Broken Flowers Review

BROKEN FLOWERS REVIEW:

Wow, that one really made ya think.

Overall, I have to say I really enjoyed Broken Flowers. It was a slow movie, that is for sure. But although it took me a while to really get into it, after about half an hour I was totally absorbed into the spellbinding flow of Jim Jarmusch's reflective look at a former Don Juan's journey through the fragmented pieces of his own history. The movie follows a simple premise - Bill Murray plays Don Johnston ("with a T") - an aging ladies' man who discovers that he may have a 20-year old son, and visits a number of his former lady-friends in order to solve this mystery - a puzzle which he may or may not actually have any real interest in solving.

Performance-wise, Bill Murray was fantastic in this film, though he is so naturalistic that he almost makes you wonder how much of his role is acting and how much is simply an extension of the now-familiar, dour and world-weary persona he's developed and honed in recent movies like Lost in Translation, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic. What you get here from Murray is covering pretty familiar territory, but it's still an engrossing, nuanced performance that is worthy of lots of praise. Likewise, the female leads in the movie seem to mimic Murray's naturalism. Formerly glamorous stars like Sharon Stone and Jessica Lange are deglamorized here, and surprisingly fit right into the movie's stark, sad world where the "reality" of wrinkles, aging, and other blemishes usually hidden by the camera are instead fully revealed and exposed.

Basically, this is one of those movies, like a Lost in Translation or About Schmidt, that is really more of a meditation on various themes - on characters, on small details and nuance, on life - that it does not necessarily follow a traditional story structure or present a real sense of character development, let alone closure to the main character's journey. And that can at times be frustrating, but mostly it's just very refreshing - Jarmusch leaves plenty of room for interpretation, and he provides plenty of small scenes, patterns, and images that really resonate during and after you see this film. While the pacing was often almost excruciatingly slow, you have to admire the artful manner in which Broken Flowers is shot. Seeing this movie's unique style definitely piqued my interest in seeing other Jarmusch films, as this was the first one I've yet gotten a chance to check out.

Anyways, I definitely recommend this film for a HUGE change of pace from most of this summer's rapid-fire blockbusters. This movie is slow, deliberate, and sparse, and can be hit and miss with some of its dialogue and character moments. But it's also brilliantly shot and acted, funny, and one of the most thought-provoking movies that I've seen in a while.

My grade: A -