A nation of the mind
Movies set in India are nothing new. Nor are movies that chart a spiritual quest. But the best of both genres requires a distinctive vision to succeed. We look at two movies just out on DVD, which do exactly that. 
Wes Anderson is the king of the quirky and that has, more or less, defined all the movies he has made since Rushmore 10 years ago that marked him out as a great director with a very distinctive vision. That vision still exists, and no film displays it better than The Darjeeling Limited. Loosely put, it is the story of three brothers’ tortuous quest to find themselves and each other while stuck in a morass of personality disorders as quirky as anyone can imagine.
Played superbly by the gangly Adrien Brody, the mustachioed Ringo Starr-look-alike Jason Schwartzman and a bandaged Owen Wilson, the three reunite in a fantastical train called The Darjeeling Limited and make their way round unspecified Rajasthani countryside on a spiritual quest with a cargo-load of Louis Vuitton luggage and a laminating machine, routinely getting into scrapes and on each other’s nerves. As a road trip set in India, Anderson chooses to use the country for all the clichéd reasons—the colours, the smells and the archaic religiosity.
He succeeds in creating a fantastic India of the mind, which exists in the heads of the three protagonists and also, to an extent, in our own heads. As is his forte, visual gags abound, with countless nods to great films set in trains, like Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night and Satyajit Ray’s Nayak. Indeed, so indebted is Anderson to Ray that the great master’s portrait adorns the compartment the brothers travel in. The movie is a profoundly satisfying visual treat, and if it looks like it is all dressed up with nowhere to go, at least the journey itself is worthwhile. The soundtrack’s a killer, too. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Price: Rs 449
There’s much to be said about widescreen photography, especially when the camera is trained on the spectacular, desolate landscape of Ladakh. Samsara examines the spiritual and carnal desires that lie at the heart of any kind of asceticism through the eyes of a Tibetan monk Tashi, who has just come out of an extreme course in meditation, where he has been dead to the world for three-and-a-half years. So intense is this young man that even his masters worry for him. But try as he might, Tashi can’t get away from humanity and human desires.
His ascetic control is sorely tested as he starts getting distracted by women, and begins to fantasise about them. He decides to tackle this pull of the world in his own intense way and leaves the monastery to immerse himself in the world, or samsara. It is an old concept, a coming of age story, but where this film differs is the intensity with which it portrays Tashi’s questioning spirit and his willingness to try anything, as long as it leads him on a path to discovering who he truly is. Tashi soon marries and settles down into a life of domestic mundaneness, managing his father-in-law’s business and being a lover and a husband.
Soon, his domestic life spirals into chaos as he falls for a migrant worker and watches as desire wreaks havoc in his life. Finally, he returns to his monastery with as many doubts as he had before, but at least his own man. Pan Nalin’s directorial debut focusses on a part of India that is remote from the mainstream and, in its own way, makes us marvel at the sheer diversity of this country and its experiences.
AV Channel
Price: Rs 449
