Broken Flowers
Vague and slow, the way "film people" like it
from the August 2005 INsite Magazine
If, as an independent filmmaker, you could pick just one Hollywood gratuity for your film, which would it be? Explosions? Opulent sets? Murder? Sex? For director Jim Jarmusch who has made a habit of imposing this constraint on himself, this time around it’s skin.
If nothing else, you’ve got to credit Jarmusch for his focus. As in Ghost Dog, which left out the love story, and Coffee and Cigarettes, which remained faithful to the business of its title, Jarmusch’s latest film, Broken Flowers deals exclusively with his subject’s chronic affair with the minds and bodies of women.
The film follows Don Johnston (Bill Murray)—not Johnson, Johnston with a “t”—on a search for the writer of an anonymous pink letter. His latest girlfriend having just left him, Johnston grudgingly sets out to approach five former lovers who could have written the letter that claims Don fathered a son 19 years ago.
Johnston’s world is slow and quiet. The film is shot in a contemplative style, and there certainly is no shortage of time to contemplate. Seemingly, this space serves to make you think while Don is thinking. And Don does a lot of thinking. There’s not a lot of action.
The film lingers on Don’s travels in rental cars, planes and in hotel rooms. The boredom breaks on Chlöe Sevigny’s legs, Sharon Stone’s naked daughter, and of course, deadpan comedy.
Murray, as in Lost in Translation, Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums, plays a character reluctantly dragging himself through motions put in place by another person—in this case he’s following a travel itinerary put together by his neighbor and only friend, Winston. “If [your son] shows up, I’ll apprehend him,” promises Winston as he hands Don a dossier of plane reservations, maps and addresses.
Somehow, Jarmusch’s odd style of storytelling manages to feel clever and clumsy at the same time. The texture that is so skillfully woven into Don’s relationship with Wilson is curiously absent from Don’s encounters with women, who for some untold reason find him irresistible. Perhaps this is the nature of attraction? This is left for the audience to figure out, as are the details of Don’s professional career. When asked how he made his money, he offers only, “computers.”
Many moments also go out of their way to be referential and wind up feeling more like lazy writing than reverential allusion. Ghost Dog fans will notice a moment borrowed from that film, and Nabokov readers will notice an even less subtle nod. I couldn’t help but feel like the whole film borrowed its soul from Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” But then again I’m a tremendous nerd.
While the film’s style of storytelling does straddle the line between deep and deeply frustrating, one thing it is not is ordinary.
Though set in the present day, the film feels thrown back to a time when computers were novelty items and the world communicated on paper. This tactile motif joined with long shots on rearview mirrors and 70’s style music offer subtle explanations for those viewers who tend to examine these types of things.
What the people who like this film will like about it is the same thing that will turn many viewers off to it. Broken Flowers moves at a pace that requires patience and leaves many conflicts unresolved. For viewers who fancy themselves art house film buffs, these open spaces will make this film one worthy of closer examination. For people who like The Fantastic Four, well, maybe there’s a better way for you to spend an hour and a half.
For a summertime release, Broken Flowers is about as opposite to a popcorn blockbuster as you can find. But it is, in its own particular way, stylish, and this is what, if you’ve got the patience for it, makes it worth watching.