This is where I make an attempt to begin an ongoing, off-topic thread that anyone else is free to add to, also. Retired now, I watch lots of films. Opera, too, but perhaps not a lot of "customers" here for opera?
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The Darjeeling Limited" (2007.)
I watched this one twice in a single afternoon. Odd and fascinating. Funny, too. The story-line on the surface is three brothers looking to bond with each other again after a long time, on a train ride on The Darjeeling Limited. Life happens. There are all kinds of distractions, some of them fun, some both fun and meaningless. Some stuff they do is pretty stupid. One of them is hell-bent to follow the itinerary he's hired someone else to put together. (How engaged is he, then? "Let's DO this!" But the doing of it, the actual recipe, is a chore he's farmed-out to someone ELSE.) Woven into it all are episodes both past and future. Sort of reminds me of one or two that I've read by Tom Robbins. (It's been ages, but "Jitterbug Perfume" comes to mind.)
At any given moment, it seems to me that they ---ANY of the people in the film--- could be stand-ins for us all. Best laid-plans, last minute decisions, dysfunctional dynamics. And is their mother the one who's got her head on straightest? Watch it and decide for yourself.
"Part 1" is a seemingly separate story: "Hotel Chevalier" which is a real hotel in Paris, by a fictional name. Actually, just typing those very words brings to mind the all-too-real short stories that one of the three brothers likes to write, though he claims all the characters are fictional. A-ha! Hasn't it been said that what makes good fiction GOOD is that it's so realistic and believable--- eh?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0838221/?ref_=nv_sr_1
