.edu/cinemastudies. ISSN: 2156-9096 Copyright © 2010 by Savannah College of Art & Design All rights revert to authors upon publication Edited by: SCAD’s Cinema Studies Department Graduate Student Editor: Andrew Terhune Contributing Editors: Duncan Pittman Meaghan Walsh Faculty Advisor: Dr. Tracy Cox-Stanton

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contents 1 Christine A. Vartoughian Running with Baggage: Onboard The Darjeeling Limited *Christine A. Vartoughian is an MFA Film and Television student at SCAD, pursuing a career in writing and directing. She is from New York City, where she directed theatre for several years and is a member of Lincoln Center Theater's Directors Lab.

6 Meaghan Walsh “A film unique in the cinema of historic restoration”: Lawrence of Arabia as a Modern Travelogue *Meaghan Walsh is the managing director of the Lucas Theatre in Savannah. She is currently completing her Master’s in Cinema Studies at SCAD and her thesis focuses on gothic feminism in the films of the 1940s.

22 Duncan Pittman Spicy, Laminated, and with a Twist of Sweet Lime: The Darjeeling Limited as Postmodern-Revisionist Travel Film *Duncan Pittman is a native of North Carolina. She is currently completing her Master’s thesis at SCAD, in which she is applying Gaston Bachelard’s theory of the “Poetics of Space to Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty.

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Running with Baggage: Onboard The Darjeeling Limited

by Christine Vartoughian

Throughout film history, the travel film has been a major theme in American cinema. The road movie has led to cult classics such as Ridley Scott’s feminist outlaw tale Thelma and Louise (1991), Terry Gilliam’s take on Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and Tony Scott’s Tarantino-penned True Romance (1993). Integral to these films is the luggage the characters carry with them and what that luggage represents. In Wes Anderson’s most recently released film, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), the road has evolved and carrying baggage takes on an entirely different meaning in this story of three unlikely American brothers traveling through India on a spiritual journey.

The representation of baggage in films can be manifested in a variety of ways. Whether it is the secret stash Marian Crane carries with her in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), or the body of the dead grandpa in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), people travel with what is dear to them. The Darjeeling Limited is no exception to this rule. The film begins with the meeting of three brothers—Peter L. Whitman (Adrien Brody), Jack L. Whitman (Jason Schwartzman), and the oldest, Francis L. Whitman (Owen Wilson). The three have not seen each other since their father’s tragic death one year prior to their reunion. In the past year, each of them went through a major life change. Peter is about to be a first time father, Jack has been secretly living abroad, and Francis got into an accident that almost killed him.

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They board a train called The Darjeeling Limited, each with their own luggage (and secrets) - sienna brown leather cases and bags patterned with an array of small animals and featuring the initials J.L.W. Wes Anderson, an auteur whose films are highly concentrated with expressive mise-en-scène, has taken detailed measure to create personal sentiment and personality in his prop design. Anderson’s brother designed the animal print and the luggage was specially commissioned and designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton. While it is clearly noticeable that the brothers’ luggage is all part of the same set once belonging to the deceased father, Jimmy L. Whitman, nothing is more noticeable than the brothers’ distinct mistrust of one another. All the brothers are quite different from each other in personality and since their father’s funeral, have experienced life changing events: Francis nearly died, Peter is about to have a child, and Jack has been secretly living abroad for a year. The three have unique vices and eccentricities that they can’t seem to shed or hide during their trip. Jack is constantly smoking cigarettes and compulsively sleeps with the stewardess, Peter has an affinity for his father’s old belongings which includes a razor blade he uses to shave himself with, and Francis can’t stop his controlling urges toward his brothers and tries to direct their every move and intention. This situation results in tension and a lack of trust as they struggle to get along with each other. They are seen as brothers primarily through a primordial link. In The Darjeeling Limited, baggage unites the brothers through their father. When their father died, they each took pieces of his luggage, symbolizing how they each have competed for their father’s affection and attention throughout their lives. All three want to have a piece of him as they go their separate ways. This film begins with the first time the set of luggage has been put back together in its entirety, signifying the brothers coming together as a family. They carry this luggage throughout their journey to visit their mother, who abandoned them to become a nun in the mountains of India and never made it to their father’s funeral.

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For a spiritual journey aboard a train, all three brothers have brought with them a significant amount of luggage that they carry with them throughout the various locations and modes of transportations they encounter. The baggage is not only a physical representation of the weight they have to carry, but also the emotional strain of their father’s death and the sadness they endure wherever they go. In the beginning of the film, the first brother we meet is Peter, who is running to catch the train as it is leaving the station, while carrying a large suitcase and a duffel bag slung over his shoulders. He catches up with the train and is able to throw his suitcase onto the train and then grasp the rails and heave himself on board. Peter looks back at a businessman (Bill Murray) who is rushing to catch the train and is too weighted down by his luggage, each arm hanging down heavily, to get close. The businessman gives up in agony, and a subtle sad expression of apology passes over Peter’s face before he moves inside the train. This is the only part of the film the businessman is in, aside from a brief montage of characters at the end. By including a character solely in the very beginning of a film for only a few minutes, the film suggests that the businessman is more significant than he appears. He could represent Peter’s deceased father, as the brothers’ wealth suggests their father was a prominent businessman himself. Peter’s expression when looking at the businessman’s struggle may be a hint of who Peter is reminded of before he enters the train, since at this stage his father’s death is something he has not gotten over yet. The emotional baggage on this journey is the baggage the three brothers carry around for one another. When controversial issues come to a boil, the brothers erupt in a physical fight that leads to them getting kicked off the train for disorderly conduct. In the scene where they are getting thrown out, the first shot we see is a close up of the suitcases being piled outside the train, further symbolizing how the brothers are identified by these suitcases. Though the luggage in The Darjeeling Limited is the most symbolic prop in the film, the viewer also get brief glimpses at the significant possessions the luggage holds. These personal possessions give us a glimpse into what holds precedence in the brothers’ lives. Jack carries perfume that smells like his ex-girlfriend (Voltaire #9), romantic French music on his portable iPod stereo, and his short stories that he pours his life experiences into. Francis travels with his assistant Brendan, carries with him an itinerary and laminating machine, signifying his ego and need for control, while Peter arrives with gifts from his wife’s handmade clay pot company. Peter brings a lot of other people’s things, including his father’s prescription glasses that he wears, his father’s car keys, and his father’s razor which he uses to shave himself with, but nothing of his own. Peter adds more to his suitcase as his travels progress, including a prized poisonous snake, Indian style shoes, and a baby sweater for his unborn child.

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The frequent representation of closed baggage suggests how secretive all three brothers are from one another, since their barely opened suitcases hold the possessions of their private lives. The luggage also represents the three brothers. Its unique physical appearance and eccentricity parallels the brothers’ eccentricity; as the luggage stands out, the three brothers stick out like sore thumbs in remote villages in India.

The designer luggage also raises a question in the brothers’ past. In a flashback scene that takes place on the day of their father’s funeral, they make a stop at Luftwaffe Automotive, a mechanic specializing in German luxury cars, and attempt to take their father’s bright red Porsche despite its missing parts. While they are unsuccessful in their plan, they discover one of their father’s missing suitcases under the hood of the car, completing the collection of suitcases. This surprise affects each of the brothers in a different way. Francis insists that it be taken home and entered in the inventory while Jack claims it for himself, discovering an unread book of stories he wrote and dedicated to his father. Peter questions if Jack is planning on traveling somewhere but remains solely concentrated on getting the car started. As an audience, we can’t help but wonder if Jimmy Whitman was about to take a secret trip before he died, as suggested by the hidden suitcase and the unopened mail and towels inside it. The brothers don’t directly address this idea, but their wild behavior and stubbornness during the scene touch upon an upbringing that was less than stable and more than unreliable. They all have respect and admiration for their

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father, but perhaps this scene gives us a clue as to why their mother never arrived at the funeral. At the end of the film, Francis, Peter, and Jack are about to miss their train ride home and they run after the departing train, much like they are constantly running after trains throughout their trip. In the spur of the moment, a unanimous decision is made to toss away their bags— each and every piece— and in doing this, the three brothers manage to get on the train together. By the end, they have endured a very rocky beginning and have come out with a strong bonding experience that allowed them to cast away their burdens and pain and continue on in life without all that “baggage.” The Darjeeling Limited is a constant reminder of the significance of suitcases to travelers and to explorers, be they interested in finding closure, escape, or themselves. Throughout the marvelous journey, three brothers discover not only themselves, but each other, and learn that they are not defined by their carry-ons.

