Broken Flowers
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Movie Reviews of Broken Flowers
Movie Review: Unusually witty and literate
Summary: 4 Stars
Broken Flowers (2005)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
This may be one for the ages, for it shows Bill Murray, now aging but not aged enough not to be able to play a Casanova (Don Juan in this case-are the two the same?) who has fathered a child with one of his ex-girl-friends, but has no idea who that might be. He received a letter in a pink envelope, typed in pink letters, informing him that he has a 19-year-old son, who will soon show up at his door. After a brief scuffle with his present girl-friend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), who walks out of the door on him (just dropped in to say good-bye), he shows the letter to a friend of his, Winston, a wizard with computers (Johnston had made his money in computers himself), who soon finds out, from the names of former girl-friends given to him, where they are and by what means they can reached. He buys Johnston air tickets, rents cars for him, and gives him maps and detailed directions, and sends him on his odyssey to discover his son-through finding who of the women was the mother. He has to look for a pink typewriter.
Johnston first thinks this is all crazy, but he is compliant and, under his dead-pan façade, really curious, he embarks on his search. He looks worn out and uncurious, to begin with. But the surprises of his trip find even this stoic soul stunned. Holding a bouquet of pink roses, he starts knocking doors, looking for the four women. First, he finds Laura (Sharon Stone) in a shack somewhere in a remote neighborhood resembling a trailer park, and the first thing that comes to his attention is Sharon's teenage daughter, who comes to the door scantily dressed, lets him in, and tells him her name is Lo ... short for Lolita. "Lolita?" asks the amazed Johnston (even he is capable of shock)-and a moment later he ogles at her when she comes into the room, a cell phone stuck to her ear, completely naked. Soon Sharon arrives, she recognizes him, and tells him her husband had been killed in a race-track smash. She now works, arranging ... closets. But she is happy to see him, and, naturally, they sleep together. No pink typewriter though. Next morning, when he takes his leave, Lolita thinly clad in her undergarments, stands next to her mom, and waves goodbye as he drives away. The road has is compensations.
His next stop is at a prim housewife's suburban home, where Dora (Frances Conroy) receives him with a lukewarm smile, looking at him as if he were secretly deranged, but invites him in, and as soon as hubby, Ron (Christopher McDonald), arrives, Don is invited to and stays for dinner. They tell him are in real estate, but plan to go into gold, when the market slows down. Their dinner is bland and tasteless, but Johnson endures his passage through this Charybdis by forcing himself to swallow it. Dora has no children, and the couple imply they are content to look at each other. No result, however, can be obtained regarding the object of his search. The next stop marks the real comedy of such encounters, for he finds Carmen (Jessica Lange) busy with her clients-dogs mostly-for she is a canine therapist but who calls herself animal communicator. Before he sees Carmen, Johnston has ample time to sit on the couch outside the office, ogling at the receptionist's (Chloe Sevigny's) thighs, exposed to the absolute maximum, a torment to a still hormonal Don Juan who can't help looking at a tempting sight thrown in his direction. But Jessica is busy, her appointments with dog owners pile up on her, and she absolutely refuses to even have a cup of coffee with the intruder, no doubt thinking him crazy, unaware that she is crazier than him. She walks to her car, repeated refusing opportunities to talk. The receptionist sweeps her hips as she urges her to return to the office, and Johnston, despondent, drives away in his rented Taurus. He calls Winston soon and tells him he should be doing this in a rented Porsche.
Stoically, but visibly growing more anxious, he drives through a forest of tangled back roads, in search of the fourth woman in his list, Penny. He asks two menacing rednecks near a shed, where she might be, and they inform him she is inside, behind "the screen door." But when she sees him she screams at him, and they run to her rescue-and one of them lands a swift right in his left eye. Before he goes unconscious, he sees a pink typewriter a few feet away in the bushes, as if thrown there as a piece of junk. When he comes to, he finds himself in the mist of a plowed field, at the back of his car, his left eye black and blue, his brow swollen. He drives away wearily, stops at a flower shop to get to get another bouquet of flowers (which he has carried all along), and an obliging salesgirl gives him some things to band-aid his brow. Soon he flies back home. But wait, a young fellow (Mark Webber) follows him to his neighborhood, and Johnston, now really curious, and beaten up, offers the youngster, who seems hungry, a sandwich. After a brief talk that gets him nowhere, he tells the young man that he might be his father, and the youngster calls him crazy and runs away, like he has seen Don Juan in hell.
