Broken Flowers
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Jim Jarmusch |
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| Distributor | Universal Studios |
| Honors | |
| Bill Murray gives yet another simple, seemingly effortless, yet illuminating performance in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers. Don Johnston (Murray, Lost in Translation, Rushmore) receives an anonymous letter telling him that he has a 19 year old son who’s looking for him. Don only decides to investigate at the prompting of his neighbor Winston (the indispensable Jeffrey Wright, Shaft, Basquiat), who not only tracks down the current addresses of the possible mothers, he plans Don’s entire trip down to the rental cars. Almost against… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Bill Murray gives yet another simple, seemingly effortless, yet illuminating performance in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers. Don Johnston (Murray, Lost in Translation, Rushmore) receives an anonymous letter telling him that he has a 19 year old son who’s looking for him. Don only decides to investigate at the prompting of his neighbor Winston (the indispensable Jeffrey Wright, Shaft, Basquiat), who not only tracks down the current addresses of the possible mothers, he plans Don’s entire trip down to the rental cars. Almost against his will, Don finds himself knocking at the doors of four very different women (Sharon Stone, The Quick and the Dead; Frances Conroy, Six Feet Under; Jessica Lange, Sweet Dreams; and Tilda Swinton, The Deep End) who were once his lovers. Part road movie, part detective story, part existential meditation, Broken Flowers is even more minimalist than most Jarmusch movies (Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man, Mystery Train)—anyone looking for an easy resolution should look elsewhere. But for anyone willing to let a movie be a poem as much as a story—i.e., let it observe behavior without explaining it—Broken Flowers will offer a wealth of mysteries, gestures, and Bill Murray’s soulful eyes. It’s a movie that’s wonderfully eloquent about what’s not being said. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
That incomparable master of movie minimalism, director Jim Jarmusch, uses an uncharacteristically subtle Bill Murray as his onscreen surrogate in this placid but absorbing dramedy. Murray portrays Don Johnston, a womanizing computer-biz millionaire described by his most recent girlfriend (Julie Delpy) as “an over-the-hill Don Juan.” After receiving an anonymous letter indicating that he’s the father of a young man now looking for him, Don rouses himself from the comfort of his modest home to visit his former paramours in an attempt to learn whether or not he’s being put on by an irate ex-lover. The ladies in question: a recently widowed scatterbrain (Sharon Stone); an uptight realtor (Frances Conroy); a flighty pet therapist (Jessica Lange); and a tight-lipped biker chick (Tilda Swinton). The female characters are sharply drawn and well portrayed by fine actresses in what amounts to glorified cameos. Murray’s character largely reacts to them, and under Jarmusch’s direction the erstwhile Saturday Night Live star holds himself back with unusual but welcome restraint. We never really know what Don is thinking, because his demeanor suggests catatonia; he’s an emotionally immobile figure around whom the episodic story dawdles, provoking quiet laughs with the slightest of expressions and gestures. We daresay the movie’s humor will be lost on those viewers who prefer the likes of, say, Wedding Crashers or The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But those who enjoy unpretentious comedies with intellectual underpinnings will find this sparkling Jarmusch jewel much to their liking. Ed Hulse