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“A film unique in the cinema of historic restoration”: Lawrence of Arabia as a Modern Travelogue

by Meaghan Walsh

There has always been a concurrent fascination and repulsion with the “other.” And since the beginning of cinema, that fascination influenced the screen. The Lumière brothers began by sending cameramen around the world to gather footage from far off places and strange lands. While traveling, they also exhibited the films they were collecting. These short glimpses into other cultures eventually evolved into the travelogue. Travelogues featured exotic locales with native cultures for the education and pleasure of the viewer, or at least that was how they were sold. Since then, the travelogue has split and two separate paths have emerged: a documentary style and a narrative style. The documentary travelogue has changed and today is seen in the form of mini-series specials on the National Geographic Channel, “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, or in the form of films like March of the Penguins. But the popular travelogue has morphed into what is now the historical epic, and the hallmarks of the early travelogues still exist in the guise of this genre, and can be seen in the grand epic of 1962, Lawrence of Arabia. This sweeping, fastidiously-made film uses the conventions of the early travelogue and modernizes them to further the legend of T.E. Lawrence, of the British involvement in the Arab Revolt, and the mysticism of the desert and the bedu. Travelogues from the early 20th century contained footage of native peoples and their culture, moving pictures of an ‘uncivilized’ area, images of foreign landscapes, including flora and fauna, and footage of the visiting filmmakers interacting with the native peoples (often in a condescending way, however unintentionally). These elements together create a slice-of-life picture of an exotic location. Travelogues were touted as educational and realistic, promising to be better than any real life journey. Now that actual worldwide travel is much easier, such blanket claims are less prevalent but certain aspects of the attitude still exist. Films in the historical epic genre represent the modern version of an attempt to capture a complicated subject in a condensed form. Mark Jankovich describes historical epics as films that “were frequently sold with the promise that these spectacles not only represented history but themselves were historically momentous achievements. It was claimed that they provided sights never seen before or, at least, never since ancient times,”i a description not unlike those accompanying early travelogues. Travelogues claimed realism and they would “leave the mind impressed precisely as would the actual visit.”ii

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Lawrence of Arabia, a historical epic, features a hero who acts as a guide, leading the natives to triumph in spite of insurmountable odds (often in battle). The historical epic does the same by featuring a distant location, either in place or time, or both. This location shows the way of life for these people, how they live and what their surroundings look and feel like. It boils down complex issues that exist within a culture, people and places to a few cinematic hours. Within the historical epic the hero often attempts to understand or become like the foreign native, but ultimately fails to do so. There is also an innate sense that the foreign culture could be great, if only it would adopt certain aspects of the hero’s outlook. Furthermore, the fact that these historical epics often highlight real people, real battles, and real places, often convinces the viewer that what they are seeing is historically accurate. All of these aspects are holdovers from the early travelogues of faraway places and cultures. As such, the genre and characteristics of the early travelogues still exist in modern historical epic films. In the earliest travelogues, the narrator was the lecturer who traveled with the film and presented the footage in context. This lecturer brought legitimacy to the images on screen by describing what was being seen for the audience and “provided a meta-commentary on the slides and films featured in the programme, perhaps using audience reaction to specific images as a cue to depart from the prepared narration with extemporaneous comments about his experiences of visiting a country.”iii Oddly enough, this lecturer may not have been the one who shot the film, and in some cases had never even been to that country. However, this was not known by the audience, rather the audience accepted this narrator as a learned lecturer. The content would be determined by the audience demographics, and while it was presented as educational, it was, at its center, highly entertaining and exploitative. This narrator acted as a host, or a guide, through these exotic experiences. In the historical epic, the narrator is wrapped in the character of the hero. He comes across a strange land and sees it for the first time, just like the audience. He tries to learn its customs and idiosyncrasies, just as the viewer does. The hero shares his point of view with that of the audience, thus acting like the narrator of the travelogue. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia is the title hero of the tale and is the audience’s guide. In this case, T. E. Lawrence is a real person, who did go to Arabia and fight alongside the bedu during the Arab Revolt, at the close of World War I. There are many extant accounts of his exploits, including his own, from which information can be drawn. Therefore the narrator/lecturer must be given a bit more credence than one who spoke at a travel film who had never been to the country discussed. In the case of Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence himself traveled on a lecture circuit when he returned to England. It was these travelogues which made him famous. Brownlow writes, “Lawrence was the first political or military figure to be transformed into a legend through the power of moving pictures. Lowell Howell, an American journalist, accompanied by a

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cameraman, Harry Chase, had been searching the war zones for a colorful hero. At first he thought he had found him in General Allenby, but when he presented his illustrated lecture in New York and London, he found audiences responding with far more enthusiasm to the lecture entitled With Lawrence in Arabia.”iv The origin of the Lawrence legend began with the early travelogue. Some forty years later, David Lean would solidify that legend with his stunning film, Lawrence of Arabia. At the outset of the film, Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) is in Cairo, as a British officer, stuck in the maps room in the basement of a stuffy building. His life is boring and uninteresting. To prevent him from getting into mischief, he is assigned to contact the Bedouin (bedu) who live in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. He embarks, knowing nothing concrete of the Arabs, and is yet determined to be successful on his mission. Lawrence’s first encounter with the harshness of the desert world takes place during a scene that has become iconic in the film world. Lawrence and his guide, Tafas, stop at a well to rest, water the camels and refill the canteens. It seems like welcome respite from the grueling trek they have just endured. When it seems that they have quenched their thirst, a shimmering image appears in the distance. The two men freeze, and stare into the distance, their backs to the camera. Their gaze is trained in the distance, as the object very slowly becomes a man on a camel. In fact, his entrance last a full two minutes, completely silent. As he arrives, he shoots Tafas dead at Lawrence’s feet. Although Lawrence does not know precisely what to make of the situation, he does not back down. He is as confused as the viewer and yet, Lawrence’s stubbornness of character remains. The man on the camel introduces himself as Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif). When Lawrence retorts that he only gives his name to his friends, Sherif Ali dubs him “English.” To Ali, Lawrence is just another of the English, who has come to play in the sand then go home and pat himself on the back. He assumes Lawrence will do nothing for the Arabs, and will never understand or appreciate the Arabs. Here, the historical epic has taken a step forward from the early travelogue. In the first travelogues, the native peoples would be shown as primitive, quaint and content to be filmed. If there was interaction between the filmmaker and the natives, it was shown to be cordial and pleasant, if distant and polite. If there were any negative native experiences, caused by the presence of the colonialist-era filmmaker, they were not shared with the spectator. The filmmakers wished to be shown as welcome visitors, and they wanted the natives to appear to be willing to share their culture. By contrast, the historical epic can make the attempt to show the ‘other’ point-of-view. Indeed, Lawrence of Arabia tries to show how an Arab might actually react to a foreigner, and in this case was based on Lawrence’s own accounts of spending years in the desert.

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David Lean, British director of Lawrence of Arabia, and consummate world traveler, initially began the project enamored with the figure of Lawrence but became equally obsessed with the desert’s own mysticism. He scouted the project for weeks, and gained the permission and assistance of the Kingdom of Jordan (the existence of which is a direct consequence of the Arab Revolt) for shooting the film on their lands. Lean recalled, “The overriding first impression is that Lawrence was right all along the line. The real desert people are most impressive. Great manners, hospitality, good humour, and gentleness of real men. The town Arab is pretty horrible and on par with the towns themselves.”v Lean, and Lawrence’s, impressions of this foreign culture are vivid throughout the film. The famous scene of Sharif Ali’s arrival demonstrates the comparison of two cultures: that of the hero and that of the native. Lawrence continues in his position as guide for the audience, as he leads the Arabs across the Nefud desert, a feat difficult for Arabs, let alone an unpracticed Englishman. Again, the viewer is subjected to stunning yet harsh views of the desert as Lawrence and the bedu cross the unforgiving expanse. He asks for no special treatment from Sharif Ali or Prince Feisal (“I drink when you drink”) and truly tries to learn the ways of Arab life. The hero’s actions comment on the natives and highlight their differences. As Lawrence and the bedu arrive on the other side of the Nefud, it is revealed that Gasim, one of the younger of the bedu, has become lost. Lawrence immediately sets out to find Gasim, to which Sherif Ali objects, insisting that it is too dangerous and that he would only be killing himself. Sherif Ali implores that Lawrence refrain from going back into the desert, stating that both will die. Lawrence and the other brother head back into the grueling desert. Lawrence orders the brother to wait and he disappears over the horizon. Time passes. The sun beats down. The music denotes confusion and disorientation. Then Gasim’s brother sees a mirage in the distance, as Lawrence slowly begins to take shape. Gasim’s brother Farraj races towards him shouting for joy, and the camera cuts to a very wide shot, making the two travelers mere specks approaching one another. This shot reinforces the vastness of this foreign land and the hero’s unique survivalist existence therein, to the spectator. When Lawrence returns to the camp, with all three of them alive and well, he is hailed as a hero by the bedu. They shout “English! English!” and surround him as he sits stoically upon his camel. When he reaches Sherif Ali, he says simply, “Nothing is written.” In this moment he has defied the Arab tradition, which has allowed the bedu to live in this harsh climate. But instead of showing disdain, Sherif Ali is impressed. This is an instance of the narrator-as-guide placing the values of his own culture before those of the host’s. And in this case, it makes him superior to a savage reality that is accepted by the Arabs in the eyes of the audience. It simultaneously illustrates the difficulties of life in this area, and

