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Broken Flowers (2005) Focus
Features, 1 hr. 45 mins.
Starring:
Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Julie Delpy, Frances Conroy,
Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Alexis Dziena, Chloe Sevigny
Directed by:
Jim Jarmusch |
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Writer-director Jim Jarmusch
skillfully explores the clouded psyche of a roguish middle-aged womanizer
in the quirky yet sentimental relationship-driven comedy Broken Flowers.
Jarmusch’s introspective journey into the skepticism and alienation of
lost love recently captured the Grand Prix prize at this year’s
International Film Festival at Cannes. Quietly robust and keenly
insightful in its melancholy mode, Broken Flowers is unconditionally
infectious as a wry commentary mixing pathos and pleasure at the expense
of an aging Don Juan prototype facing his underlying emotional midlife
crisis.
Jarmusch is clearly considered somewhat of a renegade independent
filmmaker with off-kilter, low-budget cinematic samples such as Dead Man,
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Down by Law and Coffee and Cigarettes.
Finally, the maverick movie-maker is allowed to stretch his artistic
muscles on a wider scale. Broken Flowers is a perceptive mainstream movie
that will cater to a generous movie-going audience. Blessed with a
tremendous acting troupe headed up by the incredibly polished
Oscar-nominated Bill Murray (Lost in Translation), Jarmusch arms his
reflective material with a refreshing charge that resonates with unlimited
spunky charm.
Murray (reuniting with Jarmusch from his previous outing in Delirium) is
in fine deadpan form as Don Johnston, a mature and cagey Cassanova with an
aversion to settling down with one particular woman. It’s an automatic
given that the carousing Don loves the ladies and that the word
“commitment” is not in this long-in-the-tooth loverboy’s vocabulary. Don’s
most recent youthful girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) is fed up with his
refusal to take their union seriously so she understandably decides to
walk out on him. But before she departs, she tosses to Don a pink letter
that arrived at his doorstep. The correspondence is from one of his many
ex-lovers and informs him that he fathered a son some twenty years ago by
one of these past main squeezes. The letter is not signed and it does
pointedly reveal that Don’s sudden offspring may be pursuing him very
soon.
Feeling rather indifferent by this revelation, Don is at a loss for words
and is ambivalent by this shocking development. However, Don’s amateur
sleuth and close neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright) encourages his pal to
set out on an elaborate field trip in order to track down his newly
discovered grown-up kid and his mother. Thus, the extensive search is on
for Don to claim his wandering seed and this means dealing with the
put-upon prospect of messing around with a perplexing road-trip itinerary.
Nevertheless, Don is ready to tackle the mystery of meeting his adult
child but first must touch bases with four of his exes in order to soak up
a sizeable sense of redemption.
Just as Don’s current existence is in meandering turmoil his topsy-turvy
travels around the country is meant to represent a similar taste of
disorder that plagues his every move. Reluctantly, Don revisits an unkind
past that takes him down a rocky road that is reminiscent of his
self-inflicted malaise with the women he left behind as a mere
afterthought. Among Don’s previous conquests is tolerant stunning widow
Laura (Sharon Stone) saddled with a teenage daughter named Lolita (Alexia
Dziena). There’s also a mixed welcoming from ex-hippie turned repressed
real estate professional Dora (Frances Conroy). New Age Carmen (Jessica
Lange) is quite noticeable with her grudge and hostile Penny (Tilda
Swinton) is a biker babe with reserved harsh bite. Despite Don’s offering
of pink flowers in an attempt to patch up whatever unfinished business he
had with his trivial honeys of yesteryear, meeting these various women of
varying temperament is meant to provide this road-wary Romeo with coming
to grips about his eventual isolation and what he’s missed out on in terms
of his unwillingness to accept completeness in his free-wheeling
lifestyle.
Broken Flowers is an enlightening examination about not making a
connection with a soulmate for fear that true romantic companionship may
demand something of us that we aren’t sure we’re ready for in our anxious
hearts. Jarmusch serves up a respectable and touching exposition that
questions the intentional unpredictability of love with all its possible
attached freedoms and restrictions. Comically, the film’s tone maintains
the right kind of irreverence and is very smart in its sardonic execution.
Murray echoes the same cherished, restrained and subtle angst-ridden
performance that was so winning in exceptional fare such as Rushmore and
the aforementioned Lost in Translation. As the calmly dejected Don
Johnston, Murray never lets his defeated stoic on-screen persona become
too overwhelming to the point that that inner pain and suffering of his
loneliness becomes colorfully over-the-top. Murray’s constant withdrawn
facial expressions and penchant for being the sacrificial prisoner in his
empty lavish home is the saddened equivalent of a lost man resigned to
play it safe and wallow in his lonely psychological devices of erratically
jumping from one faceless female to another without satisfying that quest
to find the ultimate intimate partner to curve his apparent insecurities.
The supporting players contribute marvelously to the cause that makes up
Jarmusch’s compelling universe of humor and heartbreak. The handful of
actresses who play the lovey-dovey casualties to Murray’s love
‘em-and-leave ‘em lothario are drawn with a passionate outline of
frivolity and frustration. And Golden Globe-winner Jeffrey Wright (Angels
in America) musters up a terrific turn as Murray’s motivator—the reliable
family man that Don Johnston doesn’t have the fortitude to be in
hindsight.
Broken Flowers is about the manifestations of broken people in dire need
of some major mental repair. Hence, this is one sharp storytelling venture
that doesn’t need the proverbial fixing. |