Johnston's search comes back full circle, with no results-except for his black eye. This may be the imagery Jarmusch was after. That, and the pink letter, the pink typewriter, and the pink flowers suggest a psychological turmoil that Johnsotn's dead-pan expression does not show. Why a pink letter? Who sent it? The answers are not given, and the movie remains open-ended, for there is no conclusion to the search, and Johnston's yearning for fatherhood remains unfulfilled. But the unstated message may be: what is fatherhood? Is it the desire to acquire a son whom one has never brought up-to accept him as a matter of conscience, or even mere curiosity? Johnston shows himself far from inhuman and behind his mask of apathy-he sits in front of his plasma TV, alone, at nights-there may be real paternal feelings stirring. But the movie, by remaining inconclusive regarding the search, may also be saying that he is reaping the rewards of his profligacy in his youth (or even in middle age), for, to him, women were an object of pleasure, not of real affection or kinship of spirit. What-who-is a Don Juan? History and legend-and opera and literature --show him as a man of conquests of literally thousands of women ("mille tre") who succumb to his inordinately sexual charisma. This, today, would appear as a travesty of humanity-just as the brief reference to Lolita (amoral creations by Nabokov/Kubrick) may indicate. Johnston is a nice enough fellow and sincere in his search for his son. But his final punishment is that he may have to spend the rest of his aging life in ignorance and isolation. Is that not some kind of hell? And, if I remember correctly, isn't pink one of the colorations that painters, poets, and other literati (not to mention religious writings) the color ascribed to hell's locations? Yes, yes, it's red, but pink comes close to it-uncomfortably so. Think of a pink hell. Whoever sent the letter devised a perfectly diabolical revenge.
Movie Review: Great performance from Murray marred by glacial pacing
Summary: 4 Stars
Don Johnston (Bill Murray) receives an anonymous pink letter notifying him that he may have a nineteen year old son who may be looking for him. At a bit of a cross roads in his life; his current girlfriend (Julie Delpy) has just dumped him, he is a bit lost, unsure what to do with the money he made from the Internet boom. He sits in his house, in the dark, thinking, watching old movies, contemplating. His next door neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), a father with five kids, three jobs and a penchant to become a detective, suggests he visit each of the five women he had relationships with during this period. After some research, Winston determines one of the women died, but comes up with an itinerary to visit the other four. Don is certain that if anything, the letter is a joke, but eventually agrees to Winston's elaborate game, more because he doesn't have anything else to do. Don sets off on his journey and eventually visits Laura (Sharon Stone), Dora (Frances Conroy), Carmen (Jessica Lange) and Penny (Tilda Swinton).
"Broken Flowers", the newest film from writer/ director Jim Jarmusch, is a very good study of one man's journey for meaning in his life. The film is funny at times, touching at times and very, very slow. The pacing is almost glacial. There are a lot of shots which end with Bill Murray's character staring off screen as the film does a slow (very slow) fade away. I don't mind this, but I feel that people should be aware of it before they go. Unfortunately, much like people feel it is okay to talk in theaters because they are conditioned to watching DVDs at home, and talking during the film, people are conditioned to expect a faster pace in their films. The majority of films released today barely hold an image for two seconds, so afraid that the attention of the audience will wander. If a film is for adults, don't worry about this. But I think Jarmusch takes it to the other extreme in "Flowers", the slow fades are nice, but there are too many and they impact the film.
Murray is clearly making a new cottage industry for himself. In his last few films, which were, coincidentally, his most well-reviewed films, he plays very quiet people, observing a lot of the action around him, essentially transforming himself into the straight man. In "Lost in Translation", he played an actor in Japan, making a commercial, lost in the sea of culture swirling around him. In "Flowers", he plays a role which is even more cerebral, but the portrayal works. We watch Johnston as he thinks about things. Not exactly thrilling on paper, but Murray makes it work.
Jarmusch sets up the film to allow Murray to react to the various characters he comes into contact with. His relationship with Winston, played by Jeffrey Wright, is humorous and adds a lot to the portrayal of each. For Murray, this solidifies our feelings that he is lost, nothing to do, nothing to care about. When Winston presents him with the plan, Johnston is so reluctant to participate that when he eventually does, we get the depth of his longing for something to do.
