Nothing revelatory here. Jarmusch’s trademark minimalism without the visual flair his previous collaborator, Robby Muller (with an umlaut), brought to Dead Man, Ghost Dog, Down By Law and Mystery Train (as well as Until the End of the World, Barfly, Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark) . Then again Flowers‘s cinematographer, Frederick Elmes, shot Blue Velvet, The Hulk and Kinsey so the production team must have been working on a low, low budget as the film just doesn’t look good (perhaps it was the Landmark Cinema I visited). It has also been lauded about that Jarmusch wrote the screenplay in two weeks, but to me the film feels underdeveloped and tossed together (straining for poignancy without really achieving anything). Bill Murray has certainly been riding a fine wave over the last couple of years and he has lovely moments in this film, but if he keeps stripping away the artifice from the craft of screen acting he’s going to altogether disappear from view (perhaps that’s his plan). Broken Flowers, however, does come to life whenever a woman enters the frame. And what women: Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, Francis Conroy, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy and Chloe Sevigny (who deserves special mention as she accomplishes the most with her character in the least amount of screen time). Not bad but nothing to drive out of your way to see.
I just saw this, and a) it looked pretty damn good–once I saw that it was Elmes, during the credits, it made sense; b) it perhaps holds up better in a small screen, as its pleasures demand attention through some meandering, and; c) it really worked nicely as a follow-up to Funny Ha Ha, which I saw yesterday.
Only a couple of notes–I think its pacing is Jarmuschian, which is to say almost gleefully disconnected from narrative ends. There’s a lovely visual joke where Don (Murray) pulls out of his driveway in his car, then we see shot after static shot of the car, in the near distance, driving–it seemed like 9, 10 connecting/establishing shots which showed the route. The camera doesn’t move, just plops down and we see the car enter and then exit frame. An awful lot of painstaking attention to the movement through time and space. Finally, he pulls up to a diner, and inside–we see Winston (Wright), his next-door neighbor.
Don’s search re-enacts one of J.J.’s old themes: randomness versus a greater plot/narrative significance. I too found it at first a bit underwhelming, but I enjoyed the rhythm and the performances … but the last couple scenes really dug in nicely. Murray has this moment after mistaking a young man, whom he buys a sandwich, for his son–another car drives by, and he makes eye contact with that young man… and then the camera holds on Murray, circling round him. You don’t know necessarily whether this signals the absence or the hopeful omnipresence of meaning (the lack of an answer to the character’s search for his son, but also to the film’s questioning of what gives a life meaning)… I tend to think the latter. And I felt the same with the closing shots of Funny yesterday–and that film’s focus on a young woman just struggling to make sense dovetailed nicely with Broken‘s later-life return to that problem. Both films also delight in how the meaning of conversations ripples underneath the surface of the words said and gestures made…
Pretty good, if not great.
we watched it tonight. i liked it but, in keeping with the film’s tone, was not particularly excited by it. i could have watched a lot more of it though. parts of murray’s character’s life hit a little too close to home: watching movies half-heartedly at all times of the day and desultorily falling asleep on the couch in the process. well, just that part. no big money, big house, or trail of beautiful women across the country for me. not that i’m complaining (this is in case sunhee reads this–and if you are, this parenthetical aside is entirely ironic. ha ha!). lots of wonderful actors but not a whole lot for anyone other than murray or wright to do.
mike, i see what you say about the jarmuschian aesthetic/concerns here but this felt least like a jim jarmusch film to me of all the ones i’ve seen. not that i’m complaining (this is in case jim jarmusch reads this etc.).
I liked that the film was not “scored” as such. Music played when music was suppposed to be playing. I’m sick of directors and scorers trying to make me feel a certain way for scenes that can’t create that feeling through acting, cinematography, etc. Not to get all Dogme 95, I think that scores are valuable, just that they’re being used as a sledgehammer too often.
And this from a director who knows the value of NOT using music, but has used (and probably overused) Neil Young, John Lurie and RZA from Wu-Tang do previous scores.
Still, an underwhelming experience for me, but I’m hard pressed to know how it could be otherwise when the main character is so underwhelmed by his own life.
I wonder… Murray’s character seems to exhibit a lot of the signs of clinical depression (as does Arnab apparently), and I wonder if there was something more that Jarmusch could have done with that, perhaps in connection with the series of flashbacks he has, or in the responses from some of the women he sees again.
Which brings up one thing: At no time do we ever have an inkling of why or how he could be such a ladykiller. As an audience we probably tend to forgive this because we’re wating BILL MURRAY – and we all love Bill Murray, and we remember how charming he was 20 years ago. So we can project that past charisma onto the character of Don Johnston, but really – that’s lazy filmmaking. Or storytelling. Well, it’s in line with much of Jarmusch’s barely-there character sketches over the years; the boat adrift on an ocean going where the waves take it.
Ehh… It was good. Mike’s examples of why suffice. And I’m glad Jarmusch is still writing his own source material, even if it’s not the storngest stuff out there.
I’m more interested in this body of work that Murray has created over the past 7 years. Rushmore, Lost in Translation , Life Aquatic and Broken Flowers (maybe Hamlet?) represent a pretty staggering array of variations on a theme. No sequels, no recurring characters, yet he’s taking something not easily stereotyped (like a DeNiro gangter role) and creating this Buster Keaton-like persona. It’s impressive and unexpected.
I’d add in his performance with (or against) De Niro in Mad Dog and Glory, which I think began this string of characters…