- A year after their father's funeral, three brothers travel across India by train in an attempt to bond with each other.
- A year after the accidental death of their father, three brothers -- each suffering from depression - meet for a train trip across India. Francis, the eldest, has organized it. The brothers argue, sulk, resent each other, and fight. The youngest, Jack, estranged from his girlfriend, is attracted to one of the train's attendants. Peter has left his pregnant wife at home, and he buys a venomous snake. After a few days, Francis discloses their surprising and disconcerting destination. Amid foreign surroundings, can the brothers sort out their differences? A funeral, a meditation, a hilltop ritual, and the Bengal Lancer figure in the reconciliation.—<[email protected]>
- Patricia Whitman lives in the U.S. along with her husband, and three sons, Francis, Peter, and Jack. All of a sudden she decides to re-locate to the foothills of the Himalayas in India. She does not return back even when her husband passes away. After their dad's funeral, the sons do not see each other for about a year. Then Francis invites them to India so that they can go and see their mother, who is now known as Sister Patricia. Individually, the trio boards the Darjeeling Limited train in Jodhpur, aided by Francis's assistant, Brendan, who has prepared detailed itineraries for their stay meticulously. At their first stop, they leave the train to get blessings at a Shiv Mandir, buy a snake, and Francis ends up getting an expensive shoe stolen. The snake gets lose, and they are reprimanded by the train's guard and confined to their room, but not before Jack has an intimate sexual encounter with Rita, their stewardess. They leave at the next stop to get blessings at the Gurdwara. Then their journey is interrupted when their train is accidentally shunted to an unknown railroad track. They do resume their journey and get into a physical altercation with each other, resulting in the guard asking them to leave at the next station, Dhelana, and Brendan quits his job. The trio ends up rescuing two of three young boys, staying there overnight to attend the funeral of the one who did not survive. They resume their journey via road and make it to the Himalayas where they intend to surprise Patricia, who is living there, albeit in fear at the moment because of a large man-eating tiger on the lose nearby. But it is the brothers who will be in for a surprise when they wake up the next morning.—rAjOo ([email protected])
- Adult American brothers Francis, Peter and Jack Whitman have been estranged from each other since their father Jimmy Whitman's funeral a year ago, the events at the funeral the last straw in what has been their long family dysfunction. Their mother, Patricia Whitman, who has never been there for them, didn't even attend the funeral. She has since abandoned them without a word of her whereabouts. Because of a near death experience of his own, Francis, the ostensibly and ostentatiously wealthy controlling brother, wants them to reconcile, most specifically by taking together a month-long spiritual journey through the Indian subcontinent on the Darjeeling Limited. Despite not trusting Francis and facing current issues of their own, Peter and Jack agree. Peter, who takes things from his family without asking as a matter of what he sees his right, will soon become a father for the first time with his longtime girlfriend Alice. Jack, nursing a broken heart over the break-up with his latest girlfriend, demonstrates his distrust in the process by purchasing an early return ticket home just in case, without telling Francis of that fact. Regardless of what happens with his brothers, Jack may stay the duration and longer as he is attracted to Rita, the female steward on the train, she who is going through her own issues and thus is working on her own agenda, especially related to the head steward. It isn't until they are well on their way that Peter and Jack find out the true reason why Francis chose India and this trip as their reconciliation. And despite the best work of Francis' aide Brendan behind-the-scenes (and sometimes not so behind the scenes) and Francis in ensuring that the trip goes according to plan, Francis' want for them to experience all that life has to offer along the way may affect what happens to that plan, especially related to a group of three other brothers they meet.—Huggo
- A beautiful and humorous journey on the Darjeeling Limited to a monastery in the Himalayas is a metaphor for how heavy, cumbersome and exhausting carrying our past around with us is. How those around us, unwittingly, because of dynamics built over a lifetime mold us into a role and that we, again unwittingly, assume. That only by leaving the things behind that have slowed us down can we move ahead.—Ernesto Delgato
- An American businessman (Bill Murray) speeds through city streets of India in a taxi. He arrives at his train station, only to see the train, The Darjeeling Limited, pulling away. He frantically chases it, but eventually gives up and is overtaken by a younger man who manages to climb aboard.
The young man, Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), is the second-oldest of three brothers who have not spoken in the year following their father's death in a car accident. The youngest, Jack (Jason Schwartzman), had been living in Europe and undergoing a rocky relationship with an ex-girlfriend (played by Natalie Portman in the short introductory film "The Hotel Chevalier"). The eldest, Francis (Owen Wilson) was severely injured in a recent motorcycle crash (eventually revealed to be a suicide attempt) and wears bandages on his face. Francis had summoned his brothers to reconcile and take a spiritual journey through India together. While the brothers initially act happy to see each other, their lack of trust is evident.
