Spine 540: The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited is possibly Wes Anderson at his most self-aware, but sometimes its still difficult to tell the difference between deeper symbolism and the director's stream-of-consciousness aesthetic styling, particularly when it comes to the religious elements. Speaking of religious elements, a note: this episode we spend some time talking about the [Anglo] Latin Catholic influence in India since that is the Christianity we see in the movie (and it gives us a chance to reference Black Narcissus). While the colonialism of more modern waves of Christianity into India cannot be sidestepped, we should point out that Christianity has a 2000 year history in parts of India, particularly the south, and it’s not all the rather austere Latin Catholicism that we see in the movie and talk about in this episode. Casey Hape joins us once again as the person we know who has been into Anderson the longest, and we got her husband Jonathan to sit in as well.