Broken Flowers
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Movie Reviews of Broken Flowers
Movie Review: A Film By...
Summary: 5 Stars
If I had to name one actor who best embodied the qualities of a Robert Bresson film, Bill Murray would be it. Bresson, in case you're unfamiliar with the name, was one of the directors who helped to inspire the French New Wave of the 50's and 60's. His credits include such classics as Pickpocket, A Man Escaped and Au Hasard Balthazar. I mention this not because he's the director of Murray latest star vehicle (that would be indie icon Jim Jarmusch) or because I want to name-drop some of my all-time favorite films (okay, maybe a little of the latter), but because in recent years Murray's taken on a persona that could be described as positively Bressonian.
In fact, this goes all the way back to his first dramatic turn in The Razor's Edge. What he does, and what directors like Bresson and Carl Dreyer always advocated, is he wipes all expression from his face, thus leaving it to the audience to project their own emotions onto the character. I expect this will probably be terribly frustrating for audiences expecting another Caddyshack or Stripes, but if you're not inclined to check your brain at the concession stands (and there are fewer and fewer of us these days), you're in for one of the best performances and one of the best movies of 2005. In other words, don't expect to get more out of this film than you're willing to put into it.
Murray, in a role sure to draw comparisons to his Oscar-nominated performance in Lost in Translation, stars Don Johnston, as an aging womanizer who receives an anonymous letter informing him that he has an illegitimate son who may be trying to find him. Egged on by his best friend and neighbor (the always great Jeffrey Wright) to revisit four of his ex-flames and find out which is the mother of his son, Don is understandably reluctant at first. Reluctant, because not all of these relationships ended well, as we soon find out.
But eventually, having nothing better to do (we're told he made his money in computers), he allows himself to be persuaded and sets out on his journey. Along the way we're introduced to four very distinct personalities (played by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton), all of whom shine in relative small roles, hopefully reminding Hollywood of how many great 40-something actresses there are who are still deserving of choice parts.
Which brings me to the ending. What struck me most about it was the way in which the young man Don suspects of being his son reacts when confronted with the possibility. At first, this seemed to me the appropriate response to being told by a perfect stranger that he may be your father. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that he overreacted, as if he was expecting what was coming and had his response planned out in advance. Am I reading too much into this? Possibly. But it's also interesting to note that the 'Kid in Car,' as he's billed in the closing credits, is Murray's actual son, Homer.
Is there a code to deciphering the film's enigmatic finale? In the end, it doesn't really matter, because the movie is less interested in the destination than in the journey it took to get there. And rightly so. It's refreshing in this day of cookie cutter movie-making to find a director more intent on posing serious questions than in providing pat questions, especially when the questions offered up are more interesting when left to us to answer for ourselves.
But, of course, Jim Jarmusch has always been anything but conventional. Starting with 1980's Permanent Vacation, he's amassed one of the most idiosyncratic resumes of any film-maker I can think of. And in Murray, like Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola before him, he may have found his muse, the actor capable of taking his deadpan humor and pathos, which have been hallmarks of his films for the last twenty years, and making them feel almost transcendent. This is certainly his most accessible movie to date, but it also may be his best.
Movie Review: A movie that moves at my speed.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have seen Jim Jarmusch's earlier work (Stranger than Paradise) as well as his later work (Ghost Dog) and so I had an idea about what he'd do with this film, but the cast also got me excited once I heard about them. One thing that's most striking about the film is the use of silence to convey things. Jarmusch uses it in part to signal the awkwardness of everyday conversation and experience as well as for the purpose of outlining what his character is like. He has no problem having minutes of silence where the only realization is that the main character is bored, lives a boring life, and has no desire to really do anything remotely interesting. These things add up to an experience that most filmgoers are not going to appreciate, or like. Most people are trained to believe that everything that makes it into the film must be interesting, when in actuality the rule is that everything that makes it into the film must be in the film. That last sentence is not meant to suggest that the film doesn't have interesting moments, because it does it's just that the film doesn't feel it's necessary to interesting from beginning to end. The run through of the story is that Don Johnston is a wealthy man who's trade was computers and now he doesn't even have computer at home. His girlfriend leaves him and notes that he just recieved a letter that is probably from another one of his girlfriends. He reads it and is nonplussed. It is an anonymous letter stating that he has a son and the son has come looking for him, he reads this to a friend who interested in writing mystery novels so the friend looks into solving the myster for him by setting up detailed plans for Don to seek and find out who the mother is. He goes to all of the women he was with at the time, that he remembers and follows a simple plan (he brings pink flowers, since the envelope and paper it was written on were in pink and it was typed on a typewriter, so he asks about them when he goes). Each woman presents an entirely different obstacle for Don to overcome. With the first woman it's her daughter, with the second it's her husband, with the third it's her receptionist, with the fourth it's her boyfriend (?) and his friend and the fifth girl is dead. Some of these