What to See This Weekend: Collision Courses

Each weekend, The Back Row compiles a short selection of recommendations for readers’ weekend viewing. The links are for the convenience of those who wish to stream the films on the suggested websites (make sure it’s available in your territory before entering your payment details); readers may well prefer other sites with alternative arrangements for the streaming and downloading of films, and can’t be stopped from using those instead.

“The Darjeeling Limited” (Wes Anderson, 2007)

Available on Google Play; on iTunes; on DVD.

The Darjeeling Limited, which reached the tenth anniversary of its theatrical release this week, is perhaps the worst received feature film by Wes Anderson — at 69%, it has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score, and, when I searched for them, I very quickly found a large number of decidedly negative critical responses to it online — but it’s one of my very favourites, and not only among Anderson’s films. It has in common with the others (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel) all the hallmarks of Anderson’s style and thematic interests, and the ways in which it’s different are mostly what brought about such strong reactions to it — strongly negative, in the case of some internet commentators; strongly disappointed, in the case of Anderson fans who prefer his earlier or later works (or both); and strongly ecstatic, in those, like me, who see something of great artistry and unparalleled beauty in it.

The story concerns three brothers, convened by the eldest, Francis (Owen Wilson), for a journey across India on a luxurious train known as The Darjeeling Limited. Francis, Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) Whitman have recently lost their father, and Francis has survived a near-fatal motorcycle accident, prompting him to reconnect with his somewhat estranged brothers and mother, on a wishful journey of epiphanies and redemption. The pained and strained family relations are redolent of those in The Royal Tenenbaums, even more so when Anjelica Huston appears to play Patricia, the brothers’ mother. Anderson has once again taken a sharp and deeply empathic view of the unique energies of family life through the prism of bourgeois comfort and privilege, and it’s a marvel, as always, to feel how keenly the emotions represented and conveyed by his film are evoked while he maintains so loftily ironic a position in presenting it. (I find that the most distinctive moments of humour in Anderson’s films arise from the tensions, as well as felicitous alignments, between precisely this emotional force and grand, overarching irony.)

Mirth at a Funeral

DVD Notes: “Bernie”

Jack Black as the jolly assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede, pampering a widow before murdering her

Bernie is a cavalcade of small town charms. The director, Richard Linklater, along with his screenwriter, Skip Hollandsworth, not only colour in what was already a fine and detailed and, importantly, fascinating illustration with the amount of attention they give peripheral characters in this bizarrely true story, but they lay a glossy finish over it, and display it with the height of dignity and delight. Linklater is not the Coen brothers, who, in films like Fargo, paint ironic and deriding pictures of the middle-American people among whom they grew up, satirising their civility and sending up their idiosyncrasies. Linklater clearly has tender feelings for the people and places he films – important dramatic characters, and townspeople alike.

Bernie is based on a true story. I’ll try not to spoil much of it. In it, we are told of an assistant funeral director in the town of Carthage in East Texas (“the Number One small town in Texas,” we are authoritatively informed) named Bernie Tiede (Jack Black). Linklater spends a significant portion of the film’s running time sketching in this oddly charming man for us, essentially as a brilliant performer. He arrives from out of town, and soon becomes a pillar of the community, knowing exactly how to behave for the bereaved, knowing how to sell an act (and make a sale) to the residents he comes into contact with, and a dedicated and meticulous artist, painstakingly preparing corpses for burial with cosmetics, and pursuing the greatest luxuries he can get his hands on.

This is Life

DVD Notes: "This is 40"

Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd in "This is 40"

This is 40 is the “sort-of sequel” to writer-director Judd Apatow’s 2007 feature, Knocked Up. That very funny film stars Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen as a young, just-promoted television personality and a slacker, respectively, dealing with a pregnancy as a result of a drunken one-night stand. It uses much profanity and dirty-talk to mask great tenderness and unease, and pokes fun at certain aspects of contemporary society, like the bromance, and the fear that young, immature men have of self-possessed women. But Apatow reaches far deeper into a person's life, and into life itself, and this is what often goes unnoticed by most viewers and critics as well.

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife) reprise their roles of "the other couple" from Knocked Up, Pete and Debbie. A few other characters also reappear, like Jason (Jason Segel), who still openly hits on Debbie, Jodi (Charlyne Yi), one of the girlfriends in Knocked Up and now an employee at Debbie’s boutique, Dr Pellegrino (Tim Bagley), Debbie’s gynaecologist, and Pete and Debbie’s daughters, Sadie and Charlotte (played by Apatow and Mann’s real-life daughters, Maude and Iris Apatow). The film also features performances by other brilliant comics, including Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd (both of Bridesmaids fame), Lena Dunham (from Girls), John Lithgow (Lord Farquaad in Shrek) and Albert Brooks (Marlin in Finding Nemo) as Pete’s dad. In a category on her own, for reasons known to everyone who’s seen her – which, incidentally, are the same reasons she’s been used in the film – is Megan Fox as Desi, Debbie’s other boutique employee, who works on the side as an escort.