Art May Imitate Life, but Life Imitates TV

So this past Sunday night I went out and saw Darjeeling Limited with my peeps. Now this isn’t going to be a review of the movie. Instead this is going to be a sort of one-way monologue/debate over certain thoughts and/or theories that the film provoked. But before I move on to that, let me just say that I really, really liked this movie. It’s light years better then the “Life Aquatic”, mainly because Wes Anderson* got back to making his writing an extension of J. D. Salinger’s work. This film is funny, moving and almost everything in it works. However there was one nagging detail that I just couldn’t ignore, and that detail will be the subject of the rest of this blog.

In “Darjeeling Limited” (which for some reason I keep wanting to call the Darjeeling Unlimited) Owen Wilson plays the character of Francis Whitman. Early on in the movie we learn that Francis has been in a motorcycle accident. Later on we learn that this accident was actually an attempted suicide. I apologize for this minor spoiler, although it will in almost no way affect your viewing of the film. Because of this accident Francis’s head is heavily bandaged through out the movie and he’s constantly taking maximum strength pain killers for his injuries. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue or anything other then an aspect of the story. But, as you all probably know, Owen Wilson actually tried to kill himself just a few short months ago, after the movie had finished filming. Now because of this, it made watching Owen’s character rather eerie. In a sense, Owen is playing a character whose situation nearly mirrors that of his current personal life. And while the chronological ordering doesn’t match up, this still raises the sh*tty art-house question of “Where does the film end and real life begin?”

Thankfully, I’m not a big enough douche to actually waste time and energy pondering this question, but it does bring up an interesting quandary. A while back my older brother Luke told me that he could no longer watch Tom Cruise movies because instead of seeing the character he’s trying to portray all he saw was the crazy f*ck who jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch and spouts off Christian Scientist theology as if it were proven fact. Playing devil’s advocate I rebutted with the fact that Russel Crowe is an egomaniacal asshole, but this didn’t stop him from watching Crowe’s work. He rightfully countered that Crowe is a much better actor, thus you can separate his personal persona from the characters he plays. I’m inclined to agree with this assessment, but I can still watch Tom Cruise films with ease. Maybe this is because instead of seeing Cruise portraying different characters I see Jerry Maguire portraying different character, but that’s a story for another day. In all seriousness though, I can watch Cruise’s film and completely ignore his public persona. I think he’s an actor who’s sometimes great (Magnolia**, Vanilla Sky) and sometimes mails it in like it’s nobody’s business (The Last Samurai, Mission Impossible II and III). Never the less, what all of this has to do with Owen Wilson and the “Darjeeling Limited” is the question of how do you separate the person from the character they’re portraying?

Acting is and will always be built on illusion. Every actor or actress has to deal with a set of preconceived notions, either about themselves or previous roles they’ve played, when they act. Truly great and/or transcendent acting occurs when an performer can overcome or transcend the preconceived notions that the audience has about them. This is probably why the best actor currently going are people who aren’t cultural icons. A person acting is far more believable the less you know about them personally. Much the same the way it’s far either to bullsh*t a total stranger then it is a friend or family member. Probably the best acting job I’ve ever seen was Ben Kingsely in the “House of Sand and Fog”***. I know almost nothing about Ben Kingsley, aside from the fact that he’s been knighted. So really if you want to be a great actor, at least in my opinion, you need to stay the eff out of the limelight.

All in all, regardless of the person’s personal life, if the acting and storytelling of a film are good enough they can more then overcompensate any potential problems. Now I’m not saying that Owen Wilson did a bad acting job or that the “Darjeeling Limited” wasn’t a really good story. I just couldn’t shake the unintentional parallels between Owen’s life and his character Francis’s. Sometimes these things are just unavoidable. Film, and any form of entertainment, is all about a willful suspension of disbelief. If this illusion is broken, it severely undercuts the effectiveness of said entertainment. This is probably best personified by the wide world of sports. Anytime there’s a war or national crisis going on, broadcasters constantly remind that in light of the ongoing circumstances that sporting event we’re viewing is “just a game”. Ironically, sports are always just a game, regardless of what’s going on in the world around us. But most people, my self included, want sports to be bigger then they actually are. On some level the same is true for all forms of entertainment. We really want to believe that the music, book, film or whatever that we’re currently digesting is bigger then it actually is. That somehow absorbing or participating in something that is larger then life we too become larger then life. Sadly, this is never the case. No matter how great something is, and (to a certain extent) regardless of its cultural impact****, the entertainment we consume is always just that: entertainment. And this is why all entertainment is built on illusion.

Anyhow, I really liked the “Darjeeling Limited”, I just think I would have liked it better had Owen Wilson not portrayed a man who tried to commit suicide when he had just tried to commit suicide himself. I guess like Owen and Francis “I still have some healing to do” as well.

Until We Meet Again
* Speaking of Anderson, is there any screen writer out there who makes better use of the word asshole? Between Darjeeling’s “Look at these assholes”, The Royal Tenenbaums’ “I know you asshole!” and Bottle Rocket’s “How does an asshole like Bob get such a great kitchen?” I submit that there is not.
** Now you could argue that this was due to Paul Thomas Anderson’s directing, but such an argument can never be proven as anything more then speculation. For support of this stance I give you Julianne Moore’s cartoonishly bad performance in the same movie. If PTA could make Cruise a great actor in this film then why is Moore so terrible?
*** For those of you who haven’t seen this film, I can’t say that I recommend viewing it. This film absolutely wrecked me. Far and away the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen. Although some of that probable had to do with the fact that I watched it in the dead of winter in Chicago, which is depressing enough as is.
**** I suppose you could make the argument about how art, in various forms, changes our world. But this very rarely happens. And these changes are almost never all-encompassing. And the further away we get from said change, the less and less effective it actually is. In the end the movement or change only ends up impacting a small number of people. Meanwhile the rest of the world goes on unmoved by this whole occurrence. So really art, in any form, doesn’t change the world, it merely influences subcultures. And yes I realize how contradictory this paragraph is, but I like the argument none the less.