An Indian Adventure

The Darjeeling Ltd had tongues wagging at the London Film Festival and has since met with mixed reactions. Wes Anderson's newest flick, just like his others, is definitely Marmite. We caught up with Anderson and three of the stars – Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and newcomer Amara Karan to find out about the journey.

What role did the train play, not only in the story but in the process of making the film. I mean it was home wasn't it?

Brody: The train was home and there was no escape from home. I think the most exciting aspect of that was that it was real and as an actor your objective is to connect as much as you can - not only to your characters emotions but also your environment. Often in film the actual environment is very different than what the character is supposedly going through and what you are interacting with is usually much more limited than what the character is dealing with. In this case he created a very authentic and inspirational environment both on the train and in the exotic locations that we were in and it made our job exciting and easier. The challenge is to create that connection and if you do not have that you're just frozen and there's no excuse to not have it. For instance the ship in King Kong was in the parking lot of the studio. The advantage was no-one got sea sick and we were all able to work and get off the boat but in order to create a sense of reality we worked out a routine where we'd all kind of rock and play off each other's rocking motion. It was constantly this other thing that you have to work with...

Schwartzman: Did they throw water at you?

Brody: There was this humungous wonderful contraption that they invented which was this big thousands of gallons of water tanks that would come down. One of them actually knocked one of the actors over the edge. And that was exciting. That was very realistic but it's a very different process. It's pretty amazing to actually be on a moving train in India, to have a spiritual ceremony, to actually be in a very spiritual place on the top of the mountain top.

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