Ah, Wes Anderson.

What a weird guy. Okay, I’ve never actually met the man, so I don’t actually know if he’s weird. He could be the most pedestrian guy on the face of the planet for all I know. But if you’re a true believer in the ability to understand a person based solely on the creative work that they do, his films really suggest a somewhat odd personality.

I love Wes Anderson films. They’re so iconoclastic. I can spot something that Anderson made after only a few minutes, and not just because there’s always at least one Wilson brother in it. He has a very individualistic way of shooting a film that really stands out from everything else. It’s very mythopoesic. Very much the work of an auteur.

You have to be careful about the word auteur. A lot of times you hear it tossed around for just any schmuck out there who has not so much a singular vision as they are just a spoiled asshole who doesn’t listen to people. So the term has a bit of a negative connotation thrust upon it. In my mind, undeserved. To me an auteur is the highest form of flattery. And a spoiled asshole is just a spoiled asshole.

There used to be a lot of auteurs out there; Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, John Cassavettes, Michaelangelo Antonioni, to name a few. For any one of those mentioned above all you needed was to watch about three minutes of any of their work and you know immediately whose film it is. And their stuff was always interesting, even if it wasn’t always good. Even as Hitchcock pretty much didn’t have it in anything he made after The Birds, there always was at least one shot, one sequence, something that made the film interesting to watch. Just check out the long track out of the killer’s apartment in Frenzy, a film that otherwise is pretty bad.

But alas, they’re all dead now. And there just doesn’t seem to be many auteurs left. There are a few. There’s Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, and Atom Egoyan, for starters. Although unfortunately not all of their work is really all that great, or at least not consistently great. There is Spike Lee of course, although his last few since Summer of Sam have been weak by his own standards. And Martin Scorsese used to be an auteur before he dropped all the style and character out of his work to get an Oscar. He’s the only filmmaker I know who got his first Oscar on his fifth or sixth best film.

But there is always Wes Anderson. And thank God for that. I went to see his latest film The Darjeeling Limited this week. And I loved it. Top to bottom, it was great. Exactly the kind of film you hope Anderson can manage to make consistently for at least the next decade.

The Darjeeling Limited is a story following the exploits of three brothers, played by Wes Anderson regulars Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody, new to Anderson’s acting stable but fitting right in. The three brothers are on a trip through India, scheduled and arranged by eldest brother Frank (Wilson) as a spiritual journey, meant to reconnect the brothers who have not talked to each other at all in the year after their father’s funeral.

The trio interact, just as anyone with siblings might recognize at least to some degree; the oldest takes charge of the two younger brothers, they play little political games with each other, talk to one about the other behind his back, promptly rat each other out about these side talks, fight, get in trouble, and all the time able to snap together as a unit when it counts.

Like I said, I loved this movie. Definitely one of the better ones I’ve seen this year. And its got all the trademarks of a Wes Anderson film that I just cannot get enough of. His wide angle close ups, the quick odd looking POV shots, the offbeat pace, the cool soundtrack. Usually I could care less about the soundtrack in a movie, but he always picks good tunes. And he doesn’t do that crappy remake of a classic song for the movie either. You want a Stones tune, get the Stones tune, don’t have some half assed cover recorded to save on royalties.

And you can’t talk about a Wes Anderson film without talking about his trademark horribly dysfunctional yet quasi-genius characters, doing stupid and sometimes tragic things, all the while speaking the most ridiculous lines. Yes, the dialogue is downright silly. It always is in Anderson’s films.

Both of you out there who actually read this crap I write here probably notice how much I talk about story, probably a little more than I should.  That being said, usually any film that would come out with its characters saying some of the absolutely ridiculous lines like they do in Anderson films would drive me up the frickin’ wall. I mean it’s incredibly stunted, often atrociously expositional, not in the slightest bit natural in any way, and at times delivered by the actors as if to a metronome.

But it works. Really well. And I have no idea why. I’ve never had even the slightest squirm in my seat when watching any of Anderson’s films because of the sometimes absurd dialogue. Even as I sit there watching one of his films I know if I ever tried to get by with characters in my own work saying things like Bill Murray and Bud Cort did in The Life Aquatic, no reader would ever get past the fourth page. Yet somehow Anderson uses it, and it works perfectly. His characters still have great depth, charm, and feel really human, even as they use the silliest language. The best I can figure is because everything in his work has at least that subtle touch of absurdity to it, what the characters say really can’t be taken too seriously. That’s the best explanation I got.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised then that I loved this movie so much. I admit, I trust Anderson quite a lot to deliver, and I will see anything he makes, but I had some doubts about this one going in. Because on the face of it, this is not the kind of film that I ever like.

I really do not like travel movies, especially those of the far off exotic type. I have no doubt that a lot of India is a beautiful country, as is Brazil, Nepal, The African grasslands, or any of the various far off places people go for a taste of the exotic. But a film about going to one of these places, especially for some ‘spiritual’ enlightenment, well, to me it’s always little more than a travel brochure, and I don’t go see a movie to get a glossed over view of a culture or the people in it. I’m suspicious of anybody who claims that an inner journey requires travel reservations in the first place. Any place can look beautiful or seem hyper-spiritual if portrayed a certain way. Hell, I bet you could make West Somerville look as magical as any place on the globe if you knew what you were doing.

But Anderson doesn’t play it that way. Yes, the film is in India, and yes, the brothers are supposedly on a spiritual journey, but there isn’t even a whiff of overplaying the surroundings or the locals as anything other than what they are. Which is beautiful enough without any pimping required. The brothers’ initial attempts at spirituality are actually comical, not enlightening, because they really are, for all their likeable traits, three silly white tourists who think higher consciousness can be achieved if you get away from all the other white people and stick to an itinerary. I think that’s part of Anderson’s message in this film about growth and moving forward in your life. Which in a way is pretty much what all of his films are about. That and really screwed up eccentric families.

Again, one of the best films I’ve seen this year. I think everyone should go see it. Twice even. Let’s show our support for auteur filmmakers. If we do, maybe they’ll be back in vogue again, and we can get Scorsese to be Scorsese the auteur again.