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what the bedu do to survive in it. For them, the loss of one person is better than the loss of two, however tragic it may be. It is not cruelty imposed by the bedu, it is the cruelty of the world they live in. The scene shows how the situation is handled in the Arab world. Yet to the Western world, this behavior seems unacceptable. It does not mesh with our beliefs, and any true Western hero would not allow such a thing to happen. If the boy died, it was not because Lawrence didn’t make every effort humanly possible to save him. In this scene, Western ideals are not just displayed, but heralded. As the film progresses, Lawrence lives his life more and more as an Arab. He wears Arab clothing, travels by camel, eats and drinks as they do, lives by their social standards, and leads battles for their cause. He even tries to institute and lead an Arab parliament in Damascus so that the Arabs may govern themselves in their newly-won freedom. Still all of this cannot make him an Arab. Lawrence must still battle his own demons, as hiding in the robes of a sherif cannot mask them forever. The horror of leading bloody massacres eventually begins to drive him insane and he must leave. His position as a guide for the audience ends when he returns to England. Within the film he has shown the audience a full cross-section of his experience. This, therefore, becomes the audience’s experience as well and often comes to encompass their impression of the entire culture. The location portrayed in Lawrence of Arabia is precisely the type of exoticism found in the early travelogue. The desert is portrayed as mystical, and the imagination of the viewer brings with it images of Scherazade and Aladdin, genies, harems, ancient curses, fallen empires, magical and beastly gods, and mysterious people. At the time of the Arab Revolt, near the end of World War I, there were few concrete borders in the Middle East. Tribes of bedu were separated by natural boundaries and fought for control of small pieces of oases in the scorching desert. They live in a wandering manner, taking their encampments across the desert from well to well. Such desolate landscape was a blank canvas for David Lean in the making of Lawrence of Arabia. He wrote, “The mirage on the flats is very strong and it is impossible to tell the nature of distant objects…I can also see how the desert can mean something, little or nothing to various people. I found it a stimulant…It somehow threw me back on myself and made me very consious [sic] of being alive. There you are. Just you and it…Everyone is somehow more on their own out there, and perhaps they just have to come face to face with themselves if they come under its spell.”vi Little, physically, had changed since Lawrence’s time there (“There are lots of remains of Lawrence’s blowing ups”vii). Its ancient austerity influences the feel of the film and Lean insisted on perfection for each shot. The production was massive, and: not only did the cast and crew have to assemble in the desert, but a catering corps, to feed them, accompanied by sleeping tents, equipment

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trucks, horse and camel wranglers, plus vast amounts of food and water to keep the livestock fed and watered. The making of Lawrence of Arabia was practically a military operation, with Lean commander in chief...It took 20 months to film Lawrence of Arabia, during which the cast and crew had to endure the scorching heat of the desert during the day, the freezing cold at night, not to mention sandstorms, plagues of insects and being cut off from civilisation for weeks at a time.viii

Lean was determined that the audience must see the desert as he saw it, and as Lawrence saw it. Most importantly, it should solidify the already existing impression of the desert, a hallmark of the early travelogue. Lean and Lawrence each eschewed the bustling cities with modern conveniences, in search of a more ‘authentic’ Arabia. Lean himself had to grapple with his own preexisting notions of Arabia. He wrote, “The desert is wonderful. It gave me a bit of a shock when it wasn’t at all what I expected from my boyhood diet of ‘The Sheik’, ‘The Garden of Allah’ and ‘Beau Geste.’ ... At first I was worried by not finding what I expected. ... Then I suddenly realized what I was seeing was better than what I’d hoped to see.”ix Lean was as fastidious a filmmaker as there ever was, and as such, every shot, and moment that made it to screen, was purposeful. He spoke about scouting shots for Lawrence of Arabia and describes the epiphany he had regarding Sherif Ali’s entrance:

The mirage? I was out there on a mudflat and another jeep was miles behind us. It came over the horizon, and the jeep, I must tell you, looked much better than the camel because the dust went up in the air behind it. Wonderful V shape, like an airplane in some windtunnel. And I thought “What a wonderful entrance.” Then some people said -and I’d heard it before -- that you can’t photograph a mirage. So I got out my camera and got the jeep to go farther away again and I took a series of pictures. And it did come out.x

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Lean was notorious for his perfectionism and visual research. The result is a stunning image, which he used to manipulate the audience’s vision of the locations shown. Lawrence of Arabia also attempts to show how the Arabs lived, like early travelogues attempted to document local lifestyle. Travelogues claimed to show the unaffected culture of the natives. It supposedly depicted peoples who were untouched by the outside world. Lawrence of Arabia examines the customs of the Arab, primarily by way of comparison, which is enhanced, again by the narrator/hero figure. For example, the audience sees Lawrence and Allenby in the tent of Prince Feisal. It resembles a diplomatic meeting of leaders, but it clearly differs. The clothing of the Arab is in stark contrast to the plain khakis of the British. The tent is filled with colorful textiles and the men are sitting or reclining on the ground. There are no marble halls, or pictures of the reigning monarch on the wall, yet it is clear that this is a place of seriousness and that Prince Feisal is a person of reverence. This scene depicts the traditions of the royalty of the bedu. The lifestyle of the everyman, as shown in Lawrence of Arabia, is much more survival-based. Daily life consists mainly of finding and protecting sources of water. Complications include: invading tribes, sandstorms and quicksand. To add to the difficulties, during the Arab Revolt, the bedu were also attempting to fight off and survive attacks from the encroaching Turks. The film implies that it was all the Arabs could do to survive the day. The audience witnesses long camel-back journeys, dangerous sandstorms, and death by quicksand. Warring tribes shoot each other over drinking from the wrong well. Lawrence of Arabia as travelogue shows the Arab as comparatively uncivilized and savage, in need of guidance from a Westerner. Lawrence himself says as much to Sherif Ali at the well. After Tafas is killed, he retorts, “He was my friend”:

SHERIF That! LAWRENCE Yes. That. SHERIF You are angry, English. He was nothing. The well is everything. The

Hasimi may not drink at our wells. He knew that. [Turns to leave] Salaam. LAWRENCE

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[Yelling after him] Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.

SHERIF Come, I will take you to Feisal. LAWRENCE I do not want your company, Sherif.

Lawrence does not care if he appears rude to this man. In fact, he hopes to offend him as he was offended by the shooting of his friend. And though he understands, at least intellectually, that such actions are part of the bedu culture, he does not accept them as his own and isn’t willing to even under threat of death.

Lawrence’s, and therefore the audience’s attitude, toward the Arab culture changes during the span of the film. Lawrence learns more about the culture and the individuals within it, and he begins to accept portions of it, in small quantities. After Lawrence rescues Gasim from the Nefud, Sherif Ali and Lawrence sit by a fire. Ali looks upon him with respect, and Lawrence can sense it. He opens up to Ali and reveals a bit about the English culture that is not all that pretty:

SHERIF El Aurens. Truly, for some men nothing is written unless they write it. LAWRENCE Not El Aurens. Just Lawrence. SHERIF El Aurens is better.

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LAWRENCE True. SHERIF Your father too, just Mr. Lawrence? LAWRENCE My father is Sir Thomas Chapman. SHERIF Is that a lord? LAWRENCE A kind of lord. SHERIF [proudly] Then when he dies, you too will be a lord. LAWRENCE No. SHERIF Ah, you have an elder brother. LAWRENCE No. SHERIF But then, I do not understand this. Your father's name is Chapman. LAWRENCE [pained] Ali, he didn't marry my mother. SHERIF I see. LAWRENCE I'm sorry. SHERIF It seems to me that you are free to choose your own name, then. LAWRENCE Yes, I suppose I am.

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SHERIF El Aurens is best. LAWRENCE All right, I'll settle for El Aurens.

A significant amount of respect on both sides is displayed in this short scene. Lawrence reveals an awkward detail of his heritage and Ali does not mock him, or the English. Instead he offers inclusion as one of the bedu. When Lawrence turns from Ali and the fire in embarrassment, Ali take Lawrence’s officers’ uniform and burns it. When he awakens in the morning, Ali gives him the robes of a sherif. He presents Lawrence, now El Aurens, with beautiful white robes with gold tassels and a white burnoose (head piece). Lawrence looks upon himself wearing them and says, “Great honour”: SHERIF The honour is to us. Salaam, sherif. LAWRENCE Is it permitted? SHERIF Surely. He for whom nothing is written may write himself a clan. These two scenes demonstrate a great deal about the interaction of these two cultures. This attempt at understanding is now a two-way street, an evolution from the early travelogue. The narrator/host is now concerned with pleasing and respecting the foreign tradition. Early travelogues put forth only colonialist ideals of the ‘other’ and often portrayed them simply, without depth. While some of Lawrence of Arabia retains this attitude, as discussed above, there is also an additional layer found in the historical epic which portrays an attempt, usually failed or incomplete, to understand and absorb the other culture. Sherif Ali reexamines his impression of Lawrence as “English” after his defiance and ultimate success in rescuing Gasim. Up to that point, his experience with the English was one of inaction, and selfish intentions. Lawrence’s actions were both gallant and at extreme risk to self. Lawrence also performed this feat to save an Arab, not fellow Englishman. This true admiration of the visiting culture is unseen in the early travelogue. Additionally, Lawrence begins to respect the Arab culture. He does not make any more insulting speeches about their actions. He accepts their christening, being named El Aurens. He also accepts their gift of the robes of a sherif with true humility. He bows to the bedu, in their fashion, and greets them with “Salaam” - only after getting permission from Sherif Ali. Lawrence shows great respect for the bedu and their customs with these actions. Unlike the early

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travelogue, the historical epic portrays instances of true cultural dialogue between the host and visiting peoples.

