My Netflix queue brought me another Jim Jarmusch film this week, which was good, because I wanted to give him another chance after the unrelatable mishmash that was Coffee and Cigarettes. Sorry, I simply had no love for that film. I don't really love this film either, but I liked it much better because it was so much more engaging. I knew nothing about Broken Flowers save for the basic plot summary and the fact that Bill Murray is in it, and since he's one of my absolute favorite actors, I had to see the movie. Bill Murray never fails to impress me, and he did so a bit here too. Except, this film felt a bit too much like Lost in Translation, only in a different context and frame of mind, for me to think it was a great movie or even Bill's finest performance.
Bill plays Don Johnston (with a T, not to be confused with former Mr. Miami Vice), an aging bachelor and ladies man who's latest girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) has just walked out on him. She hands him the mail, which contains a letter typed on pink stationary, unsigned and with no return address, advising him that he fathered a son 20 years ago. Don's neighbor Winston (Ghostbusters anyone? Played by Jeffrey Wright), a family man who fancies himself an amateur detective, develops a strategy for Don to deduce the letter's origins. He and Don narrow down the possibilities for this hypothetical child's mother to four possible former girlfriends, and soon, Don is flying all over the country (or maybe just the state of New York, since his ubiquitous Taurus always has New York plates), visiting his old girlfiends. There's Laura (Sharon Stone), the over-lusty widow of a race car driver with a daughter whose libido rivals her own; Dora (Frances Conroy), a real estate agent with the perfect, pre-fabricated suburban life; Carmen (Jessica Lange), an "animal communicator" with an overprotective assistant (Chloe Sevigny); and Penny (Tilda Swinton), an aging biker beauty with no-nonsense bodyguards.
Broken Flowers is about the journey of a man whose routine of empty relationships and the lonely bachelor's life has resulted in boredom and an apathetic attitude. Visiting his old flames sort of gets him out of his rut, if only for a brief while, and makes him consider possibilities he would otherwise not be able to entertain. He also gets some taste of what might have been with each of these women, had he invested some emotional commitment in any of the relationships.
I enjoyed this movie because, as always, I enjoyed Bill Murray. He was kind of the perfect casting choice for Don because his ability to manage self-effacing hollowness while maintaining a wry smirk works well for this character. His performance is another masterwork of subtlety: facial expressions and vocal inflections that betray so much more than a bored, slightly annoyed middle aged man with no looming hopes or dreams.
As I mentioned, though, I felt like this character was a carbon copy of his Lost in Translation character. Instead of someone who felt foreign in a foreign land, he played someone who had to be shaken from his comfort zone, no matter how empty and meaningless that comfort zone had become. Yet and still, the man seemed to be the same archetype, so it was no surprise that Bill could affect such a great performance, since he'd done it before.
As the filmmaking went, I felt it was pretty tight. Great use of the camera to add so much texture to small moments; excellent soundtrack; good art direction. The choice of the color pink to tie each woman together was a great symbol for the rut in which Don found himself (even down to his choice of women). The pacing was also perfect; it was a slow film, but it never lost itself in its slowness and was never boring. It kept a steady, determined pace to match the steady determination of Don's quest to find the answers to questions asked and unasked.
My only problems with this film came down to story. The ending was really dissatisfying to me; maybe it was supposed to be, but even if certain questions were never going to be answered, I felt it would have been nice to give us a flavor of what Don might have learned from the whole experience, other than the "philosphical" nugget he offers near the end of the film. Maybe some glimpse of the future, or some idea as to how the whole thing affected him. Also, I feel the viewer is given very little insight into what convinces Don to take this journey to begin with - he's adamant that the letter is at best a hoax, but then falls hook, line, and sinker for Winston's pitch about solving the mystery. At first, I assumed it was morbid curiosity, until each new visit stirred some latent parental responsibility and wave of nostalgia in him. Maybe the viewer is only supposed to assume and guess, I don't know. I kept wondering if only men facing midlife crises would relate to this film, and maybe these outstanding questions would resonate better with those types of viewers.
Still, I found myself interested in Don's journey. I was disappointed in some narrative wishes, but I still occasionally chuckled. The best scene is when Don complains to Winston over the telephone in a hotel room that Winston should have rented him a Porsche because, instead, he's a "stalker in a Taurus."
All in all, I feel this film warrants a 7.5 between shaky and minor flaws/very good, due to some of the narrative flaws (even if the flaws are such in my eyes only). I was still entertained, and I still love Bill Murray, but this film won't pass the test. It's kind of depressing for starters and didn't really offer any answers to the mysteries aside from some insinuations; I don't care to watch quasi-frustrating films more than once, but I do think the film is worth one viewing, because the art is there, even if the flowers are broken.