Yellow

I finally got The Darjeeling Limited, the latest installment of Wes Anderson. One of the main reasons I love Wes Anderson's movies is because he puts painstaking detail into each and every scene. Everything going on from the position of the actor, objects in the background, colors, lighting, music, every aspect is done with real thought, and is on purpose. With this movie, I noticed a whole new aspect to this detail oriented writer/director. The entire movie consisted of a relatively small color scheme. The entire movie was primarily yellow overall, with compliments of blue, black, white, and grays, then with touches of red. This is Wes Anderson's fifth movie, and it seems that he has chosen yellow to brand himself, as well as one particular font, Futura Bold. In Life Aquatic all the credits and text were set in yellow, and again this movie did the same thing. Only this movie went even further than only the credits, and text, but even the actors themselves seemed to take on a bit more of a yellow tone to their skin, and the background as well, and almost everywhere you see yellow. In the middle of the movie it tends to become more blue, and the end of the movie is dominated by red, but the yellow never leaves. It was beautiful.

I also thought Wes Anderson has always chosen the perfect moments to use slow motion, and once again in this movie he chose the perfect moments to put the movie in slow motion, not only that, but the music throughout the movie perfectly fits the scene. The music in general really sets a tone, and also helps tell the story.

The story itself is wonderfully written, by the end of the movie you are really able to relate to the characters, and truly understand all of their quirks. The splashes of subtle humor are peppered throughout the movie making it what I like to call a smart humor. Most comedies seem to consist of stupid humor.

For an example, one of the characters introduces a book he wrote to his two brothers, and asks them to read it. So one of the brothers begins reading it, and upon conclusion he says, "I thought it was really good, but I don't appreciate how the part where I yelled at the mechanic, that never happened."

Then the brother who wrote it looks up at him and says, "The characters are all fictional."