Broken Flowers

I can't think of an actor better suited to play the expressionless chronic bachelor Don at the heart of Jim Jarmusch's newest movie than Bill Murray. His mournful hound-dog face, which hides any trace of what's going on inside the head on which it sits, stares blankly at the T.V., at other people, sometimes at nothing, betrays itself with the slightest movement of the mouth or twitch of the eyes. It's a characterization Murray has so down pat that I'm tempted to think he's not really acting all that much, but he's so perfectly cast that it doesn't much matter whether he's acting or not.

If you're not familiar with the movies of Jim Jarmusch, "Broken Flowers" is a nice introduction, as it's the most accessible Jarmusch film I've seen. I'm not a huge fan, but I liked this movie quite a lot. Don receives an anonymous letter one day from a past girlfriend, telling him he has a 19-year-old son who may come looking for him. Murray's friend, Winston (played amusingly by the chameleon Jeffrey Wright), convinces him to track down a handful of women who could have possibly been the mother and resolve the mystery. Don agrees to it, seemingly not so much because he has a need to know but because he has nothing better to do. What follows is a series of scenes with each past girlfriend, during which their interactions with Don tell us heaps about their relationship back when they were dating. Some are affectionate, some are distant, one is downright scarily angry, but all are played beautifully by a quartet of actresses: Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton.

This is Jarmusch, so there aren't necessarily any tidy answers, and I don't think I give anything away by saying that the mystery is never solved. Life is messy, and it doesn't always happily resolve itself just because we want it to. I liked how subtle the film was; Don doesn't make any huge ground-breaking discoveries about himself, but nevertheless you sense that he's a slightly different person after his journey than he was before it.

You'll have to be patient, as Jarmusch tells his story very slowly, and nearly all of Don's interaction with others is ponderously awkward. But the movie slowly begins to fascinate, and you find yourself watching the faces of the women he visits (and examining the visible details of their lives) much in the same way that Don is himself, looking for the slightest hint that she might be the one who sent that fateful letter.

A very fine film, poignant and sad in a rather obscure way, and one that stays in your mind for a while after seeing it.

Grade: A-

Broken Flowers, is about a lonely and quiet bachelor named Don Johnston, who lives in a big house and basically lies around all day. Don, recently breaks up with his girlfriend Sherry. Don, lives next door to an interesting man named Winston, who likes to look up information and investigate people on the internet. One day Don gets a letter in the mail from a woman (who does not sign the letter) and says that her son is Don's and that he is coming to visit Don, to see who his father really is. Don, shows the note to Winston, and Winston tells Don, to make a list of all the girls he has been with in the past. Don, makes a list of five people and Winston gets information on all of them including where they live and sets out a traveling course for Don, to go and see them to find out which one is the mother of his child. Don, goes on this journey and meets these women he has not seen in years to find out the truth about the letter and notices how much some of these women have changed since he last knew them. Broken Flowers, has good direction, a good script, good performances by the whole cast, good cinematography and good film editing. The film is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who has brought us such offbeat delights as Down By Law, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai and Coffee And Cigarettes, and all of those I liked a lot. But, I was disappointed with Broken Flowers. It was not a bad film in any way but it is slow and it often tries to make witty and smart jokes and be funny but for the most part the jokes don't work and they are not funny. The film also lacks energy and it doesn't have as interesting characters or situations as past Jarmusch films who shows he can whip up some really good conversations like in Coffee And Cigarettes. I didn't really find any of the characters that interesting and at times it was hard to relate to characters in the film and wonder at the end what the point of the movie was. It was still mildly entertaining and I liked their performances and some of the creative scenes so for that I'am slightly recommending this but it doesn't work on a whole as well as past Jarmusch movies that were virtually ignored while this one is getting a lot of buzz.

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.

This according to some people is Jim Jamusch's mainstream movie, well to me it is still an independent movie it just so happens that everyone likes it and rightly so. It is a subtle tale filled with meditations on life, ageing, love and loss. The film opens with a pink letter and the viewer sort of follows it on a mini road trip from post box to sort room to final delivery. It is a beautiful metaphor for the journey you are about to undertake with Bill Murray's character Don Johnston. Everything in this film is set up so well from Don's name (a cross between Don Johnson of Miami vice fame and Don Juan, both smooth ladies men in their own right) to the underage daughter of one of don's old flames called Lolita. The style of the film is paced slow allowing you time to wonder at Murray's dead dead dead pan delivery, it's the stuff that made watching him so enjoyable in 'The life aquatic' and 'lost in translation' but turned up a notch. From opening the anonymous letter to his subsequent journey through ex-girlfriends to try and find who sent it and if he really has a twenty-year-old son as the letter states, is beautifully crafted to keep you glued to the screen. It has elements of comedy but not so much jokes as more the absurdity of life and bizarre situations that can arise. The characters are so diverse your bound to spot someone you know in one of them. One of my favourite things about this film is how it addresses wanting children from a mans point of view, Don constantly says to his neighbour that he's not interested in finding out or even going and then he does the opposite, it is the male equivalent of being broody and it ends up with Don clutching at straws and almost saying 'someone, anyone please be my son?' With a well-chosen eclectic soundtrack from Jarmusch complimenting scene after scene the film flows from comedic highs to tender lows. Here Jim and Bill have committed a very special blend of cinematic magic to the screen, one that should be a good way for a mainstream audience to enjoy an indie film and realise it doesn't have to be all CGI and explosions to be brilliant film-making.

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."