As the 45th New York Film Festival kicked off on Friday night with a gala screening of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, critics and other members of the press were still bleary-eyed from the Toronto International Film Festival. I didn’t make the mid-September trek north, but, because the overlap between the two fests this year seems greater than usual, attendees got a leg up on the films being screened on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Those who also went to Cannes in May were really ahead of the game.

Julian Schnabel won the director’s prize at Cannes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the first movie screened for the press here. Schnabel took questions afterward, and it’s fascinating to compare his session with the press conference 83-year-old Sidney Lumet gave after his latest Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was shown a few days later.

The two estimable movies couldn’t be more different. Schnabel’s visually eclectic and emotionally stirring film tells the true story of Paris fashion magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a stroke and became a paralyzed prisoner inside his own body. Lumet’s is a taut crime thriller about two New York brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) who plot to rob their parents’ jewelry store.

But it’s their personalities and approach to filmmaking that are strikingly opposite. Lumet is the efficient storyteller and craftsman of realism whereas Schnabel is a gadfly and freewheeler from the downtown art scene whose two previous films, the loose biographies Basquiat and Before Night Falls many feel are more about himself than his two subjects. That wasn’t my impression watching Diving Bell, and I doubt viewers unfamiliar with the Schnabel persona or without a snarky agenda would think the director gets in the way.

Anyway, the best illustration of the difference between the two filmmakers came during their talks. Lumet let it slip that he didn’t know whether his screenwriter, Kelly Masterson, was a man or a woman (he’s a man). The script arrived unsolicited in the mail, and Lumet decided to make it. He did his own rewrites (the two leads weren’t brothers in Masterson’s original), and he never had occasion to speak with Masterson on the phone, let alone meet him in person. For his part, Schnabel told the audience that the red Pendleton shirt he was wearing onstage during his Q&A was actually worn by actor Max Von Sydow (who plays Bauby’s father) in the movie. You sensed Schnabel knew the deepest darkest secrets of everyone on the set—including the gaffers and production assistants—and that, yes, it was all very personal for him.

Lumet is drawn to strong material and approaches it impersonally, while Schnabel has to become wrapped up in whatever story he’s telling and wrap it in his own garb.

In other fest happenings, the juiciest topic for the celebrity-watchers in the press and public involved Owen Wilson, who stars in Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. Naturally, he wasn’t on hand for the North American premiere Friday night, as his August suicide attempt eerily dovetails with his role as the despondent older brother who travels across India with his two siblings. Fortunately, the movie ends on a happy, positive note that Owen hopefully will take to heart.

In a cover story last week, New York Magazine lumped Anderson in with Schnabel and Lumet—plus Noah Baumbach and the Coen brothers, who also have movies in the fest—as New York filmmakers. Even if he lives here and The Royal Tenenbaums was set in Harlem, isn’t it a stretch to identify Anderson with a New York sensibility? I’m not convinced the Coen brothers fit under the heading, either.

The other news surrounding The Darjeeling Limited was the 13-minute short called Hotel Chevalier that preceded it here and will be included on the DVD but won’t be part of the theatrical release. In it, Jason Schwartzman’s Darjeeling character has an assignation in a Paris hotel room with his on-again, off-again girlfriend played by Natalie Portman. Reference is made to it in the film proper, but I don’t see it as essential. While it gives a little background to the womanizing younger brother Jack, I couldn’t help think it was an excuse for Schwartzman (who is credited along with Anderson and Roman Coppola for the Darjeeling screenplay) to get it on with Portman, who appears naked in a side view. Hotel Chevalier is also available on iTunes and images of Portman, who once swore she wouldn’t do screen nudity, are all over the Internet.

According to the latest reports, Anderson may add it to the theatrical release in a few weeks, perhaps to counteract the movie’s tepid reviews and boost receipts. Buzz after the press screening was mixed to negative—many dismissed it as barren of ideas. Yet even the snootiest cineaste must admit an Anderson film is fun to look at and listen to, thanks to his meticulous eye and knack for picking great music.

The beauty of NYFF is that it does provide a small, brief oasis from commercial considerations, and you can let the arthouse fanboy inside you run free. Art and commerce aren’t completely separate, however. For example, this year New Line is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a black-tie party benefiting the Film Society of Lincoln Center, host of the fest. (Judging by all the construction going on around Lincoln Center, including a new home for the film center, the institution can use the cash. Alice Tully Hall, the main screening venue in the past is under renovation and has been replaced by Rose Hall in the glitzy Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle.)

Another plus about New York is that it’s a non-competitive festival and provides a respite from awards speculation. That said, among the offerings unspooling over the next 17 days that might figure during the awards season are the centerpiece film No Country for Old Men, the Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, and Brian De Palma’s pseudo-documentary about Iraq titled Redacted. More on these and other festival happenings coming soon… —