The distant and remote time in which Lawrence of Arabia takes place also make this historical epic much like an early travelogue. One offering of the travelogue is the chance to see a culture that is nearly extinct. Lyman Howe, popular travelogue producer and lecturer used the phrase “See Them Now or Never” in his advertising. He exhibited films with the “recurrent notion of a world inhabited by rapidly disappearing native ‘types’.”xi The claim was that modern times were encroaching and their authentic culture is quickly disappearing. It was therefore necessary to document the culture in its native habitat before it’s too late. Furthermore, it was necessary for the viewer to see these travelogues to understand the world that is changing around them. Lawrence of Arabia visits two such disappearing cultures at once. Both the English Victorian era and the bedu culture were fading. Lawrence represents the disillusion of the youth that were thrown into W.W.I. The Lost Generation was raised with Victorian ideals in an industrial age. Encouraged to believe in chivalry, at all costs, they were sorely dumbfounded when wave after wave of their sword-rattling cavalry were mowed down by machine gun fire and nerve agents. This war was nothing like their fathers and grandfathers had described. Those that survived the battles were shattered, confused, and felt they had nothing to build the rest of their life on. Brownlow writes, “...the Western world needed an authentic hero to shore up the ideals for which the war had allegedly been fought. ‘A shining symbol was needed to prove that chivalry and nobility has not vanished, that we had not fought in vain when individual genius could rise out of mass horror’.”xii The foundation that the Lost Generation had built was demolished. Lawrence somehow managed to find that place where the ideals of chivalry still survived. He found a place where he would ride into battle, sword raised, and come out victorious. He found the adventure the rest of

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the generation had been promised. While every generation has its hallmarks, the Lost Generation was deeply scarred and it changed the literary, art, and music world forever. Lawrence of Arabia provides a glimpse into the psyche of this generation. The second vanishing culture to be showcased in Lawrence of Arabia is, of course, the bedu. Living the same way for centuries, their traditions are hard-earned and stoic. They had yet to be overexposed to the modern world. Only the biggest ports were modern cities, and so the bedu continued to live a nomadic lifestyle relatively untouched. Lawrence is able to immerse himself in this foreign world so completely that it seems as though the rest of the world has gone away. Lawrence acts as the audience’s guide through the last days of this remote culture. Once the bedu begin to fight back against the Turkish invasion, they tacitly agree to interact with the outside, modern world. The British, led by Lawrence, presence puts modern machinery and ideas into the hands and minds of the bedu. While this change affords them the victory and independence they wish for, their existence is forever altered. They cannot return to the simplicity they lived before the Arab Revolt. Lawrence of Arabia as a historical epic explores not only a distant land, but, an extinct time. It offers the audience a chance to see, in dazzling Cinemascope brilliance, a world that no longer exists. During the early days of film, sound was used to legitimize the genre of the early travelogue, including real recordings of native sounds to accompany the images on screen. Audiences of the time found that travelogues were “greatly enhanced by the mechanical sound effects and human voices which could be heard at appropriate points during the film screenings. ... and makes the audience forget for a moment that they are really looking at views, but are spectators at actual events.”xiii Even at this early stage of cinema, the importance of sound to the realism of the travelogue had become clear. The historical epic uses dialogue to advance the narrative, rich ‘natural’ sound effects, and sweeping symphonic thematic scores. These evolved elements have become part of the epic’s style. In Lawrence of Arabia, the viewer’s experience is enhanced by all these elements. The audience gets to hear the sounds of sandstorms, camels bleating, and clang of swords in battle. Maxford writes:

Lean makes as much use of startling sound effects as he does imagery to impose on his audience the other world of the desert. As Sherif Ali approaches Lawrence and Tafas from the mirage, all we hear is the gentle pad, pad, pad of the feet of Ali’s camel as it makes its way towards the well, all of which adds to the building tension. ... Finally the taking of Aqaba, we’re refreshed by the sound of waves crashing thunderously on to the beach as Lawrence rides along the coast in triumph. Indeed this is

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the first time we’ve seen a body of water in the film, and after the heat and dust of the Nefud, one can almost feel the coolness of the foamy waves.xiv The sounds of nature help to create the atmosphere of the film. The one and only time women are in the film, it is their sound that is notable. As Lawrence and Sherif Ali head off to battle there are women sitting of the tops of the cliffs, looking like outcroppings, watching the men ride by. They are wailing and the sound is loud and overwhelming. Lawrence is struck, impressed and confused by it. Ali explains the significance of this, that the women are wishing them well as they head into battle. The sound is deafening, and strange to the Western ear. The inclusion of such a scene further accentuates the exotic nature of the desert culture, and the strange world that Lawrence is in. An aspect of the historical epic that did not exist with early travelogues is the score. Scores give emotional themes to the overall film and individual scenes. Music is an international language, and certain styles evoke subconscious responses. Lawrence of Arabia, at this point, would seem empty without the score. Composer Maurice Jarre created different leitmotifs for desert scenes, British scenes, and Arab scenes. The themes are repeated throughout the film, at different tempos and in different instrumentations to enhance the action on the screen. The desert theme, the main theme of the film uses the harmonic minor scale to replicate the sounds of Arabian music. Harmonic minor raises the 7th, which gives an exotic sound to otherwise Western melodies. Interestingly, harmonic minor is a scale used by Western composers and orchestras to evoke a sense of Arabian or Middle Eastern music and sounds. Middle Eastern culture’s native music is not played in harmonic minor. They do not even use the Western diatonic scale, which ascends by half-steps. Their instruments are played on a 23-note scale and include quarter and three-quarter increments. Jarre composing with the Western harmonic minor is another instance of a foreign culture being simplified and digested for the movie-going audience. This main theme is one that audiences could walk away humming and it acted as a unifying aspect within the film. It is sweeping, fluid, romantic and appears in otherwise quiet moments. It can shift tempos and moods, softly, like the sand dunes. It comes to represent the romantic ideal of the desert, and a foreigner’s discovery of it. It is triumphant and confident in itself and makes the listener feel all of this at once. The British theme is used the least, but it signifies the properness of English society and procedure. It uses simple melodies played lightly and staccato. It suggests the idea that form is most important. It keeps everything outwardly lovely and anything that does not fit within this rigid, developed form should change or be left behind. By contrast, the Arab theme is native and tribal. It begins with loud tympani, like the banging of war drums. It is dissonant but strong, as if everyone is

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playing confidently but not everyone is on the same page. Its progression is unpredictable and non-melodic. It conveys the confusion and incoherence of the bedu and the Arab peoples before Lawrence solidified their efforts. This theme occurs primarily in battle scenes, themselves moments of confusion. At times, these themes are played over one another and reflect the attempted unity of disparate agendas. Just before the intermission, Lawrence returns from the desert to the British headquarters in Cairo. Even though he was sent as an emissary from the British army, he returns an emissary for the Arabs. He confers with his superiors while wearing the robes of a sherif, not a British uniform. Now the clash is no longer between Lawrence and the Arabs. It lies somewhere between Lawrence, his support of the Arabs’ independence, and the English. As the film goes to intermission, the music reflects this great conflict. The stirring desert theme remains in melody, but has changed in structure. It is played over the tribal Arab theme, and the piccolo, which is the lead instrument of the British theme, cries shrilly over the top of everything. It is all coming to a boil and the disturbance is evident. Lawrence can no longer ride in the soft, fluid strains of his romantic ideals. Nor can he find meaning or order among the British ranks. And yet, he is not quite an Arab. This ambivalence is reflected in the score, and the viewer is cued by the musical themes. Just as with early travelogues, the historical epic uses sound to create the atmosphere of the mysterious place. The historical epic Lawrence of Arabia extends this characteristic by creating additional sounds in the composition of emotional effective music. The original trailer for Lawrence of Arabia opens with a quote from Winston Churchill: “I deem him to be one of the greatest beings alive in our time... we shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war... It will live in the legends of Arabia.” The fantastic claims of Churchill, a well-respected and larger-than-life figure himself, set the tone for this historical epic. The quote mirrors the claims made by early travelogues and further aims to impress the audience with representations of accuracy. A quote such as that from Churchill is unlikely to be refuted by the Western world and solidifies “a spectator’s imagined version of an object or phenomenon, [that] can never fully escape the internalised culturally-constructed way of seeing it which may end up more ‘real’ than the first hand account.”xv These claims at realism are underscored by the fact that real people are characters in the film, the location shooting, and the length. These aspects of the historical epic genre lead the viewer to assume that the film is a fairly accurate account of that particular piece of history. Lawrence of Arabia has become a pocket encyclopedia of the Arab Revolt and T. E. Lawrence’s involvement in it for millions of Western viewers, for at least two generations so far. Its grand scale (shot in Cinemascope), locations (Jordan, Morocco, Cairo, Spain), troubled characters (on all sides), and fabulous length (longest cut at about 222 minutes) all seem to add

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up to realism. Instead they merely point to fastidious filmmaking, not historical accuracy. Historical epics often claim to tell “the real story of” or the “true events of.” In some cases, most certainly in Lawrence of Arabia, the filmmakers were committed to telling Lawrence’s story. The only failing is their limited view of the world, which colors their concept of the story. David Lean represents the story from a British perspective. Even the film’s several attempts to portray the Arab worldview were made by a Westerner. Although the exact circumstances are unknown, the support of the Kingdom of Jordan changed at some point during the course of filming. Lean and producer Sam Spiegel went from having free-reign in Jordan for a location shoot, to being asked not to return. Additionally, when David Lean was asked how Lawrence of Arabia was received in the Middle East he said, “They banned it in Jordan, where we shot it, because, as you know, Hussein is the king there, and Feisel, the Alec Guinness character in the film is portrayed as an unwarlike man who would rather spend his time in the garden. This isn’t history as it’s taught over there.”xvi Furthermore, the official history of the Kingdom of Jordan does not even acknowledge the existence of T. E. Lawrence, let alone a positive or negative comment on him. Their history of the Arab Revolt does not include a need for English guidance. The only mention of the British involvement is one of betrayal, regarding the French and English dividing of Arab lands with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The website of the Kingdom of Jordan states that “The Sykes-Picot Agreement specified that most of Palestine was to be entrusted to an international administration. The agreement clearly contradicted the promises made to Sharif Hussein of Mecca. To further complicate matters, in a deceitful move British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour in 1917 issued a letter to a prominent British Jew, Lord Rothschild, promising Britain’s commitment and support for a Jewish home in Palestine.”xvii Still, does this mean that T. E. Lawrence had nothing to do with the battles against the Turks? Or are they merely tired of Western images of their own? Despite being accepted in the Western world as an incredible example of filmmaking and exceptional storytelling, Lawrence of Arabia represents only one aspect of the Arab Revolt. This does not mean it is a fictitious account; only that it is not all encompassing. Early travelogues faced the same challenge. At least some of the footage displayed the life of natives, but, the presentation of information documented was done by Westerners. It is impossible for a documentarian to remain completely anonymous, as everything in life has shaped their personality that, in turn, affects their interests in shots, aesthetics and theme choices. This is highly evident in the history of the early travelogue. The historical epic genre represents a movement toward an evolved version of the travelogue, which attempts to include the perspective of the native in the exotic narrative. Lawrence of Arabia, a masterful historical epic, fulfills the role of