All three Whitmans dose heavily from Indian prescription pain medications throughout the film, though Francis uses his injuries as an excuse. The two younger brothers soon grow tired of Francis's overbearing and bossy demeanor, and Jack confides in Peter his plan to leave early and meet his ex-girlfriend in Italy. Peter reveals that his wife, Alice, is seven months pregnant, and he behaves anxiously when speaking of the situation.
Francis is annoyed that Peter has kept many of their deceased father's personal items (sunglasses, luggage, car keys, etc.). This pushes their distrust even further. Jack is still conflicted and stoically depressed about his ex-girlfriend. Francis and Peter share a brief moment of agreement, as neither of them approved of the girlfriend, and they attempt to help Jack move on. Jack, meanwhile, romances and befriends a beautiful stewardess named Rita (Amara Karan).
Francis has planned the trip to an obnoxiously detailed level. His personal assistant Brendan (Wally Wolodarsky) occupies a different compartment of the train and prints out the schedules and itineraries that Francis provided. Their first stop is a beautiful temple, which the brothers enter after shopping at the nearby market (Jack buys a tear-gas gun and Peter buys a small cobra in a box). As they attempt to pray inside the temple, Peter becomes annoyed with Francis and moves to a different altar. Jack, whom Peter had sworn to secrecy, tells Francis about Peter's upcoming child. Returning to the train, the three brothers finally talk openly together and Peter admits that he never planned to have children because he never expected his marriage to last; not because he does not love his wife, but because of his low self-esteem. They re-board the Darjeeling Limited and continue their journey.
The next morning, the brothers awaken and learn with horror that Peter's cobra had escaped its box. They cannot find it in the compartment and run screaming into the hallway, leaving the head steward (Walis Ahluwalia) to capture it. The snake is confiscated and the brothers are forbidden to leave their compartment for the rest of the train ride.
Sharing the small compartment, the brothers' tempers begin to escalate. Francis chastises Peter for taking their father's possessions, and Peter, enraged, throws a belt at Francis, drawing blood. The two begin to brawl, until Jack ends the fight by spraying his brothers with tear-gas. They abandon their room during the ruckus, and the head steward kicks them off at the next stop.
The brothers walk with their luggage down a rural road next to a river. They spot three boys ahead, crossing the stream on a rickety pulley-raft. The current swells, the raft capsizes, and the boys fall in. The Whitman brothers immediately spring into action, jumping into the water and attempting to save the boys. Francis and Jack haul two of the children to safety, but the third is torn from Peter's grasp by the current and is taken over a small waterfall. As Francis and Jack rush to them, Peter emerges from the river, bloodied and extremely shaken, with the lifeless boy in his arms. Devastated by the child's death, the Whitmans are lead to the nearby village by the two surviving boys. While the boy's family and village elders frantically tend to the body, Francis, Peter, and Jack are given clean clothes and food. The two boys had explained that the Whitmans had saved their lives, and that Peter had done everything he could to save the third child. The Whitmans prepare to leave by bus the next day, but, to their surprise, they are invited to stay for the boy's funeral.
As the funeral takes place, a flashback shows the three brothers the year before, on the day of their father's funeral. They, along with Peter's wife Alice (Camilla Rutherford), are en route to the funeral when Peter demands that they stop at the mechanic's and pick up their father's car, which was under repair. After much bickering and making themselves late for the funeral, they find that the car is still not working, and that their estranged mother will not be attending the funeral as promised. However, the brothers band together in their grief for the moment, reveling in the fact that they are all in the same situation for once.
The Whitmans decide to end their spiritual quest, and prepare to board a plane home. As they wait for their flight, Peter calls his wife on a payphone and reveals to his brothers that she found out that their child is a boy. Francis and Jack congratulate their brother, and Francis offers his $6,000 belt (a prop passed back and forth throughout the film) as an inheritance gift for his nephew. The brothers veto their trip home, and resolve to visit their mother, who is now a nun near the Himalayas.
Upon their arrival at the convent, they are greeted by their mother, Patricia (Anjelica Huston). She warns them that the area is dangerous due to a man-eating tiger that is loose nearby. As they settle in for the night, the brothers confront their mother and ask her why she did not appear at their father's funeral. She says she simply did not want to go, and that she was needed at the convent. Peter tells her about her upcoming grandchild, and they plan to continue their talk in the morning.
When the brothers awaken, they realize their mother had left the convent in the night (which, they are told, she often does). Realizing they will never be able to truly trust her, they begin to trust each other instead. They arrive at the station to catch a train, having decided to return home to America. The train pulls away as they arrive, and they chase after it, dropping their father's suitcases at they run and leaving the past behind. They board the train and happily head for home, as brothers once more.
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