Broken Flowers

There are movies which are lots of action interrupted by occasional pauses. Those are the movies people tend to enjoy. Unfortunately Broken Flowers is a movie of pauses interrupted by occasional action. Director Jim Jarmusch lays out his story in excruciatingly slow fashion. It's a road trip story, Bill Murray playing Don Johnston, an aging man criss-crossing the country for reasons we'll get to in a bit. Don has a few important stops on his journey. Sadly Jarmusch wastes way too much time on the travel between those stops. The movie is a seemingly endless succession of shots of the countryside flying by outside Don's car window. There are only so many hills and houses you can see go by before you are screaming "Get on with it already!" at the screen. There is just way too much time in this movie where absolutely nothing is happening. What makes it worse is that it's the same nothing over and over again, all those scenic shots backed by the same repeated musical cues which frustratingly burrow deep inside your brain. When we met Don Johnston it was obvious he was a man who had pretty much checked out on life. He didn't care about anything. The way his story is presented here won't make you care either.

Don is a retired guy, living a quiet life which consists of pretty much nothing but sitting on his couch. He is pushed into action when he receives a mysterious letter from a woman saying he fathered a child with her about twenty years ago and that her son, his son, is now looking for him. The letter is not signed, no indication who it could be from. And apparently Don was quite the ladies' man back in the day because there are five possibilities as to who the mother could be. So now Don must leap off his couch and go find out who the mother is right? Well, no, not at all actually. Don doesn't care about the letter, has no interest in this hypothetical son with the mystery mother. But with some insistent prodding from an exceedingly enthusiastic, and annoying, neighbor, Don sets out on a journey to track down all these old flames and discover the truth. So Don gets on a plane, flies somewhere, gets into his rental car and the movie at this point grinds to a screeching halt.

Don meets up with four women, the fifth having died a few years earlier. These meetings have their entertaining moments. They also have plenty of awkward moments. At some stops Don is greeted warmly, at others not so much. The four women he meets have very different lives, each with life circumstances which are unusual in their own way. One with a teenage daughter who lives up to her name of Lolita, one who's a cat whisperer, one desperately sad, one curiously angry. Of the group Sharon Stone and Jessica Lange get the meatier, and quirkier, parts to play and do well with them. Murray is pretty much just left to react to whatever he is confronted with at each stop. He certainly portrays Don's world-weariness, and road-weariness, well. But the movie really leaves the audience feeling weary. There's just never enough going on. So much time is wasted. And as Don moves from woman to woman the whole thing becomes so repetitive. After the endless lulls when he meets the next woman on his list you desperately want the movie to perk up, for something big to happen. But the movie falls into the trap where it's basically just the same thing again and again. Nothing ever really happens. Don is searching for answers, searching for himself. But in this case it is the audience which never really finds what it is looking for.

I just saw this at a press screening. It's very smart, well-made and entertaining, directed with sure-handed control, full of quirky, funny moments and superb acting. The film pretty much avoids clichés, although it does rely a bit on the familiar "Aren't Middle-Americans quirky?" idea for its humor. But Jarmusch never goes too far with this, his restraint keeping the film propelled from beginning to end.

The only weakness for me is rooted in the film's strength: I feel like there's not quite enough here.

Murray's character is beleaguered and despondent, Murray plays him with perfect subtlety. This is fun and fascinating to watch; I found myself hanging onto every little expression on Murray's face. But, the combination of his passive, muted performance and the spare storytelling left me wanting more. It just doesn't have as much impact as I feel it could have. So, yes, it's wonderful minimalism, but perhaps a bit too slight of a movie to have any lasting resonance.

Bill Murray has added another very good performance to his career, and Jim Jarmusch has made another compact little gem (unlike some of his more recent films). Unique and entertaining. Definitely worth seeing.