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modern travelogue through its use of the narrator/hero, its exploration of foreign cultures and locations, an endeavor to understand the foreign culture, use of sound effects and symphonic scores, and an attempt to display historical accuracy. These aspects of Lawrence of Arabia, and other historic epics, are evolved from the early travelogue. i Jankovich, Mark. “’The Purest Knight of All’: Nation, History, and Representation in El Cid (1960).” Cinema Journal 40, no. 1 (2000): 79. ii Griffiths, 293. iii Ibid, 287. iv Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 402. v Ibid, 412. vi Ibid, 414. vii Ibid. viii Maxford, Howard. David Lean. (London: BT Bradford, 2000.): 110. ix Brownlow, 412. x Stevens, Jr., George. Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute. (New York: Knopf, 2006), 431-32. xi Griffiths, 289. xii Brownlow, 408. xiii Griffiths, 294. xiv Maxford, 115-116. xv Griffiths, 293. xvi Stevens, 432. xvii Jordan - History - The Great Arab Revolt. http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_arabrevolt.html

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Spicy, Laminated, and with a Twist of Sweet Lime: The Darjeeling Limited as Postmodern-Revisionist Travel Film

by Duncan Pittman

When Wes Anderson’s film The Darjeeling Limited was released in October 2007, Film Comment reviewer Christopher Norris remarked that the pop-teur’s oeuvre and current locale “prompted one unsettling question: has the twee auteur become a Marc Jacobs imperialist, leading his WASP pilgrimage through the jewel in the crown and fattening his menagerie of eccentrics?”i While provocative, cleverly written and suspicious film snobbery always makes for good yellow (entertainment) journalism, such surface readings of the film’s content and message are too shallow in their depth. Upon first glance the film is a self-indulgent tale of spoiled, affluent white Western males vacationing in India. However, to know Wes Anderson is to understand that his meticulous attention to detail extends far beyond ambitious production design, eclectic soundtrack compilation, and quirky, Indie casting. Rather, Anderson is able to craft a tightly constructed narrative and richly textured characters that touch on deeper issues. Set in a postmodernist construction of “India,” I argue that The Darjeeling Limited serves as a revisionist travel film that simultaneously employs, satirizes, and revises the depiction of the western tourists and their interactions with the “other” in narrative film. Western cultures have always been fascinated by the East and the mysteries and explanations contained within its “other.” As Edward Said notes, “the Orient was almost a European invention and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, and remarkable experiences.”ii In addition to fascination with the Orient, the West has used the otherness of the Orient to define and identify itself. This defining interest led to numerous incarnations of western representations of the Orient, beginning with 19th century travel writing and novels. The interest created by these writings brought about the physical presentation of “primitive” peoples at the World’s Fair and Vaudeville shows, allowing patrons to experience the non-western “other” up close and personal. The success of these shows led to the widespread dissemination of these images through the most recent and intensely visceral of all modes of communication, motion pictures. Since the invention of cinema, film audiences were entranced by representations of the “other” in their various exotic locations. Some of the first films were ethnographic in nature, such as the Lumière Brothers’ actualities, which were shot on location all over the world. These early films allowed Western cultures to experience the “other” first hand, almost like a postcard in motion. Later, more sophisticated examples included the ethnographic films of Martin and Osa

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Johnson, which were more anthropological in nature and sought to understand non-western cultures and contrast them to the Occident. Out of this format, travelogues developed, allowing the general public (before tourism and travel became widespread and within the reach of the middle class) to visit distant locations and be exposed to other cultures. Travelogues such as Beautiful Japan (1918) by Benjamin Brodsky even staged some events much like Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), in an effort to encourage tourism. Ultimately, like Darjeeling, these films reveal more about the traveler than the place itself. This travel imagery provided a means for “Hollywood cinema to incorporate the earlier cinema of attractions alongside the constraints of classical narrative.”iii Early examples of exotic feature films like Tarzan (1933), The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), and King Kong (1933) were more exploitative in nature, turning the non-western into a spectacle of the “other.” Modern fiction films employ the “other” in more subtle ways, but continue to glamorize the western traveler’s presence within a non-western world as depicted in the cinematic text. Over time, issues of political correctness have been addressed and images of the “other” as primitive and backwards have been somewhat corrected. The Darjeeling Limited’s genre can be hard to pinpoint. Its exotic setting and exploration of a foreign culture make it a candidate for a narrative satire of non-fiction ethnographic and travelogue films. “An ethnographic film may be regarded as any film which seeks to reveal one society to another. Ultimately, all films are in some measure ethnographic, for none can entirely evade the culture which produced it.”iv Certainly, the subject matter and circumstances of production surrounding The Darjeeling Limited lend it an ethnographic air, but the lack of serious and in depth cultural investigation as well as its tongue-in-cheek comedic overtones keep it from settling firmly into the ethnographic film category while its specific setting on a train and focus on western tourists align it more closely with travel films. The film’s preoccupation with travel, rather than its satiric ties to ethnography, proves a more efficient means of classification. “Travel and movement are central to fiction film, with the journey among its most common narrative tropes.”v The distinctions of travel cinema have yet to be adequately described and analyzed; thus, not all films about travel are travel films and vice versa. Among those that have been accepted as travel films are films of exile and immigration, picturesque road movies, virtual travel, travelogue aesthetic films, and a host of others. The Darjeeling Limited follows in the footsteps of other travel texts in which white, privileged western males travel to “the Orient” seeking life-changing experiences and contact with the “other” in order to exploit it for their own benefit. Rather than condone the reinforcement of this imperialistic exploitation, however, it humorously critiques and revises the West’s condescending view and use of the Orient. The Darjeeling Limited follows three estranged brothers – Francis (Owen

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Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack Whitman (Jason Schwartzman) – as they travel across India aboard a rainbow-painted train in search of a self-motivated “spiritual journey,” carrying both their existential and safari-themed Louis Vuitton baggage behind them. It is no accident that these brothers’ last name is “Whitman,” a subtle play on “White Men,” and brother, are they white. It is precisely the pervasive and unquestioned entitlement of the bourgeois western traveler that Darjeeling seeks to revise. Anderson is able to subtly toy with these stereotypical roles by presenting the western spectator with a familiar version of India, the version that travelers expect to find upon arrival: bright colors, dust, saffron hued landscapes, brown people with black eye-liner, sitar music, intricate patterns, mosaics, bindis, temples, elephants, spices, snakes, mysticism, spirituality, saris, and brightly colored turbans. Anderson delivers this imagery in spades, complete with the soundtrack of the ideal India, including a selection of tunes lifted from the films of Satyajit Ray and Merchant Ivory. Since this is a Wes Anderson film, this “cinema India” soundtrack is balanced out with late 60s British Invasion rock, a subtle nod to dying British colonial influence and The Beatles’ famous pilgrimage to study transcendental meditation with the Maharishi. Known for his ability to create idiosyncratic and fantastical worlds within reality as the settings for past films such as Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Anderson’s depiction of India in The Darjeeling Limited is necessarily reductionist, especially for his satirical and revisionist purposes. Ideology in the travel film frequently results in “the suppression of significant aspects of the encounter between the traveling party and native peoples in favour of a romanticized mystification of the traveler’s experience.”vi This mystification on the part of Anderson is necessary, particularly given the hyperbolically absurd treatment of the characters’ “spiritual journey.” In presenting a limited yet familiar western view of India, The Darjeeling Limited, like a picture postcard, reifies “the identities of indigenous peoples in similar ways to the travel film and travel novel.”vii The audience’s expectations of the Orient are met and their prior associations with India are reinforced, just as a postcard projects the commonly held and romanticized image of a place. Ultimately Anderson’s Darjeeling is an “idea” of India that incorporates a range of influences, all of which have been filtered through a western viewpoint of what India should be. Thus, Anderson constructs his India through second hand and non-native interpretations and representations. Indeed, a “spectator’s imagined version of an object or phenomenon can never fully escape the internalized culturally-constructed way of seeing which may end up appearing more ‘real’ than the first-hand account.”viii

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Perhaps this is why Anderson’s postmodern, western influenced version of India, the one which is also more likely to be accepted by other westerners, was already too engrained through acculturation to be influenced by the realities of filming on location. Schooled on Jean Renoir’s The River (1950), Satyajit Ray’s poetic yet naturalistic Indian films of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and Louis Malle’s documentaries on India, Anderson—like so many travelers infatuated with a foreign land— had a preconceived vision of India (albeit a cinematic one): “I became somewhat obsessed with the India I learned about from those films,” Anderson admitted during an Indian newspaper interview.ix Yet, he brings to his cinematic interpretation the signature Anderson touches, complete with symmetrical compositions, Crayola color schemes and a certain boyish innocence and appetite for exotic adventure. In this vein, his work is at times reminiscent of the Belgian adventure comic hero, Tin Tin, both for its stereotypical depictions of travel and the “other” and for its vibrant yellow and blue dominated color scheme (Figs 1 & 2).

