This movie is really a stinker. Everything is good about it except the characters and the writing. It has high production values, the acting is very good, but the characters are shallow, narcissistic and nothing more than sum of their hangups. It's like some teenage film school freshman was given unlimited resources to try to create the most quirky characters ever, without a story to hang it on. Perhaps it's how a spoiled, rich teenager would imagine adults to be, selfish, whiny, demanding and spiritually hollow. <br /><br />The three brothers are riding a train in India in hopes of finding and visiting their mother who failed to show up at their father's funeral. We are treated to a relentless display of the brothers' bizarre and exhibitionistic behavior as the train trundles through the Indian countryside. They behave like chronically depressed 4 year olds. Maybe the filmmaker thought he was getting at contemporary angst, maybe he just thought he was creating amusing madcap clowns in the spirit of "A Hard Day's Night." But these clowns aren't young, their antics don't amuse, they grate. We come to hate them as much as they hate each other. We don't care whether they find their mother or not. The older brother's head is always swathed in bandages, the result of a motorcycle crash which may have been an attempted suicide. He orders the other brothers around and they seem unable to stand up to him. One brother reads a couple of paragraphs from a story he's writing. The story is as shallow and pretentious as this movie and these characters. <br /><br />Here's the spoiler: they do meet up with the mother (Angelica Houston) who's the biggest narcissist of all. Dressed in white robes and made up with black eyeliner, she holds forth in some sort of Christian mission in the foothills of the Himalayas. Well, you might have known it...these losers were nurtured by this pompous and vain woman. No wonder. In the end the brothers are running to catch the train to go home, as they run they drop their baggage. That's symbolism; get it? They're shedding their baggage, right? But these characters are so light you can't imagine them having any hardly weight at all, even with their baggage. Without the theatrically contrived baggage they wouldn't have any material existence whatsoever. <br /><br />For the last hour of this film every scene looked like it was going to be the last. The camera focuses on the bewildered faces of the brothers, the music swells, the camera pulls away. At last! you think. It's finally over. But no, there's another scene, and another, and another. At one point they witness a young boy drowning in a canal. They try to rescue him, but can't. They take his body home to his village. There is a funeral. The scene is empty; it's like it happens in dream. The brothers appear unaffected. It is impossible to care about them. I've almost forgotten about this movie and I only saw it 2 days ago. Please, save yourself the boredom.