Barely dramatic, thematic but enigmatic, that's Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. His Stranger than Paradise was exactly that, a Cleveland road trip to existential uncertainty. In Broken Flowers, Bill Murray as Don Johnston is also on a trip, but more certain of his goal than anyone in Stranger, for he seeks out his alleged son by visiting former lovers, one of whom anonymously wrote that she had borne him a child 19 years ago.

The formidable women, including a randy Sharon Stone happily lampooning her film persona and Tilda Swinton, tougher and more dangerous than all the others in her biker mom role, never really sway him from seeking his son or finding himself. Beyond discovering that you can't change the past of "an over-the-hill Don Juan," much less understand him, reflected in the depressing but authentic lack of communication with all but one of his wives, Murray may have discovered on his low-key picaresque a truer self than he had ever known before. He may be beaten up physically, he may be unable to close the case of his putative son, and he may have divorced himself from his millionaire persona as a computer whiz, but he remains a deeply calm, lonely wanderer in his effort to solve his case.

An amateur detective, neighbor Winston has the spirit and energy Don does not have, yet Don is deeper and more reflective. In fact he outstrips all of his former loves in kindness and caring in calm response to often explosive situations, for instance when Stone's daughter, Lolita, comes on to him only to find he is not available.

I complain American films are not sophisticated like Euro flicks, but Jarmusch has come close with this slow, laconic, and demanding indie. Hats off to Bill Murray for mixing minimalist with passionate this time around—his purpose and his change of character make his aging Hollywood star Bob from Lost in Translation just a dress rehearsal for this Oscar-worthy performance and film.

Perhaps Don's discovery is twofold: his potential to love others and himself. As Alexander Smith declared, "Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."

I never saw this movie when it came to the theater. Later on, when it arrived on video, the clerks at the local store rolled their eyes and told stories of renters returning it and complaining that it wasn't funny and was boring. So I didn't rent it, being the mindless lemming that would listen to a video store clerk.

Then I stumbled across it on one of the TV movie channels and sat down and watched it. Perhaps it was the lack of any expectations on my part, but I found this movie fascinating. Bill Murray has cornered the market on middle aged male guilt and regret. Between this film, Lost in Translation and the Life Aquatic he presents us with a very real sense of what it means to be in your mid fifties and contemplating all that has been missed while pursuing something else.

The movie moves slowly, at a measured pace, but it has to, because that is how the story unfolds, with the protagonist moving down the road of his past reluctantly, and with trepidation and rightly so, because he has left skeletons behind. Many of them, it would appear.

Bill Murray was always my favorite SNL guy and he never disappoints, always taking whatever role he is given and doing it well, and doing it as only Bill Murray can. David Spade and Chevy Chase, eat your hearts out. Actually, just retire. But I digress.

The supporting cast deserves kudos as well. For once, I liked Sharon Stone in a movie. Francis Conroy does her Six Feet Under persona but manages to spin it a little differently, and Jessice Lange is mesmerizing as always. And Jeffrey Wright, as Winston is a perfect foil for the perpetually deadpan Murray.

But in fairness, I suspect that you have to be middle aged and male to really love this movie and all of its wisdom.

Broken Flowers is a departure for Jim Jarmusch, and not an altogether successful one. This film is decidedly more mainstream than anything Jarmusch has directed before. He inserts product from mapquest.com, Sharp, and Ford Taurus; shoots in color; and writes a character being admonished for smoking for starters. This isn't as radical a shift to mainstream as George Lucas going from THX-1138 to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. It's more like the Cohen brothers going from Blood Simple to Intolerable Cruelty.

Broken Flowers is highly structured and deliberately paced (i.e. slow), with an episodic format. Murray's character, Don Johnston, tries to reveal the identity of the woman who alerts him to the existence of his son, awkwardly reuniting with a succession of old flames. Murray's portrayal is fun to watch, and Sharon Stone is still magically delicious. The film has interesting things to say about the suburbs, the path not taken, bachelorhood, and the banality of travel. But it says little and hardly engages. It is the Odyssey with no reason to return home.