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 What is most interesting is that Anderson’s knowledge of India is chiefly informed by the films of Satyajit Ray rather than the indigenous Hindi cinema that serves as the national cinema of India and the most accurate expression of traditional Indian culture. The influence of Ray on Anderson’s work is obvious. Like Anderson’s films, “it is difficult to emphasize the beauty, and choreographical exquisiteness, of Ray’s films, the way narrative is inscribed in architectural interiors, lighting angles and physiognomic close-ups, musical scores and the lyrical pace of cinematic story.”x Like Ray, Anderson’s films—which often feel like novels— “draw you very close to his characters. His stories are almost always about people going through a major internal transition… are always adventurous and inventive stylistically,” and focus on “soulful troublemakers as heroes.”xi Though Ray is the most famous Indian filmmaker and an internationally recognized cinematic auteur, his filmmaking style is more akin to the great filmmakers of western countries such as Italy, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union.xii His filmmaking contains none of the inconsistencies in style (excessive length, complicated plots within plots, song and dance sequences, colorful costumes, and incongruous locations) that are the hallmarks of the popular Hindi national cinema.xiii “I do not know a great deal about Hindi films,” Wes Anderson

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has said. “My main knowledge of Indian films is Ray’s films…”xiv Thus, Anderson creates an India as westerner’s have chosen to interpret and represent it, not as non-westernized Indians have represented themselves. Ray’s influence on Anderson’s vision of India is both direct and indirect, for even when Renoir was in India filming The River, Ray hung around the set and served as a consultant on the film.xv Thus, Ray’s influence on Anderson is two-fold. Given the similarities in their styles, it is only natural that Anderson would ultimately film Ray’s India, one that has always been conceived by and represented through a western lens. “There are lenses through which the Orient is experienced and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West.”xvi As a western filmmaker, Anderson goes one step beyond mere imitation and homage to create a film that earnestly satires and revises traditional notions and depictions of western travelers “going primitive.” Anderson precedes his revisionist romp through the Orient by first commenting on the nature of the western traveler. Hotel Chevalier (2007) serves as a vivid short form prequel to The Darjeeling Limited, in that it sets the tone of the feature film, introduces the spectator to the type of western traveler that the film will focus on, and is the first indication that this is a revisionist travel film. It reveals the pretensions of western travelers, a major theme used in The Darjeeling Limited to enunciate those typically ignored in travel films. These are not the typical map-toting, camera draped, fanny-pack-clad, ugly American tourists. Rather, the characters are upper class—if not elitist—travelers with emphasis on the bourgeois distinction. These travelers are Europhilic, cultured, and sophisticated. Yet with this sophistication (be it feigned or natural), there is also an existential angst that permeates their pursuit of salvation in the “elsewhere.” The short film centers on Jack Whitman, who remains anonymous throughout Chevalier. Bundled up in a goldenrod yellow hotel robe, he wanders barefoot around his plush Parisian hotel room, ordering room service and pouting below his pensive mustache. He is a throw back to the Surrealists of the 1920s who made Paris their cultural center, often living in hotels for extended periods of time.xvii When his self-imposed isolation is interrupted by his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman), he quickly snaps to and hastily “dresses the set” of his artistic exile. Quickly tidying the obviously well lived-in hotel room, he meticulously arranges objects from boxes and bubble wrap, desperately hoping to create the image of himself as a bourgeois-bohemian, well-traveled artist. By the time she has arrived, the hotel room is converted into the idyllic, expatriate Parisian getaway. He chooses an appropriate song to queue up when she arrives, one that reflects an ideal, mid-century courtship and embodies his desire to seem cultured, eclectic, and most of all, artistic and cosmopolitan. The arrangements of trinkets and curios conjure images of the Surrealist travelers and their found objects from the Paris

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markets.xviii To his delight, when his ex-girlfriend arrives, she examines each piece, both delighted and intrigued by his feigned eclectic cultured existence (Fig 3). Later, when he reveals “his view of Paris”—a wall of another building— the deconstruction of his masquerade is complete. It is then that the film ends, followed directly by The Darjeeling Limited. As a result, the spectator is prepared for another journey in which the balance of feigned cosmopolitanism and pride in a sophisticated tourist are well established.

Fig. 3 Anderson’s angst-ridden and privileged revision of western tourists is carried over into The Darjeeling Limited. From the moment we meet the Whitmans, they are preoccupied by their superficial goal of a spiritual journey in India and their expectations of what India is supposed to do for them. A common theme in western tourism is “the emphasis on the ‘spirit quest’ or the self-testing, often maturing, pioneer endurance test” as a means of gaining new spiritual understanding of one’s self and the world at large.xix Right away, this quest for change is presented to us by Francis, the eldest Whitman brother, who is uber-organized and specific goals of their eastern locomotive pilgrimage are matter-of-factly delivered as follows: A: I want us to become brothers again like we used to be, and for us to find ourselves and bond with each other. B: I want us to make this trip a spiritual journey, where each of us seeks the unknown, and we learn about it. C: I want us to be completely open and say yes to everything, even if it’s shocking and painful. This flamboyant declaration of the western search for spirituality in the East (in alphabetically bulleted order of priority, no less) serves as the first of many signs that The Darjeeling Limited is poking fun at the privileged western traveler’s role in narrative film. Such intentions, especially when they are sincere, are typically shown rather than declared. By placing this traditionally subtextual element into the text, Darjeeling illuminates the underlying absurdity of this western motivation for tourism. Such adventure “attracts the affluent, for money is not the criterion for prestige. Rather, it is the sacred, non-ordinary quality of tourism for the middleclass nomads of affluence.”xx

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Just as the brother’s journey doesn’t always follow Francis’ well-planned, tightly scheduled (and laminated!) itinerary, so too does Darjeeling lead the spectator off course along the familiar western trip to India. Throughout the film, a gluttonous pursuit of religious experience is parodied and turned upside down. At one stop, Francis reminds the brothers of The Temple of 1000 Bulls, which, true to the brothers’ dialogue throughout the film, contains no Indian words whatsoever. “It’s probably one of the most spiritual places in the entire world,” he rhapsodizes, which is met with apathetic responses from Peter and Jack. At the temple, Francis orders them to ring the bell so as to create a truly authentic experience within the sacred walls. But their eager pursuit of spirituality does not end there. “Take some rupees and put them on this thing in front of the deity here,” Francis instructs. Kneeling at the altar, eyes closed in an attempt to communicate with God, Krishna, or whichever spiritual being they are in search of, their immersion into the spiritual aura of India is shattered when they instead bicker over the fact that Peter borrowed Francis’s belt without asking (Fig 4). After a terse argument, Peter stands and announces that he is “going to go pray at a different thing.” This scene is indicative of the continual interruption of spiritual connection by brotherly turmoil and their flippant and distracted approach to their supposedly sacred quest. Upon leaving the temple, their blasé, confused, collective response is amusing yet telling: “Wow, right. Yeah, amazing. Great, thanks.” Likewise, when they make their way back to the airport later in the film with the intention of giving up and flying home, they make time to pray at the airport “temple.” While solemnly kneeling in front of the humble altar, Jack asks, “What should we pray for now?” (Fig 5). This question is so earnestly superficial that it carries no spiritual weight.

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Later, Francis informs his brothers of a sacred ceremony that he is eager to experience—one supplied by his assistant Brendan and accompanied by “some instructions from ‘the guru’”– in which they will “each take one of these peacock feathers, go off into the wilderness and meditate.” They are given instructions but no specifics as to what the ceremony is actually supposed to accomplish. The simple fact that it is a spiritual ceremony is enough for them. After searching the pockets of his designer sports coat, however, he grumbles, “Dammit, I gave them to Brendan. That’s alright, we’ll do it after the next stop.” This mix of enthusiastic

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spiritual urgency and backburner religious faith is a theme that runs throughout The Darjeeling Limited. Even when their formulaic rituals prove successful, their ostentatious performance is directed by their misguided appropriation of what a sacred ceremony is supposed to be. When inspiration finally strikes, the brothers spontaneously jump up and rush off, in their pajamas, to the nearest mountaintop in order to perform their peacock feather ritual. Their performance consists of a series of indistinguishable grunts accompanied by a mix of bodily contortions that resemble a cross between yoga and Vogueing (Figs 6 & 7). Despite the absurdity of their “yogueing,” it is clear that the Whitmans believe that some form of ceremonial performance is crucial to the effectiveness of the ritual.

Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Central to their half-hearted attempts at a spiritual journey is the notion of an itinerary. Francis believes that by visiting spiritual places and going through a checklist of rituals they will somehow receive enlightenment. This notion that they can impose western control on a foreign place is a common theme of western tourism: “For Westerners, who value individualism, self-reliance, and the work ethic, tourism is the best kind of life for it is sacred in the sense of being exciting, renewing, and inherently self-fulfilling. The tourist journey is a segment of our lives over which we have maximum control, and it is no wonder that tourists are disappointed when their chosen, self-indulgent fantasies don’t turn out as planned.”xxi The convention of the planned trip is hyperbolically employed here in the form of laminated itineraries (Fig 8) prepared daily by Brendan, Francis’s hired personal assistant. Initially a symbol of the westerner’s desire for control over foreign surroundings, the laminated itinerary eventually becomes a symbol of Francis’s frustration with the failed objectives of their journey. During the scene in which the Whitman brothers are gathered at the airport readying themselves to fly back home, Francis, frustrated, attempts to rip the laminated itinerary in half, without success (Fig 9).

