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Bill Murray,
Bill Murray,
Jeffrey Wright,
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Jim Jarmusch,
Jim Jarmusch
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: Universal Studios
: Comedies, Independent, Romantic Comedy
: 106 min.
: English
: Spanish, French
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Recently Rented By DLeonard
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A man sets out to find the son he didn't know he had and winds up getting answers to some questions he never asked in this comedy drama from director Jim Jarmusch. Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is an emotionally blank middle-aged man who has never married and lives a quiet, comfortable life thanks to shrewd investments in computers (though he doesn't use one himself). After being given his walking papers by his latest girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), Don receives an anonymous letter informing him he fathered a son 19 years ago, and that the boy wants to find his dad. Not sure what to do, Don shows the note to Winston (Jeffrey Wright), a neighbor who fancies himself an amateur detective. With Winston's help, Don narrows the list of possible mothers down to four women, and with a mixture of reluctance and resigned determination he sets out to find them. Armed with a CD of traveling music from Winston, Don pays unannounced visits to Laura (Sharon Stone), an oversexed widow with a libidinous teenage daughter (Alexis Dziena); Dora (Frances Conroy), a stuffy real estate agent; Penny (Tilda Swinton), an aging biker with no happy memories of Don; and Carmen (Jessica Lange), a self-styled analyst for pets whose outward eccentricity disguises a firm inner stability. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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by estherjane
January 23, 2007 - 8:55 AM PST
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2 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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| Broken Flowers is Jim Jarmusch's Wild Strawberries. |
| Broken Old Act Bill ?
by PandT
September 20, 2006 - 10:45 AM PDT
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0 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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In an interview in Film Forum, Jim Jarmusch says that Bill Murray's character in Broken Flowers, Don Johnston, is the first character in one of his films he doesn't like&it shows. Don is a guy who made a small fortune in computers whatever that generic term means at this late date in computers yet doesn't have one. One of the few surviving Dot com. millionaires possibly? In any case, Don lives in a mixed neighborhood as the opening scene shows us so seemingly importantly. As a mailman delivers the mail to a house full of black children running around the yard and their mother carrying an infant at every turn, we learn that this is Don's next-door neighbor and his friend Winston's wife, children and home. Winston, played enthusiastically by Jeffrey Wright, is Murray's Ethiopian buddy, who as it turns out is the only character in the film with any mainstream characteristics really. Odd that Jarmusch would intentionally (or not) point out that it is the immigrant who is looking to seemingly quickly inhabit America with an endless supply of new citizens, while his white middle-class counterpart is later engaged in the movie's true theme of a man searching for the mother of his unknown child. I think this is a reverse-reverse racist joke on our behalf from Jarmusch, Don't doubt it, this film is full of these possible moments of politically-correct reversals.
I found the film somewhat enjoyable, but also maddening as I sit here and think about it. Jarmusch has always been at his best when he subtly films landscapes, highways and images of buildings, houses and other simple everyday things without dialogue, as they alone speak volumes about our society and lifestyles and at times even deeper ideas of the American Dream and nightmare. This is done as the camera follows Murray throughout the country on a trek to find a woman who has had a pink enveloped letter delivered to him saying he is the father of her 19 year old son, who is on an odyssey of his own.
********SPOILER ALERT********* (Read after watching the film.)*****
In the opening Murray's Don sits at home quietly while his current girlfriend played by Julie Delpy (who is used only in a cameo that will be followed by more from the other women from Don's past) is leaving him, she in her couture pink dress and he in his jogging suit, asking her to stay in a most unpersuasive and passive way. I was wondering by now if Jarmusch must have really bummed out when Murray became the darling of the festival circuit a year ago playing essentially the same uninvolved character (he is starting to wear-out really) only in a frankly better film. Now that I think of it, Murray has been perfecting this non-participatory or at least non-engaged character since Rushmore.
Winston gets word of the pink letter that Don received and is immediately and excitedly already making detective-like plans on his computer to help Don find the mystery woman who has left no return address or name in the letter. Don's stoic behavior makes it hard to believe that he could be convinced to go to the store for milk, much less cover the entire country in a semi-conscious yet somehow important and rather sweet but incongruous search for the mother of his unknown child carrying pink flowers to each of his prospects doorsteps in a most unromantic way. (upsidedown) He's not even sure that he had the son. It drives him on never-the-less as he follows Winston's itinerary for him Mapquest print-outs and all.
First stop is the home of the very youthful and lighthearted Laura played by Sharon Stone. We and Murray first meet Laura's teenage daughter,r all alone in the house, her name is Lolita and she lives up to that name, yet she and her mother don't seem to know who the famous Lolita character is when Don brings it up later. Is this one of Jarmusch's in-jokes about how vapid and illiterate most Americans are, after all Laura was married to a NASCAR type driver who was lost in a wall of flame, what else can we expect of these folks? Don is leaving the house after Lolita's little performance when Laura finally arrives, he gives her the flowers, she is still smitten with the guy it seems and invitingly says: Come on in we're having chicken for dinner. In one of the few funny scenes we see the trio sitting down for dinner, in a distant camera sho, and we hear Don say to Lolita: That was quite an outfit you weren't wearing today. The filmhas been mistakenly called a comedy by many critics who I think never even saw the film. Hysterically funny and uproariously amusing were some of the types of quotes I read on film posters as I left the theater in a fairly blank and oh so not laughing mood, kind of like Don's. Nothing in this film is remotely hysterical or uproarious, mostly due to this over-the-top mundane behavior that is passing as some sort of genius new kind of understated minimalist acting from Murray. Don spends the night with the easy Laura and pushes on, she's probably not the mother of his child, if you sleep with the guy, why not tell him&you know?
