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BROKEN FLOWERS Send This Review to a Friend
Bill Murray excels with a sensitive, understated and likable performance in writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers,” which emerges as a road picture of an effort at self-discovery. But we learn more about the leading character than he does about himself, and perhaps that’s the point. The film, winner of the top award at the 2005 Cannes International Film Festival, is among the year’s best, both for Jarmusch’s talent at creating the unusual and for the quality of performances, including those in addition to Murray’s.
Having made money in the computer field, Don Johnston (Murray) is living a sullen life without new territory to conquer. His girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) dumps him. He is in the doldrums, save for his communication with his friend and neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright). One day an anonymous, typed letter arrives as the story’s catalyst. A woman writes that unbeknownst to Don, he has a son who may be trying to find his father. She doesn’t give him her name or that of the son. It’s enough to make a guy wonder but Don isn’t inclined to act. Spurred on by Winston, who fancies himself an amateur sleuth, Don is goaded to setting off on a road trip to find various women from his past in an effort to learn about the supposed son.
A good part of the film’s charm lies in Murray’s ability to say little but signify much with his subtle facial expressions, whether taciturn or projecting looks of inquisitiveness, skepticism or boredom. But what makes the film especially interesting is that we not only follow his story but in meeting the women whom he looks up, we get thumb-nail sketches of what has happened in their lives. And they are portrayed by extraordinary actresses.
Sharon Stone gives an intriguing performance as Laura, a mom with a sexy teenage daughter provocatively named Lolita, saucily portrayed by Alexis Dziena. Laura still looks great, and Don spends the night before he moves on. Other women are played in turn by Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton, and they all make important contributions to the film’s success.
Jarmusch, as he has shown he can do so well in past works, heaps on the atmosphere as we follow Don to different venues and situations. Since the letter was on pink stationary and typed, anything pink becomes a clue that gives hope. “Broken Flowers” left me wanting a more defined ending, and yet that would have been wrong. The pleasures of the film lie in its portrait of a man whose life is empty and raising questions as to whether it can ever be full and how much he can realize about himself.
The director does what would seem to be borrowing even if he may think he is being inventive. There is an opening sequence in which we follow the route of a letter among thousands after it is dropped in a mailbox. The great Indian director Satyajit Ray did that more impressively in a film to show the futility of the hopes and dreams of a young man with a letter that is a speck among the millions. Jarmusch also leans heavily on a particular closeup of Murray’s face, reminiscent of efforts at poignancy by directors as different as Chaplin, Vittorio De Sica and Woody Allen. Nonetheless, what Jarmusch does works for him—and for us. A Focus Features release.
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