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Fig. 8 For the extremely self-involved Whitman brothers, India serves as a backdrop to their personal problems. They rarely acknowledge or comment on anything that goes on around them, keeping both their conversation and their attentions on familial issues and fraternal bickering. Here, the brothers exemplify the conventional tourist who “looks but does not see, listens but does not hear. Not that he has any particular moral or mental perversion, but he is to a greater or lesser extent impervious to the experience of otherness.”xxii Indeed, the brothers come across as unobservant at best, blasé at worst, towards their exotic surroundings. However, when they do acknowledge the India around them, their observations reflect a variety of stereotypical responses to the “other” and “elsewhere.” A key example is a moment in which the brothers spot a group of Indian children squatting on a wall. “Those guys are laughing at us,” Jack says, self-consciously about his western-ness in the eye of locals. “I love it here. These people are beautiful,” says Francis, blissfully consuming the picturesque tableau around him. “They’re playing cricket with a tennis ball,” says Peter, immediately pointing out the cultural errors in the performance of familiar practices. In each instance, it is the western gaze defining and responding to what they are not. Other sparse comments the brothers make reflect a blasé and non-committal response to their surroundings, such as Peter’s inappropriately telling comment at the airport: “I love the way this country smells,” he confesses. “I’ll never forget it. It’s kind of spicy.” Looking beyond the spiritual journey, several other conventions of travel films are targets of The Darjeeling Limited’s revisionist intentions. The all-too-familiar image of bourgeois, white western travelers strolling easily through exotic locales while a group of natives tote their luggage behind them is taken to absurd extremes in the film. The safari printed Louis Vuitton designer luggage emblazoned with their father’s initials serves as a hyperbolic reminder of this image (Fig 9). This exaggeration is taken to further extremes by the sheer number of pieces of this boxy, awkward luggage they feel it is necessary to carry with them.

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Fig. 9 The Whitman brothers rarely deign to carry their own luggage, preferring to employ an army of red turbaned porters in the task. This image is given a modern twist during a beautifully cinematic scene in which Francis, Peter, and Jack, piled onto a motorcycle, speed towards their mother’s convent at sunset, a veritable “Motorcycle Diaries” moment (Fig 11). The tracking shot then pulls back to reveal a small bus following them, filled to the brim with their safari luggage while several of the porters hang onto the outside (Fig 10), visually insinuating that the previously free and inspiring moment would not be possible without the work of the anonymous natives.

Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Central to the depiction of western travelers in narrative feature films is what James Clifford has described as the Myth of Independence. “As Europeans moved through unfamiliar places their relative comfort and safety were insured by a well-developed infrastructure of guides, assistants, suppliers, carriers, etc.”xxiii These helpers were never considered “travelers” because the dependent nature of their position denied them the independent status ascribed to the individualistic, bourgeois voyager. Traditionally silenced in nearly all representations of travel (filmic and otherwise), this overlooked role is re-visioned in The Darjeeling Limited through the character of Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky), Francis’s paid personal assistant, the modern bourgeois incarnation of the slave. Brendan serves as a walking cell phone, GPS, travel agent, and mobile office complete with printer and laminating machine (Fig 12). Despite Francis’s insistence to his brothers that “we never see him, ever,” the audience does see him, tucked away in the servants’

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compartment of the train, crammed into his cot with an Apple laptop, working away, the laminating machine undoubtedly heating up nearby. Like a living, breathing power adaptor for Francis’s journey, it is no wonder that he is put to the formidable test of locating a power adapter with the right voltage from a moving train for his “master.”

Fig. 12 As the film develops so does Brendan’s character. Brendan has alopecia (baldness), a condition which makes him both appear more native and become a target of condescending comments from Francis (“Why’s your head so bald?”). In the tradition of the master/servant relationship, Francis rides Brendan about his performance in completing the tasks he is assigned. Francis’s frequent mistreatment of Brendan and his subsequent decision to quit when the brothers are kicked off of the train firmly expose the Myth of Independence that excludes those members of the traveling party not granted the status of “traveler.” This also revises the subservient nature of the “help” in that it shows the servant standing up to the master and refusing to be mistreated and underappreciated. The importance of his role in the brothers’ successful journey through India is finally acknowledged by Francis, when he calls Brendan from the airport with promises of a pay raise and increased health care benefits in the hopes of hiring him back. “He’s gotta get hired back, because otherwise I’m probably just a bad person. And in some ways I feel like Brendan might be my… friend maybe,” Francis confesses to his brothers. In many ways, this revelation is a revisionist “shout out” to all of the ignored and overlooked helpers throughout the history of travel texts.

Fig. 13 Fig. 14

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In a similar fashion, other helpers are recognized in The Darjeeling Limited, including the train’s Chief Steward (Waris Ahluwalia) (Fig 13), beckoning stewardess, Rita (a.k.a. Sweet Lime), the numerous porters who continually carry the Whitman’s luggage across the country (Fig 14), and Oberoi, the Tibetan sherpa who guides the brothers to their mother’s hilltop convent. Appearing after Francis’s apology to Brendan, the singling out of Oberoi by name in the film suggests that he has learned his lesson and that perhaps future filmmakers and travel authors should follow suit and discontinue the practice of silencing or ignoring those who make “effortless” travel possible. Rita (Amara Karan), a.k.a. Sweet Lime (Fig 15), is a revisionist incarnation of the passive, anonymous, exotic woman. Said classified this role in traditional travel texts as similar to the view held by Flaubert, which provided female characters marked by “their learned sensuality, delicacy,” one who seems to “place no demands on him.”xxiv According to Said, The Oriental woman is an occasion and an opportunity for the western author’s musings: he is entranced by her self-sufficiency, by her emotional carelessness, and also by what, lying next to him, she allows him to think. Less a woman then a display of impressive but verbally inexpressive femininity, [she] is the prototype…of all the versions of carnal female temptation to which his [male character] is subject. Looked at from another angle, [she] is a disturbing symbol of fecundity, peculiarly Oriental, in her luxuriant and seemingly unbound sexuality.xxv Moreover, Jack’s lustful referral to her as “that stewardess” conjures outdated and politically incorrect labels for and associations with female professionals. Anxious to break up with her boyfriend (the Chief Steward) and get off the train, she sleeps with Jack Whitman. In this film, the Oriental woman has a voice, in the sense that it is she who uses a western man, not the other way around. However, The Darjeeling Limited continues to reveal how most western men view eastern women. The nickname Sweet Lime refers to the drink that she offers to passengers as a hospitable gesture as she applies bindis to their foreheads. Francis’s intentionally flippant disregard for her name—“What’s her name again?” “See ya, Sweet Lime!” “Did you just fuck that Indian girl?” “Who?” “Sweet Lime!”— is amusing yet crass in that it represents the western male’s detached association with the workers who make his trip possible, as well as his regard for the anonymously exotic, female ”other.” This is contrasted by Jack’s knowledge of his lover’s real name, Rita. Moreover, the importance of her name is such that when they try to catch the cobra loose on the train and Jack shouts, “Rita don’t go in there,” the Chief Steward reacts in jealous acknowledgement.

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Fig. 15 Similarly, a fellow passenger, The Old Man (a petit Indian man) stands in for the nameless Indian traveler, a representative of an inhabitant of the modern and rapidly industrialized India, which has recently grown in affluence and in turn is beginning to engage in domestic tourism.xxvi He is often seen poking his head out of his sleeper compartment looking at the Whitmans with a mix of confusion and annoyance, or peering over the top of his Hindi newspaper in the dining car as they loudly converse in English at his table, acting as though he were invisible (Fig 16). Sitting mere inches away from the Old Man, they order dinner for themselves and do not acknowledge his presence much less his potential appetite. For them, India is a backdrop to their own experience and problems, and as an unidentified Indian, the Old Man is just another part of that backdrop, a detail to be seen out of the corner of their eye. It is also interesting to note that the actor, Kumar Pallana, appears in every single Wes Anderson film, suggesting a preexisting connection to India.