Next we see Don driving through one of those treeless new neighborhoods of pre-fab McMansions.He drives up to one of these and rings the doorbell, pink flowers in hand again. We now meet Dora, a former hippie girlfriend whose husband interrupts the sedate and formal reunion with a kind of gushing enthusiasm reserved only for a husband who nervously wants to make his wife feel comfortable even though he is obviously quite concerned to find this strange man who he eventually remembers as a former flame. The couple invites Don to dinner; Don fidgets with his frozen fish and eats a couple of carrots. Don, all the while has been looking for clues from ideas given to him by his friend and accomplice Winston that might help him spot or even cajole the truth out of one of his former loves, such as a typewriter or pink objects (?), the color of the envelope, remember? He gets no answer from the real-estate selling/zombified Dora, especially when Don hits a sore spot with the couple after he asks if they have any children.
The next cameo appearance is from Chloe Sevigny as the curt assistant to new-agey professional animal conversationalist Carmen (Jessica Lange). She greets Don's surprise visit with a distant, careful reservation inviting him into her office. Don asks her if a cat there is having a conversation with them right now and she answers He needs to go out, and the cat leaves. She is willing to listen to Don, albeit with a neurotic distrust about his visit. She does stay to talk to him longer than the assistant wants her to, after all, a pet and its owner are in the waiting room eager to find out about the pet through Carmen's conversations with it! As Don is leaving to his car he asks if she wants to get together later for a drink and Carmen replies:I don't drink so he asks:Well how about a bite to eat then? Carmen responds:I don't eat. I'm not sure if this is the stuff that the critics were calling hilarious, but the folks in my theater weren't laughing, just weird.
At this point I'm starting to think about other moments in Jarmusch's career that often seemed nothing more than pretentious, now don't get me wrong, I think the guy has a place in film, and I really like many of his films, (Ghost Dog, Stranger Than Paradise, Mystery Train) but more importantly I like his style, yet his films quite often have an annoying quality, something I think he would be the first to admit to. Well, this one tops the others in the annoying category folks. In a way more mainstream than his other films Broken Flowers has that feel about it that will just be agitating and vacant enough to put off those who don't like art-house fare, and just commercial enough with it's pop culture actors to put off the true indie crowd.
There is a point in the, should I say, action where Murray is in bed in a long distance phone conversation with his buddy Winston, he says to Winston who has called him "Don Juan" on a few occasions, Couldn't you have got me a Porsche for this trip, Winston replies: "You are the Don Juan" where Don answers back:" I'm just a stalker in a Taurus!" another much needed funny line. Next Don goes to a trailer trash environment replete with the rusty cars, motorcycles parts, loose car seats laying around the yard along with anything else you could think of. He asks a couple of guys, who fit into the mullet/biker crowd, if they know a Penny; they tell him to try the screen door on the porch. Penny played by Tilda Swinton has exactly three angry lines before she leaves Murray and his flowers at the door. As he is being attacked by the two men who now have come to the screaming Penny's aid, Don sees a typewriter in the yard&a clue&who cares? That's not really what this film is about is it, does this apathetic man really care to be doing all of this leg-work? The resounding answer is no, yet Jarmusch has for unknown reasons weaved this unbelievable premise into the fabric of the movie and is stuck with it now. It never feels right, and this is the problem, in a mainstream film there would be a character that at least seems to really be involved in the caring aspect, and if this is to be a more artistic accounting of a lost soul, why would he be so nose-to-the-grindstone when he so obviously doesn't want pull that off anymore? This is the films major flaw, and it is an complete flaw that makes the movie not work ultimately. The film as puzzle parts is entertaining, but not as a film with a beginning middle and end, as this one tries to be.
The best scene in the film is when we see Murray in a flower shop (after he has been beat up by the biker-type acquaintances of Penny) and he is cleaned up by a sweet shop-girl and then asks her for directions to a certain cemetery. One of the five possible women that Winston had tracked down from the period in Don's life that would have been right to have a child is now dead, a victim of an automobile accident. He goes to her grave, drops off the flowers, again carrying them as if they were heavy, and simply and tragically says:"Hello beautiful". He then tearfully sits down against a tree beside the gravestone and looks visibly shaken. I really love Bill Murray, this is his finest moment in this film, and possibly all of his films.
Some of the more interesting moments in the film are when we and Don see different types of 19 year old boys/men during Don's travels. The camera lingers on them as does Don, wondering if this one or that one could be his son, or certainly at distance they have been, they could be. Don encounters a young man he recognizes from a bus ride the day before, convinced that he is following him and looking like he is in need of food, he buys the vegetarian youngster a cheese sandwich with mushrooms. The kid says he's into philosophy and asks Murray if he has any wise things to tell him, Don just answers back that the past is gone and the future unsure, so there's just now. The kid asks if he's a Buddhist.
I could go on about this film, but I will just end by saying we need directors like Jim Jarmusch, but I'm not sure we nedded Broken Flowers, he's done all of this better and with much more focus even though his is almost always skewed.
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| Watch, Repeat
by randomcha
January 4, 2006 - 7:55 AM PST
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1 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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| I think this is one of those films that require repeat viewings. A comparison to Ozu is especially apt in the case of "Broken Flowers." The first time you watch it, it pretty much looks like very little is going on. It's only the second or third time that all the silences and repetitions fall into place. The films needs those to create a space for meditation. The dinner scene where Murray wrestles with the carrots is especially funny. Plus Jarmusch has chosen another soundtrack full of killer music. |
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