BROKEN FLOWERS Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Focus Features
Grade: A-
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
Written by: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances
Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy
Screened at: Loews Lincoln Sq., NYC, 8/6/05 “A good comedian never laughs at his own jokes,” goes the old saying, which would appear to place suspicion on Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryer, Robin Williams, Jackie Chan, and in some cases even Steve Martin. The only purist around is Bill Murray, who with acting that ranges deliberately from the almost comatose to the delivery of dry, subtle bon mots, would have to be the best comic around. He struts his stuff–or rather displays a bland assertiveness--throughout “Broken Flowers,” which is considered to be the most commercial of quirky director Jim Jarmusch’s achievements. Still, compared to any of the exhibitions of joke jocks in typically blatant, big-studio offerings, the pic is surprisingly compelling because of Murray’s very deadpan nature. The big advantage in playing a role in the impassive style of, say, Charlie Chaplin, Buston Keaton and Bill Murray, is that the audience will look to every small facial gesture and tic as a revelation of character, of each actor’s barely perceptible nuances of feeling. Jarmusch signals early on that his main man is phlegmatic to the point of semi-consciousness. Murray’s character, Don Johnston, a fellow whose fifty-ish presence allows us to guess that he’s to go into mid-life crisis, sits in his capacious and sparsely-furnished digs somewhere in the American landscape. He’s watching his flat-panel TV without changing channels. Yet he’s hardly involved with what’s going on inside the tube, and hasn’t the energy even to move away from his sofa when he takes a nap. We’re surprised then, to hear his latest, much younger sweetheart, Sherry (Julie Delpy), accuse him of Don-Juan-ism, giving him the heave ho. Shortly thereafter he receives a post, a pink envelope with a typed, anonymous letter, alleging that Don left the mysterious writer pregnant some twenty years back and that his son may be on his way to meet him. He contacts his more active, even obsessive neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), who urges him to list all his girl friends from two decades back and to take planes and cars to meet all of them, looking especially for the color pink on their clothes, on their typewriters, on ribbons, in motorcycles, whatever. “Broken Flowers,” then is an odyssey, a road-and-buddy movie, except that the buddy, Winston, is consistently with him only in spirit. As Don meets each of his ex-sweeties, writer-director Jarmusch conveys his thematic agenda: the ways that time changes us; the difficulties of communication; the nature of memory; the regrets and animosities that remain with us despite the fact that–as Don tells a new pal late into the story–that the past is gone. We eavesdrop on his conversations with each of the women, wondering not only how he could have hooked up with such a diversity of personalities, but how these now middle-aged people have changed. Dora (Frances Conroy), married to a successful and gregarious real-estate agent, is a repressed soul, barely able to get a word in as the conversation is dominated by her ebullient husband Ron (Christopher McDonald). No meeting of the minds here. When he checks out Carmen (Jessica Lange), who has kept her spanking good looks and figure and now runs a business as an animal communicator, he’s treated with bare politeness, perhaps because Carmen seems more interested physically in her assistant (Chloe Sevigny). Strike-out. Another airline flight takes him to an antagonistic biker, Penny (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), but he strikes gold in his entente with the free-spirit Laura (Sharon Stone), whose daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena), has no problem chatting with him while she is completely nude, just ten minutes after they meet. Just as Murray’s character mines a quiet humor while the costumes of the characters are indicators of their inner selves, Jarmusch makes sure that the jazzy music from a CD that Winston has given to him is not intrusive, but played primarily when he is driving his rental car. Though “Broken Flowers” sustains its narrative for its entire length–a feat that some considered Jarmusch (“Stranger Than Paradise,” “Down by Law,” “Dead Man”) to be incapable of doing--this study of loneliness overlapping with chances for human connection does not give us closure. Does Don finally meet the young man who allegedly searches for him? The film tantalizes us with the possibility without tying up the mystery in a neat package with a pink ribbon. The journey, and not the destination, is not only the most important thing, it’s the only thing, and Murray, in every frame except for those exhibiting some generic landscape, is the perfect match for Jarmusch. Rated R. 108 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
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