Fig. 16 The same goes for the female German travelers aboard, who are portrayed as bland, loud, carbon copies of one another, clad in beige jackets and hats and possessing an almost Ninotchka-like level of sternness. These women are often shown speaking in German and eyeing the Whitmans suspiciously, as if their presence also complicates and disturbs their trip through India. This tourist-on-tourist judgment culminates in the scene in which the Whitmans are thrown off the train. After shouting something in German to the boys, Peter asks her to repeat

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herself. “Shame on you,” she scolds them in English. The same goes for the Chief Steward, whose exotic status as a devout Sikh does not stop him from reprimanding them for their bad behavior in a perfect American accent. It is no wonder then that the Whitmans throw rocks at the train as it and all the well-behaved tourists aboard choo-choo off into the heart of India, leaving the brothers behind. Other conventions of the westerner abroad are satirized within the film. The frequent use of an iPod stereo system in The Darjeeling Limited serves as a revisionist phonograph. Throughout the history of filmic representations of travel, from the ethnographic films of Martin and Osa Johnson to Hollywood feature films such as Out of Africa (1985), the phonograph has been a staple of the western traveler and a means of sharing the culture of the west with the “other.” In The Darjeeling Limited, the modern equivalent to the phonograph, Apple’s iPod, takes on an additional function in providing a “portable soundtrack” for the characters throughout the film, and by extension, a romantic projection of a uniquely western India on the part of Anderson. Primarily operated by Jack Whitman, this “privileged object of contemporary nomadism” is ever present throughout the brothers’ journey.xxvii First introduced in Hotel Chevalier to set the mood for Jack’s ex-girlfriend’s arrival, it is also used on the train, in the wilderness, and in their mother’s convent. It enables them to continue their romanticism of the trip even when things are going poorly. This is evident during the campfire scene that serves as the lowest spiritual point in the brothers’ journey where they decide to give up and return home after having been kicked off of the train. Even in their lowest moment, Jack is attempting to provide a meaningful soundscape to their India (Fig 17). This revisionist phonograph can also be read as the brother’s attempt to “carry the home-grown “bubble” of their lifestyle around with them;” a typical trait of western tourists.xxviii

Fig. 17 In stark contrast to the half-hearted attempts at uncovering the spiritual “truth” in Indian temples and contrived rituals stands the scene in which the Whitman brothers encounter a traditional Indian village. The day after being kicked off the

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train, they are walking along a riverbank when three young Indian brothers who are attempting to ford the river fall in. Francis, Peter, and Jack jump into the river to save them. All are successful except for Peter, who loses his grip on the young boy, who ends up dead after hitting the rocks. The Whitman brothers then walk back with the two surviving brothers, carrying the lifeless body of the other young boy. The village at which they arrive is nothing short of a full color spread from National Geographic, complete with traditional clothing, hand built huts, livestock, and brightly colored turbans (Fig 18).

Fig. 18 What follows is a visual montage that serves as a tableau of the implied “real” India that the Whitman brothers have been after all along (Figs 19 & 20). However, the scene is played for pathos and audience’s emotional connection to the situation rather than an exploitative consumption of the ”other,” for the camera is constantly in motion, and thus creates a “moving picturesque scene, composed to provoke emotional reaction.”xxix Just as ethnography has traditionally chosen the village as the scope of its fieldwork, believing it to be the true center of a society’s cultural life, so too does The Darjeeling Limited present the traditional Indian village as the “real” India.xxx This is not only the western impression of “quaint” India but also the India of Ray’s films. This is particularly true of the funeral scene in which the boy’s body is set on a pyre and given over to the river, a scene present both in the films of Ray and in Renoir’s The River. This scene would typically be the performance of the “authentic” that travelers seek out and “connect” with on a superficial level.

Fig. 19 Fig. 20

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This superficiality is avoided in The Darjeeling Limited, however, through the use of a flashback to the day of their father’s funeral. This establishes a firm and deeply felt emotional connection between the brothers and the village, both of whom are in various stages of mourning. The death of their father and their inability to overcome this personal tragedy is the reason why the brothers have come to India in the first place, and the moment rings unexpectedly poignant as the western traveler is not depicted as merely a consumer of the authentic and picturesque performances of the “other.” In doing so, it revises the depiction of such scenes because it avoids exploiting the tragedy of the “other” for the western spectator’s desire of authentic experience. What is most remarkable about the entire village sequence is the lack of verbal communication between the Whitmans and the villagers. Nearly all of their communication is non-verbal. Aside from some Hindi prayers recited quietly over the young boy’s dead body, the only other aural element in this scene is the Kinks song “Strangers.” The song’s telling lyrics, “Travelers on this road we are on/We are not two we are one,” suggest unity among these disparate groups rather than difference. The major emotional turning point for the brothers comes when they finally track down and confront their mother (Anjelica Huston) about her absence at the father’s funeral, the true unspoken reason for their existential angst and spiritual journey. Their mother has since become a Catholic missionary (the ultimate rejection of motherhood) in charge of a hilltop convent. Unlike the conventional image of the missionary whose aim is to convert the world to Christianity, she is presented here as a wounded woman seeking solace and meaning for her own life in her missionary work. Likewise, her confession of her own humanity and facing down of her own demons is refreshing, making her a complicated and interesting character rather than a simple stereotype. Physically, their mother is the opposite of the ideal Madonna. She is tall and broad shouldered, with short cut grey hair, which gives her the appearance of a woman masquerading as The Great White Hope, towering over her short, blue-clad nuns (Fig 21). One can’t help but see a resemblance to her real life western adventurer father, John Huston. Her character serves as a refreshing revision of the missionary prototype.

Fig. 21

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Only after confronting their mother about her absence at their father’s funeral are the Whitman brothers able to finally let go of their existential baggage and reflect on the people, places, and experiences that they had ignored while they were so self-involved. What follows in the film serves as a revisionist take on the people that influence travelers along their journey. In a single shot that moves down a train, we see every character that has influenced the brothers in their own compartment/environment, including Rita/Sweet Lime, the Chief Steward who kicked them off the train, the boys from the village, Peter’s pregnant wife Alice (whom he left behind to come to India), the anonymous Old Man, Brendan, Jack’s ex-girlfriend from Hotel Chevalier, and the white, western business man (Bill Murray) who symbolically represents their deceased father’s spirit. Normally ignored in favor of the main characters (the white bourgeois travelers), here each supporting and influential character is given their own screen time. We are now privy to the brothers’ collective thoughts and experience this flood of influence visually just as they do mentally. The role of these supporting characters is here revised from that of silent support and influence in the subtext to full textual consideration. The Darjeeling Limited’s overall message comes through bright and clear in the film’s final scene. Having successfully completed their spiritual journey and worked through their formerly unresolved issues surrounding their father’s death and the subsequent estrangement from their mother, the Whitman brothers set off for another train ride. This time, however, they won’t be able to make it with their entire luggage in tow. A slow motion sequence shows the brothers quite literally discarding their “baggage” and hitching a ride with a new train, the Bengali Lancer. This time around, however, the train is fairly nondescript—red in color, an Indian symbol of rebirth. Its name is symbolic as well, serving as homage to Satyajit Ray’s Bengali origins, not to mention the portrait of Ray hung prominently on the wall of their new sleeper compartment (Fig 22). A tall Sikh steward again greets them, this time with an easily distinguished British accent. Rita has been replaced with another “Sweet Lime” stewardess, only this time, Peter voluntarily applies his own bindi, actively embracing the “other.” For the first time in the film, all three brothers seem content with themselves and their surroundings. They smile, sit comfortably, and are able to take in their environment and experience India as it rushes past their train window.

Fig. 22

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By juxtaposing the two trains so closely, The Darjeeling Limited accomplishes two things. First, it clearly shows the change that has taken place in the Whitman brothers; they appear lighter, happier, and more content. Second, it serves as a lesson on how to travel “correctly,” that is, to be truly open to whatever comes your way. The complete lack of an itinerary has freed the brothers from the slavery of their expectations. Perhaps now they will act like proper well-behaved travelers and not the spoiled and pretentious boys introduced at the beginning of the film. While some critics are resigned to reading The Darjeeling Limited merely as an escapist western romp through the colorful East, it is my hope that more spectators will change their view of the film and reconsider it as an intelligent and meticulously crafted revisionist travel film. As Christopher Norris concluded in his review in Film Comment, the India that Anderson creates is “a cinematic India of the mind and one Anderson navigates quite ably.”xxxi As such, he is able to insert a postmodern, revisionist stance on the depictions of western tourists and their interactions with the “other” in travel films among his signature cerulean and lemon-hued cinematic canvas. If Anderson continues to evolve as an artist and craft more films that so skillfully satirize and expose the subconscious social and cultural issues present in traditional western cinema, one can only imagine what other conventions he could revise for the silver screen. From the looks of The Darjeeling Limited, it is safe to say that Anderson has a well-stocked arsenal of cinematic tools at his disposal to do just that. In the words of Jack Whitman, “What should we pray for now?” i Chris Norris, “Baggage: Onward and Upward with Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited,” Film Comment, Sept/Oct. (2007): 30. ii Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 1. iii Jeffrey Ruoff, Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel (Durham: Duke UP, 2006), 13. iv David Macdougall, “Prospects of Ethnographic Film,” Film Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1969-70): 16. v Ruoff, 12. vi Alison Griffiths, “To the World the World We Show: Early Travelogues as Filmed Ethnography,” Film History 11, no. 3 (1999): 282. vii Ibid, 289. viii Ibid, 293. ix Arup De, “On Ray’s Trail.” The Statesman. January 2007, 1. x Dirks, Nicholas B. Dirks, “The Home and the World: The Invention of Modernity in Colonial India,” Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of the Past (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995), 60. xi De, 1. xii Rachel Dwyer & Divia Patel. Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2002), 7.

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xiii Ibid, 7. xiv De, 1. xv Dirks, 59. xvi Said, 58. xvii Clifford, James. “Traveling Cultures.” Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 2000), 104. xviii Ibid, 104. xix Valene L. Smith, Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 35. xx Ibid, 35. xxi Ibid, 28. xxii Jean-Paul Dumont, “Indifférance.” American Ethnologist 11, no. 1 (1984), 149. xxiii Clifford, 106-7. xxiv Said, 186-7. xxv Said, 187. xxvi Smith, 2. xxviiIain Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity. (London: Routledge, 1994), 50. xxviii Smith, 35 xxix Giuliana Bruno. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (London: Verso, 2002), 194. xxx Clifford, 98. xxxi Norris, 34.

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