Trama

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.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

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 (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

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

A North American businessman in India (Bill Murray) runs after but fails to catch his train as it pulls out of a station in India. He is beaten to it by a younger man, Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), who is carrying heavy luggage. Peter reunites with his brothers Francis (Owen Wilson) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) on the luxury train called "The Darjeeling Limited", which is traveling across India. The brothers have not seen each other since their father's funeral a year earlier in New York.

Francis, the oldest of the three brothers, has planned their journey in advance. The journey is supposed to culminate in a reunion with their mother (Anjelica Huston), who is running a convent in the foothills of the Himalayas. Francis conceals the real reason for the trip, telling his brothers that they are making the journey for spiritual self-discovery. Francis' brothers are not convinced of this and get annoyed with Francis' controlling behavior such as choosing from the menu for them, which turns out to be a trait inherited from their mother. With his assistant Brendan's help, Francis draws up a detailed itinerary for the trip. He also takes his brothers' passports to prevent them from getting off the train too early.

Francis, who was badly injured in a motorcycle accident, wears bandages on his head throughout the film. The youngest Whitman, Jack, has written a short story which is strikingly similar to his own life. However, he denies those similarities. Jack obsessively listens to the messages on his ex-girlfriend's answering machine at every stop the train makes. Moreover, he has a fling with the train's beautiful stewardess Rita (Amara Karan), whom Francis nicknames "Sweet Lime" for the drinks she repeatedly offers.

Peter, the middle brother, justifies his keeping many of his late father's possessions, including his spectacles, which he wears even though they are not the right prescription, by claiming that he was their father's favorite. His wife, Alice (Camilla Rutherford), is expecting a baby, but Peter fears that their relationship may end in divorce.

At first, the three brothers get high on a cocktail of locally made drugs and pharmaceutical products. In their trips through the Indian provinces, they visit temples and markets. At one market, Francis has one of his $3000 loafers stolen by a shoe-shine boy, and Peter buys a cobra, which later escapes from its transport container. This escape results in the brothers being confined to their cabins. Francis and Peter get into a fight over Peter being the "favorite" and Jack uses the pepper spray he bought in the village to mace his brothers until they stop fighting.

This is the last straw for the train's Chief Steward (Waris Ahluwalia), who is also Rita's boyfriend, and whom the three brothers have repeatedly annoyed. He throws the three of them off the train with all their luggage, leaving them in the desert. The three brothers become close again and even perform one of Francis' spiritual rituals. On their way back to civilization, they see three young boys get into trouble while attempting to pull a raft across a fast-flowing river. Jack and Francis rescue two of the boys, but Peter fails to save the third. This affects Peter deeply. In the boys' village, the three brothers are befriended by the villagers and attend the boy's funeral.

(In a flashback,) the three brothers and Alice are on the way to their father's funeral. They stop on the way to pick up their father's Porsche from the repair shop and take it with them, but the car isn't ready yet so the brothers leave.

(Back in the present,) the Whitmans get on a bus, which takes them from the village to the airport. The brothers stop for a bathroom break, during which Francis removes his bandages to shave, which reveals a number of large, bright scars on his face, but his brothers offer marginal reserved comfort. However, just as they are getting on the plane, they change their minds and decide to go and visit their mother, even though she has sent them a message telling them that their visit is not convenient. The three brothers travel to their mother's convent. The reunion is very emotional (it is learned that Francis's accident was, in fact, a suicide attempt) and the family is reunited for a time. The next morning, the three brothers find that the mother has again left her family and her children.

On the way back the three brothers run for a just departed train, and jettison all their baggage on the railway line as they and some porters run after the train. Jack reads his new short story, which tells the story of his meeting with his ex-girlfriend in the Hotel Chevalier, and gives in, accepting that it is representative of his own life.

Francis wants to give the passports back to his brothers, but they decide that they are safer with him. The Chief Steward (who has kept Peter's snake as a pet), the businessman from the beginning, and Jack's ex-girlfriend (Natalie Portman) look out contemplatively.