Whenever the term religion is mentioned today, a tension can be felt. On the one hand, there is this list of religions which get propogated every time the word is mentioned, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc. On the other hand, there is this subtle sense that the term and this list are quite distanced from concrete religious practices as they are enacted in particular cultural contexts. What makes religion real? Why does anyone do it?

In one sense, religions have gained a kind of glossy currency in contemporary society. They are chic, sexy and hold potential transcendental states of mind, body and spirit which go beyond what we can experience in any other part of consumer culture. Five years ago advertisements used words like "extra," "ultra" and "supreme." Now, cosmetics advertisements in particular use language like "sublime" and "derma-genesis," and we shop at stores called "All Saints and "Religion." Increasingly, what the advertisements teach us comes after "ultra" is the transcendent offered by religions. Religious language is co-opted to sell the next step in consumer experience. But of course, religion is just a word with a set of associations here. People feel the need for something more, and religion seems to have this potential more-ness. Even that weird little tingly feeling which goes from the back of the neck right down to the back of the knees after you purchase the latest widget can go numb. We need a spiritual experience that touches the inner core of our being. This hunger for reality finds its greatest nexus in the idea of a pilgrimage or religious quest that one can purchase like an all inclusive package holiday. Such is the journey we are taken on in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited.

The Darjeeling Limited is probably one of the best cinema examples of deconstructing religion as of late.  The film follows a trio of brothers played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman on a "spiritual" journey across India. They seek out the Hindu hot spots in an attempt to come to peace, tranquility, and that oh so elusive transcendental state.

Like all Wes Anderson films we are taken into the inner world of their family through carefully written and idiosyncratic dialogue. We begin to feel their utter desperation in the face of their father's death, and lives which have left them numb. The brothers' abnormal quirkiness is accentuated as they literally carry their father's baggage with them around India searching the shallows of their idea of religion - an idea, I would suggest, which is deeply rooted in the dead end consumerism which sees it as what comes next, after, and beyond the "ultra" they were sold five years ago.

There are a number of touching scenes. In one temple the brothers kneel to pray together. they begin quibbling over a belt which one brother borrowed. The control-freakery of the elder brother begins to grate on the nerves of the middle brother. Finally, exasperated, the middle brother gets up to leave. "Where are you going?" "I'm going to pray somewhere else." 

Translated in terms of the Christian tradition, it struck me just then that Jesus's teaching "that whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone" (Mark 11.25), could and maybe should be read that it is impossible to pray if you are at odds with your brother. It is impossible to settle your heart and mind upon God when your brother nags you in your ear. It doesn't really matter if your brother is still speaking, or whether his pesky voice just echoes in your mind. Reconciliation between God and people is inseparable.

The scene just described however, is a good example of what the film explains about religion, and is an insight shared by many university classes which introduce religious studies to new students. As I summed up in one review lecture this year, the whole point of the first few weeks of class was to help you see that what you think you know about religions doesn't relate very well to what people actually practice and do in particular cultural contexts. As it turns out, Christianity is far more colloquial and syncretistic than many Christians would like to admit. So too, this is the case with Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In short, it becomes very difficult to talk about religion. Rather, we can talk about how Christianity is practiced in, say, Manchester, or Seattle and/or begin to note the particularly Protestant influences upon much of global western culture today.

At its worst, the word "religion" is just another shiny simulacrum, a surface without depth or meaning. Like the characters in this film, the term religion floats around without much concrete correlation to what people actually experience and go through in life. It is, as one commentator of religious studies puts it, a reification. Reification is a Marxist term which refers to the way in which words become illusory or ideological. Because the word is no longer meaningfully related to a concrete context or practice it loses its descriptive efficacy and becomes susceptible to ideological illusions. The brothers in the film are consistently confronted with their reified notions of religion that have little impact on the tragedies which haunt their lives. Their lives are meaningless, and the film takes us through their realization that their understanding of religion is also meaningless. 

About the point at which the viewer is starting to become as lost and hopeless as the brothers, one of the most compellingly tragic moments in the film explodes onto the screen. The brothers have been kicked off their train and are walking with their luggage along a river canal. Up ahead they see a group of Indian boys ferrying a raft across the river. Just as they do, the current catches the overburdened raft off balance and threatens to flip it over. This moment is filmed like a singularity. Time slows down. The brothers see the need of the kids on the raft and they instantly spring into action. All their shallow idiocracy falls away in the moment they see the need of the kids struggling against the current. In a kind of chaotic baptism, they leave their baggage behind and dive into the water to save the kids. Two brothers save two kids, but the third brother played by Adrien Brody cannot hang on as the raft flips over. An eternity seems to pass before the third brother arises with the drowned body of the third Indian child. 

The boys and the brothers are separated by language, culture and religion, but they are united in their most basic humanity. Anyone could see the tragedy for what it was. Wes Anderson takes all of us back to the village where the boys came from. The dead little boy is carried into the village by the soaked to the bone Brody whose sorrowful countenance now make perfect sense. There is little dialog, but none is needed. A son has been lost. A father grieves. A village grieves. The brothers stay the night, and are asked to stay for the funeral. Wes Anderson has been flashing us back to the brothers' father's funeral in New York. The brothers' denial of death, reality and their own grief is captured in a scene where they try to pick up the father's Porsche from the repair shop before the funeral. Now, as the brothers find themselves in a funeral in this rural Indian village, the Hindu rituals give more meaning to the little boy's death than anything they experienced before. All their searching for "religion" left them empty. And yet, as they touched down in the human drama of a village's loss of a son, they experienced the heart of religious practices.

Religious traditions live and breath just as people do. At their best they provide the life of a community just as oxygen does to a body. Like it or not, deny it or not, we are all human beings. We are born, we live, we die. What gives meaning to these experiences? What helps us understand and appreciate the significance of a birth? of a death? of all the joys and tragedies in between? The Darjeeling Limited takes its audience to the place where religion becomes real in the lives of people.  

For my own part in the Christian tradition, I found this film poignant and challenging. It reminded me as ever that the reason Jesus remains such a compelling religious figure is precisely because he is human. Christology, and the doctrine of the Trinity, play a vital role in Christian honesty about itself. What makes Jesus so compelling, I would suggest, is the point at which his life and teaching touch down in our lives in concrete practices that give them meaning and purpose. Jesus taught about real life. He lived real life. What good is a God in heaven if he never becomes real here on earth? This question goes beyond the historical cross to the church today. It is a question of the Eucharist. It is a question of baptism. It is a question of the sacramental character of our lives and how God finds his way into them. If there is a prism for ecclesial practice this is it: do those Christian practices which bring about a real and meaning-ful life. If there is any truth to The Darjeeling Limited, then there is a hunger for this in the West today that no fetishized food stuff can fill. People are hungry for a full bodied Christian realism again.