encounters are funny, some are violent, and some are uncomfortable. Mainly I find it interesting how Jarmusch decided to make a movie about a character who doesn't want a movie made about him, wouldn't care if there was, and has not interest in seeing it even if he lived next to the theatre. Making the main character a reluctant and offbeat character enhances this story in a way that obviously won't appeal to many people, but it appealed to me. Also, the acting in some of the scenes was simply excellent. For instance, the scene in which he goes to see his former lover who has become a real estate broker and he ends up eating dinner with them. In this scene Christopher McDonald is simply great. Although the film has a relaxed attitude about the mystery that spurs the action forward, it still has some interesting features of the most interesting mysteries. It has plotlines and clues that may or may not lead to anything. I'm not giving anything away by saying that this film leaves some of the mystery wide open while dispelling some of it. What's also funny about this mystery are the dreams he has where he's internally processing different things he notices during his journeys. You wonder if they will actuall lead to anything and that is something I will leave to those who to see the movie to find out. As for Murray, I like this part of his career just as much as when he was younger. He may be funny, but now he's working on being more than that and in this film some of his decisions are divisive, but I'm glad that he's making them because they make his characters more individual and you can't just say that they're the "The stock Bill Murray character." I wouldn't have given the film a prize persay, but enjoy it nonetheless.Movie Review: A beautiful, intelligent, subtle film with a strong central performance
Summary: 5 Stars
Thank god! After one of the worst summers for movies in years, we needed a thoughtful, subtle, quietly intelligent film to balance out the horrors of the previous months. I have long been an admirer of Jim Jarmusch, having seen STRANGER THAN PARADISE the first weekend it was shown in Chicago and all of his subsequent films. This is, in my opinion, one of his very finest films. It is also another surprisingly fine performance by Bill Murray, who in his mid-fifties has put together a string of unexpectedly excellent performances. For those who still think of his more from his over-the-top, gonzo roles of the early eighties, these roles could almost stand as the the complete antithesis of what he used to do. Indeed, it would be hard to find many performers who could contrast the goofiness of Murray's role in CADDYSHACK with this role in BROKEN FLOWERS. If in the former he crazily managed to generate all kinds of rage at gophers, here he manages to suppress any kind of rage at all. In fact, Murray's Don Johnston in this film is like someone from whom all hints of human emotion have been sucked clean.
Structurally, this movie reminded me somewhat of Bergman's WILD STRAWBERRIES, in which an older man (in the Bergman a quite old man) takes a trip during which he is forced to confront the life he has been denied by the life choices he has (or has not) made. After Johnston's girlfriend (played by Julie Delphy) leaves him, he receives a pink-enveloped note in the mail in which someone anonymously informs him that twenty years earlier when they had an affair, she has become pregnant and had a child of whom he was unaware, a child who was now a 19-year-old boy who could possibly be coming in search of him. Prodded by his next door neighbor Winston (marvelously played by Jeffrey Wright), Johnston compiles a list of potential mothers of a child from that time, and goes off in search of clues as to who the authoress of the note might be.
Johnston's journey involves visiting five former girlfriends, four living and one deceased. One is the widow (played nicely by Sharon Stone) of a NASCAR driver who is also the mother of an absurdly sensual teenaged girl improbably named Lolita (who wears ear rings that mimic the famous sunglasses worn by Sue Lyon in Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA). Another (played by SIX FEET UNDER's Frances Conroy) is a real estate agent married to a mildly irritating fellow agent. A third ex (played by Jessica Lange) is an animal communicator, author of several quite odd books, and, it is hinted, a lesbian. His most unpleasant encounter is with a former girlfriend who has become a backwoods societal drop out (played by the very nearly unrecognizable Tilda Swinton, who wears a long black wig to hide her red hair). None of these apparently the mother of his possible son, though several are vague possibilities.
Though Murray starts off the film as someone incapable of human emotion, as if he just can't be bothered to care, by the end some subtle new emotions begin to assert themselves, such as regret, sadness, remorse. None of the people he meets have spectacularly enviable lives, but one senses that Johnston has understood his own complete lack of a personal history, his lack of a network of significant human relations. The film ends with his meeting a young man he mistakenly believes might be the son searching for him. Though a profoundly cold person, we see by the end that he is someone who yearns for more, and is forced to confront the lack of anything at all significant.
This is truly one of the loveliest movies I have seen in quite a while, and it forms a nice trilogy with Murray's two previous significant roles in LOST IN TRANSLATION and THE LIFE AQUATIC.
Movie Review: I've never read a review that got out of it what I did.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my first review written for Amazon, and I'm writing it because I feel very strongly about this film. I've seen it, probably, four times now. When I finish writing my review, I plan on ordering it so I can watch it again.
I don't love it so much because of a compelling plot, but because with this movie, I find Jarmusch to be perhaps the first filmaker I've come across who really wants to tell a story about how F'd over the men are getting in Western society. I give the movie 5 stars for being groundbreaking in a way that probably won't be discovered for several more years.
There are two things to consider with my take on the film: the first is the title "Broken Flowers" and what it means. The second is about the Don Juan myth itself.
