Jarmusch’s trip down memory lane offers plenty of highs embedded in lows.
While character and story development are the key fundamental ingredients in making a film for the masses, to truly stand out from the rest of the pack sometimes it requires a special touch, a consideration for other elements that give a film its distinctive flair, its personality and its heartbeat. With Broken Flowers those key ingredients come from a Bill Murray in top form and from a matched minimalism that is dispersed in all facets of the film. Less strange and quirky than his other films, and fitted for many audiences to enjoy this is a film experience that simply leaves viewers wanting more.
He has reached the comfort zone part of his life but as no one to show for it. A next-door wannabe sleuth pushes the tracksuit-wearing middle-aged womanizer to follow a trail of pink. Combining the road movie with air miles formula with a more subdued path of enlightenment, we find a certain affinity with the films from Alexander Payne, but compared to a Sideways or an About Schmidt this film is not excessive in the detail of the mundane and is a lot more mature.
Guiding the Don Johnston character (spelled with a T) with his trademark dead-pan low-brow style, Murray offers generous portions of the type of person who at times speak with their thoughts and not actual spoken words. It is interesting to witness how this gets displayed with the array of women featured in the film (Stone, Conroy, Lange and Swinton) especially where a history and positive or negative sentiments between two people comes back into the foreground with a simple knock or a ring at a door. Jarmusch gives clues to what that past was like and answers or sometimes doesn’t answer why the relationship failed or how they were once attracted to the Don Juan.
The film’s slow pacing and the selection of p.o.v shots from the car exploring pieces of suburbia and Americana adds to the great satisfaction and anticipation found that we find at each door stand encounter – the fun is that many items remain a mystery because Jarmusch refrains from describing or labeling these moments with a slew of fade-to-blacks and just when the narrative inserts Mark Webber’s character we get a whiff of the perfect ending, instead Jarmusch gives it the perfect touch. Broken Flowers is touching without demanding itself to be, its funny without requiring big laugh set-ups and its simple without trying to be something bigger than what it is. This is easily his best work in a long time and like the many mysteries that are the make-up of this picture – Jarmusch will leave it up to you to figure out who this film was dedicated to (Jean Eustache).
