Movies

Director Jim Jarmusch, best known to me for his work in making Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai, first worked together with Bill Murray in Coffee and Cigarettes before getting back together two years later to make Broken Flowers.

Broken Flowers features Bill Murray acting in a role similarly caught up in the mundane passing of time as was his character in Lost in Translation. Murray plays Don Johnston...with a T...a "middle aged Don Juan" with a whose past relationships with women are to be admired. As he says, he was just living his life when one day he receives a mysterious letter which had neither a return address nor a signed name. The letter read that it was from a woman from 20 years into Don's past and that shortly after they went their separate ways she gave birth to a son. Don's son.

Winston, Don's sleuth-obsessed neighbor gets involved to discover the origin of the letter. His blueprint involves Don creating a list of possible women from which he will plan an itinerary. The choice, then, is Don's; whether or not to set out on this wild goose chase to find a woman who may or may not have given birth to his child.

The movie was good. It was not great, it was not incredible, it was not wonderful. It was good. I think it COULD HAVE BEEN great, incredible and/or wonderful. Something was missing.

Winston was the loveable character. It was his role that should have been developed further. He and his family with their relationship to Don could have been used more. Maybe a few less cut scenes to watch a plane take off.

I understand that the idea was to let Don embark on an outwardly manifested journey into himself, but so many solo shots of Murray sitting quietly as he learned more about himself made the movie progress too slowly.

I know I broke the cardinal rule of movie watching and entered the theater last night with expectation(s) for this film. Granted I had not heard much of the movie itself, only that Murray was great. I will concede this point, but with exceptions. To an extent I will draw a parallel between Bill Murray in Broken Flowers and Tom Hanks in The Terminal. Both men were great in their respective roles, the problem was that maybe the roles themselves needed work. The Terminal was a horrible film, so I will go no further in using the two movies in the same sentence. I said before, Broken Flowers is a good movie.

I laughed (maybe too) loudly at many points. That is part of what made the movie difficult for me as I would laugh so hard and then there would be such a long lull before the next laugh. This emphasized some parts of the movie as being slower than I believe they really were upon reflection; the contrast was too great.

There were two things that I definitely enjoyed about Jarmusch's direction. One, though it made me a bit nauseous, was his camera shot out Don's driver side window. The shot is right out the window, including the reflection in the side mirror. This shows Don on his journey through his past to maybe find a piece of his future. We watch the world pass by his window then vanish into the horizon. The second technique was the use of basketball hoops. Winston instructed Don to keep an eye out for clues that may indicate which of the women mothered a son. Each neighborhood he travels to shows a basketball hoop. The hoops are used as hope that maybe he is on the right path.

I was also fascinated by the newfound desire in a man who had never exhibited any signs of wanting a family of his own to find his son in the face of every 19 year old young man he passed on the street. ...So I guess that was three things I liked....

Either go in committed to "the long haul" or maybe get antsy in your uncomfortable theater seat, either way the movie is good. Maybe Jim Jarmusch will just let me see his next script ahead of time so we can work in a few more jokes to keep up the intensity. Until then, go see Broken Flowers. (Oh and I recommend Ghost Dog, too.)

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