Wright's character is funny and multifaceted. With five kids, three jobs and a hobby, he is a ball of energy compared to Murray, which also adds a lot of depth to Murray's character. Their relationship is unique, funny and interesting. When Winston calls Don, Johnston springs (well, for his character anyway) over to his house to help.
As Johnston visits each of his former girlfriends, he reacts to the craziness in each of their lives. Two of these works really well, the other two don't, creating an uneven balance. Stone and Lange seem to have the most richly observed characters. Their lives are unique and strange, polar opposites from each other, allowing Murray to react and create some real, genuine laughter. Conroy's Dora is stiff and emotionless and I didn't get any connection between them. Dora's husband (Christopher McDonald) is slightly amusing, but the sequence is too long. Conversely, Tilda Swinton's Penny is on screen for all of two minutes, making her role the shortest and most difficult to accept and understand.
A couple of times, people mistake Don's name for the former "Miami Vice" star. He quietly corrects them. This seems like a joke that wasn't completely worked out. Is Jarmusch trying to make fun of Don Johnson's past? If so, the idea seems half-baked.
It seems odd to me that Murray is receiving so much acclaim for such low key performances. His performances are so good, that he deserves the acclaim, but for someone who started his career in high energy comedies, the transformation is all the more remarkable. I thought Murray was great in "Lost in Translation" and he is very good here. But after "Translation", "Life Aquatic" and now "Broken Flowers", each performance seems to have slightly less energy, as though he is simply content to stand and react. And the performances work. But I wonder if his next film will feature him sleeping through the entire film. It seems like the next natural step. And Murray will no doubt make it work.
"Broken Flowers" is a very good, but not great film. It features a very good performance from Murray and some interesting supporting characters. But the pacing is so slow and the supporting performances are uneven, robbing the film of lasting interest, greatness and longevity.
Movie Review: "The past is the past and the future hasn't happened yet"
Summary: 4 Stars
With it's laid back rhythms and it's languid flow, Broken Flowers certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea. The initial set up is slow and the film is bathed in a kind of maudlin, existential angst that may put off more mainstream viewers. But those who are looking for a movie that is subtly humorous, but also "modern" in its portrayal of a series disparate, lonely people will probably be richly rewarded.
Be warned though, Broken Flowers is a slow mood piece, so don't expect fast action sequences or quirky comedy. There's no doubt, that in places, the film is genuinely funny, and heartwarming, but the film is also painfully angst ridden, with Bill Murray, doing what he does best, imbuing the proceedings with a general sense of his trade-mark malaise.
Murray stars as Don Johnston, a lifelong woman-chaser - a kind of modern Don Juan - whose better days as a Casanova are behind him. He spends most of his time holed-up in his dreary suburban house, drinking wine and watching classic movies on TV. He mopes with the weary gaze of a joyless man trapped in a world that gives him diversion, but also no pleasure.
We first meet Dan just as his latest girlfriend; Sherry (Julie Delpy) is walking out on him. She accuses him of being "over-the-hill" and sees him as hopeless at relationships. But Don's life gets even more complicated when an unsigned letter arrives in a mysterious pink envelope, from a girlfriend of 20 years ago, telling him that he has a teenage son.
Winston, his Ethiopian mystery-story-obsessed neighbor, and computer expert encourages him to search for the old lover and his unexplained offspring- he even Mapquest's locations and books Dan's flights for him. At first, Dan is defiant, but Winston talks him into it, so Dan embarks on a road trip to visit the handful of women who could possibly have written the letter - none of whom he has seen in 20 years.
The trip is both a both witty and melancholy exercise, where Dan is forced to face the consequences of his past reasons for love. It's a journey into history, to find the truth behind faded memories, and the real story of what Laura (Sharon Stone), Dora (Frances Conroy), Carmen (Jessica Lange), and Penny (Tilda Swinton) have become. All greet Don with varying degrees of enthusiasm; all leave him tempered by what, exactly, happened then - and now.
Much of the movie is made up of Don's trip though the highways and thoroughfares of America, as he methodically tracks down each woman. And the film works best when Murray has this eclectic group of women to bounce off. And what a diverse, mismatched group they are.
