Page 2
Working on a train came with its own unique set of problems. “We would do 20 sometimes because the train would slow down, and then you’d see Wes being like, in the middle of a scene, he’d be by the camera and he’d be like, ‘Why are we slowing down?’ It has to match and it has to work, but for the most part it flowed very smoothly. I think Wes has something very specific that he’s looking to catch, and when he catches it he knows it and you move on. It’s pretty brave filmmaking because he doesn’t have anything to cut to in the editing room. He’s not saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to do all these great complicated shots and then we’re going to do coverage, and then we’re going to do that.’ It is, ‘We’re going to do this complicated shot and then we’re going to move on.’
So it took more takes than usual, but then it saved so much time because we weren’t going into coverage. Essentially, you have a much greater understanding of how your role plays out because so much can be shaped in an editing room. They may not even be the choices you would want to make, because it’s not – you wouldn’t want to repeat yourself in every take. You can’t repeat yourself, and I try to change the way I do things constantly. And so at the end of the day we do seven versions of a close up. If the director has an idea for one thing, I’m game to try it. I may say, ‘I don’t think that’s the right way to go. I’m going to try and do a very different approach.’ At the end of the day, he can use the one I don’t feel is appropriate and he’s entitled to do that. So I think I had a real clear understanding of where Peter was at any given time, which was kind of reassuring.”
Brody had toured around India a year or so prior to shooting The Darjeeling Limited but at that time he had no idea he’d be back so soon to work on a film there. Brody likes to travel and his experiences visiting different countries have had quite an impact on his life. “I’ve probably gained a lot of insight from a number of experiences traveling for roles in a film. I lived in the Rain Forest and in Red Line, it was very complicated and that changed me a lot. I identified a lot with the struggle soldiers would feel. In The Pianist, it had a profound effect on me because I really did everything that I could to understand loss and understand a sense of pain. And the level I experienced it, even though it was very uncomfortable for me, it was incomparable with the pain that exists in this world and that exists today in places like Africa and hungry people everywhere, actually, because there are tons of hungry people.
But I think India is a reminder of those kinds of experiences. It’s a reminder to embrace life and be present and be thankful and not harp on the negativity, but kind of go with it. I think that’s part of what the journey of making the movie was. There were many obstacles and rather than us butting our heads against it because they weren’t solvable by resistance, they were only solved by finding solutions. I think that was a big lesson to me to kind of resist a little less.”
Brody speaks glowingly of his time in India, but not all of his experiences were positive. “I almost got killed a couple of times in India,” said Brody. “There were a couple near death experiences. But, yeah…well yeah, I try not to think about it. I think what it reminded me of is that life is precious and precarious. That’s what India kind of reminds you constantly, not just because of my own incidents but because you see it everywhere. You see a mother and three children on a scooter riding and she has a sari blowing in the wind, which is about to go in the spokes. And it’s constantly something. Dogs narrowly getting run over every two minutes. It’s very intense and tragic and beautiful at the same time. There’s this kind of freedom that people have there because, I don’t know, it’s different. There are less rules. There is less an awareness of what we kind of obsess on right here, but somehow most of the time people meander through it. It’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating experience.”
