The Darjeeling Limited (2007) features Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman as Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman, three brothers who have not spoken to each other in the year following their father’s death. As a way to reconnect and experience a spiritual journey, the brothers take a train ride across India, and with this train ride, there is created a liminal space through which the brothers embark on their passage through grief. Each of the brothers has his own problem that he is unable to overcome: Francis attempted suicide by riding his motorcycle into a ditch, Peter is about to hesitantly become a father, and Jack is consumed by the thought of his ex-girlfriend. Each of these problems is only exacerbated by their evident inability …show more content…
The first Noble Truth is the understanding of suffering (Ford: 129). The brothers must first realize that they are in suffering, which they hint at on the train, with each of them coming to terms with their problems: Jack’s heartbreak, Peter’s unwelcomed fatherhood, and Francis’s accident. However, their suffering becomes much more evident to them once they are kicked off the train and must face their problems head-on. The second Noble Truth is realizing the cause of suffering. In Buddhism, a cause of suffering is ignorance to the truth of reality (130). In the film, the brothers are ignorant to the fact that their problems are largely due to their family life, though this aspect of their suffering helps to further the critique of family that is made through the film. They also come to the understanding that their problems are made worse by their continued, unresolved grief for their father. They each realize this at different times, with Peter stating that his anxieties were due to his belief that he would get a divorce and Jack finally admitting that his stories are ways of processing moments in his life, not just fiction. The third Noble Truth is that there is cessation of suffering, which the brothers realize at the airport is closure with their mother (131). The final Noble Truth is the path to the cessation of suffering, and the film mostly utilizes the Buddhist concept of detachment to lead to the Whitman brother’s cessation (132). Once they meet their mother and are, yet again, disappointed by her frequent disappearances, they look to each other for strength, finally gaining peace in the fact that they cannot change the past. In this, they detach themselves from the suffering of the past and embrace their futures. Throughout the film, the brothers frequently fight over their possessions, with Francis