There's the sunny-faced single, closet-organizer Laura, (Stone) with her aptly named teen daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena); Dora (Conroy), an ex-"hippie chick" who has turned into a maudlin, neurotic estate agent obsessed with neatness and order; Carmen (Lange), the formidably successful "animal communicator," who can barely spare him a moment from her busy schedule of pet conversations, and Penny (an almost unrecognizable Swinton) as a crude, shaggy American biker chick.
Each actress brings their own unique gifts to their respective characters, and when one considers that each only has a maximum of fifteen minutes screen time, their performances are indeed startlingly vivid. Swinton, in particular, nails her character with barely any dialogue in just one very brief scene, In fact, these women are so good, that after their respective scenes are over, most viewers will be left wanting to see more of them.
But the movie belongs to Bill Murray who gives a nicely nuanced portrait of a man who's emotionally shutdown and not sure that he likes what he's become. He's like a blank slate; he finds the world sort of amusing, but he has willed himself into not to caring that much about what is going on around him.
I also liked the way the movie reflects the rather lonely, sad, and fractured atmosphere of American life. Don's past loves are just so different, and its like they could be all living on different planets in terms of class and economics. Director, Jim Jarmusch is obviously having fun with our culture, but underneath his mordant humor, lies the very real fact that our over-emphasis on youthful hedonism will eventually catch up with us, and like Don, we should probably be more mindful of the consequences. Mike Leonard August 05.
Movie Review: Tragedy, Comedy, or Both?
Summary: 4 Stars
In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche is focused on the idea of intoxication, of being intoxicated, filled up, and engulfed in a passion. Nietzsche contrasts the the Dionysian impulse and the Apollonian. The Apollonian is the visual arts, and gives an appearance of form and stability. The Dionysian is intoxication, and its representation in the arts is music. Like music, the Dionysian is constantly moving through time, whereas the Apollonian, like sculpture and painting, is stationary, forever present in one form. These two impulses represent, for Nietzsche, the "origin and essence of Greek tragedy."
For Nietzsche, tragic plays were the high point for Greek culture. The Dionysian spirit embodied them, since it is out of music that tragedy emerged. Tragedy was great because it moved beyond a moral and ethical interpretation of the events described in the play. The world of tragedy presupposes that there is no objective order. It is not evil or wrongdoing that causes suffering. It is just part of the chaos of existence. Meaninglessness is inherent to existence. In tragedy, the Greeks showed how one could confront this, by recognizing the Apollonian images of reality, and surviving the meaninglessness through a Dionysian "intoxication" of life.
The golden age of tragic plays would end with the birth of Euripidean drama, where the Dionysian impulse is disavowed, and the hero has a connection to virtue, knowledge, and morality. In Broken Flowers, the recent film starring Bill Murray, Murray's character, Don Johnston, must decide whether to continue and bask in perpetual intoxication, or attempt to get a clear, `sober', look at his world.
Don Johnston is a self made rich man, preferring to remain in the comfort of his living room. He seems to be unfazed even as his latest girlfriend decides to leave him and move out. Don, whose fortune has come through his knowledge of computers, leaves his house-a house without a computer-to help his neighbor, Winston, fix his computer. Don decides to read an anonymous letter he has received. It is shockingly revealed that he has fathered a son 20 years ago, and that this 19 year old boy is out searching for his father. Since no name is written in the letter, Don enlists the help of go-getter friend Winston, an Ethiopian immigrant holding down three jobs to support a wife and five kids, to help him figure out which of the five women he was dating around that time could possibly be the mother of his son.
Winston researches and plans the trip, and Don sets out on an adventure to reconnect with his old flames and come to grips with his past. Connected often with tragedy is irony, such as the confusion by those he meets over his name, mistaking Don for Miami Vice actor Don Johnson, who in real life is not half the celebrity of Bill Murray, or girlfriend number one's daughter Lolita, often naked and always suggestive around Don, to the chagrin of mother Laura, herself not afraid to jump into bed with Don after a 20 year break.
The visits to each successive old flame get worse, leaving us, and Don, to wonder whether his effort to move from the Dionysian to the Apollonian is worthwhile. Should Don have stayed in his home, with the blinds down, the lights off, in his comfort, if not happiness, zone? Does Don receive the answers he is looking for, and in turn, the peace of mind that has not come with what the film suggests are his numerous sexual conquests as he lived a life of Dionysian intoxication?