The myth is one that changes with time. There is a Don Juan myth that anyone can look up on Wikipedia and get an idea of what the story line is. But the myth changes with time and with the culture in the way that it's viewed -- sometimes Juan is a womanizer who uses women, other times it's that he loves women and can't get enough. Jarmusch is telling the Don Juan myth circa 2006.
It's funny to read about how the take with most people seems to be that Johnston doesn't want to settle down. Are you sure? Tell me this: which one of the frauds and jackasses should Johnston settle down with? The closet organizer who's raised a daughter to walk around nude? The animal communicator? The surrendered wife? The redneck trash? Yet he looks longingly at Winston's life, for the truth of the matter is, every woman Johnston's been with has been a broken flower. He's made his living off of computers, yet he doesn't own one. We're introduced to Winston through his broken computer. Simple and elegant plot devices.
Something to notice at the beginning of the film: As Sherry's leaving she asks Don about Winston and his family, "Don't you want that?" she says.
"I don't know, do you?" answers Don.
"I don't know." returns Sherry.
Every reviewer I've seen takes that to be Don's reluctance to commit, yet at the same time, Sherry doesn't know what she wants either. Jarmusch has tricked every reviewer from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune into exposing their gender bias.
But the truly huge red elephant in the living room is the idea that Johnston has a son. Somewhere, possibly, a woman from his past has denied him the opportunity to have a family even while we criticize him for not wanting one. There is, of course, no criticism for the woman who would do this. More tellingly, there is no criticism for the denial of her son to have a father. So, kind reader, is that the broken flower Johnston should have settled down with? The one who'll dismiss the deep emotions of a man and a boy simply because it's the most expedient?
Nice girl.
Most people tend to think Jarmusch left us hanging, but in fact, if one is willing to REALLY look at this movie, you'll see he answered every question.
The last woman -- Penny, is that the one? She had his child, she sent the letter and the young guy at the end who wears the same warm-up jacket is Johnston's son. The pink typewritere gives it away as well as Penny's use of violence by proxy. Penny is a user who uses one man to beat up another even if it's her own son to wreak emotional havoc on an ex-lover.
Truly a masterpiece movie that every man should watch, and I hope that someday it re-emerges to be what it is.
Movie Review: Broken lives
Summary: 5 Stars
Broken Flowers is, in many ways, not a typical film for Jim Jarmusch. But then again, what is? After twenty five years of work, Jarmusch is still one of the most original and creative directors in the US. Broken Flowers is not, by any means, his best; it is his most sensitive and most mature, though. Many have blamed Jarmusch of going mainstream on this film. That's partly true - in the sense that it conforms to film-genre norms more than any of his previous films. By that I mean: Dead Man (1995) was a western that was an antithesis to every other western in the world. Ghost Dog (1998) was a gangster film and a samurai film, and at the same time it was absolutely neither. Broken Flowers doesn't actively challenge Hollywood; instead, it's a study in character and in human life. As such, it's the most personal, most beautiful film that Jim had pulled yet, and it manages to do what films like Sideways have tried to do in recent years but just didn't get right.
More than it is a triumph for Jarmusch, Broken Flowers is a triumph for Bill Murray, who plays Don Johnston, an aging Don Juan who receives a letter regarding a long lost son, and sets out to find which of his old flames the mother is. Like most of Jarmusch's films, the premise is simple, and the film is slow and minimalist, but the combined strengths of Jarmusch's direction and script and of Murray's performance make it a powerful experienced. Murray, who had spent much of his youth as a successful mainstream comedic actor, had in the last few years, with a chain of critically acclaimed films that included Rushmore, Lost In Translation and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, based himself as one of the most talented and intelligent actors at the fringes of Hollywood. His poker-face, which shows none and yet reveals all, comes to wonderful use in the role of Don, which in a way is further development of the character he created in Sofia Coppola's beautiful Lost In Translation, and it may just be the most brilliant performance of his career - yet.
The rest of the small cast is absolutely flawless; like in most of Jarmusch's films, in Broken Flowers Don is the only true major character, but he's better defined by the fascinating personalities surrounding him. Four stellar actresses - Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under's Ruth Fisher), Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton, play the women in Don's life, each one shedding her own unique light on him; Jeffrey Wright (Basquiat, Angels in America), one of the most humble and underrated actors in Hollywood today, is fantastic as Don's neighbor Winston; Julie Delpy (Killing Zoe), Alexis Dziena, Christopher McDonald, Pell James and Mark Webber (Hollywood Ending) are all worthy of praise as well.
You can say that Jarmusch has gone 'middle of the road', but the fact is that all his marks are here, color and all; and none of it is fake, he's still one of the most sincere and most original creators in America. His unique approach to cinematography, to pacing, to editing and to music (Ethiopian fusion artist Mulatu Astatke does for Broken Flowers what John Lurie did for Down By Law, Neil Young for Dead Man, and RZA for Ghost Dog, and Jarmusch's fusion of music into the film is as seamless as it always is) are fresher and more creative than anything seen in any mainstream film and Broken Flowers is probably the most beautiful film we'll see this year.