Spoiler Alert! I think the greatness of this film is that it gives us the struggle between the Dionysian and Apollonian impulses, without showing its hand and revealing where it stands. The movie concludes with the young man that Don believes may be his son leaving him, and Don is as confused as when he first opened the anonymous letter. We are left wondering whether, as Nietzsche claims, tragedies are the highest apex of the beautiful, offering us a respite from meaninglessness, with Don's despair resulting from his attempt to leave the Dionysian for the Apollonian, or if, as Socrates suggests, the beautiful is something that can be comprehended and seen as true, with Don's despair the result of not finding an answer that he knows is out there.
Movie Review: Tragedy, Comedy, or Both?
Summary: 4 Stars
In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche is focused on the idea of intoxication, of being intoxicated, filled up, and engulfed in a passion. Nietzsche contrasts the the Dionysian impulse and the Apollonian. The Apollonian is the visual arts, and gives an appearance of form and stability. The Dionysian is intoxication, and its representation in the arts is music. Like music, the Dionysian is constantly moving through time, whereas the Apollonian, like sculpture and painting, is stationary, forever present in one form. These two impulses represent, for Nietzsche, the "origin and essence of Greek tragedy."
For Nietzsche, tragic plays were the high point for Greek culture. The Dionysian spirit embodied them, since it is out of music that tragedy emerged. Tragedy was great because it moved beyond a moral and ethical interpretation of the events described in the play. The world of tragedy presupposes that there is no objective order. It is not evil or wrongdoing that causes suffering. It is just part of the chaos of existence. Meaninglessness is inherent to existence. In tragedy, the Greeks showed how one could confront this, by recognizing the Apollonian images of reality, and surviving the meaninglessness through a Dionysian "intoxication" of life.
The golden age of tragic plays would end with the birth of Euripidean drama, where the Dionysian impulse is disavowed, and the hero has a connection to virtue, knowledge, and morality. In Broken Flowers, the recent film starring Bill Murray, Murray's character, Don Johnston, must decide whether to continue and bask in perpetual intoxication, or attempt to get a clear, `sober', look at his world.
Don Johnston is a self made rich man, preferring to remain in the comfort of his living room. He seems to be unfazed even as his latest girlfriend decides to leave him and move out. Don, whose fortune has come through his knowledge of computers, leaves his house-a house without a computer-to help his neighbor, Winston, fix his computer. Don decides to read an anonymous letter he has received. It is shockingly revealed that he has fathered a son 20 years ago, and that this 19 year old boy is out searching for his father. Since no name is written in the letter, Don enlists the help of go-getter friend Winston, an Ethiopian immigrant holding down three jobs to support a wife and five kids, to help him figure out which of the five women he was dating around that time could possibly be the mother of his son.
Winston researches and plans the trip, and Don sets out on an adventure to reconnect with his old flames and come to grips with his past. Connected often with tragedy is irony, such as the confusion by those he meets over his name, mistaking Don for Miami Vice actor Don Johnson, who in real life is not half the celebrity of Bill Murray, or girlfriend number one's daughter Lolita, often naked and always suggestive around Don, to the chagrin of mother Laura, herself not afraid to jump into bed with Don after a 20 year break.
The visits to each successive old flame get worse, leaving us, and Don, to wonder whether his effort to move from the Dionysian to the Apollonian is worthwhile. Should Don have stayed in his home, with the blinds down, the lights off, in his comfort, if not happiness, zone? Does Don receive the answers he is looking for, and in turn, the peace of mind that has not come with what the film suggests are his numerous sexual conquests as he lived a life of Dionysian intoxication?
Spoiler Alert! This film gives us the struggle between the Dionysian and Apollonian impulses, without showing its hand and revealing where it stands. The movie concludes with the young man that Don believes may be his son leaving him, and Don is as confused as when he first opened the anonymous letter. We are left wondering whether, as Nietzsche claims, tragedies are the highest apex of the beautiful, offering us a respite from meaninglessness, with Don's despair resulting from his attempt to leave the Dionysian for the Apollonian, or if, as Socrates suggests, the beautiful is something that can be comprehended and seen as true, with Don's despair the result of not finding an answer that he knows is out there.