Broken Flowers

Review by Colin Moore

In the hands of Jim Jarmusch, Bill Murray has minimalised his performance even beyond Lost in Translation. And there's no one better at it.

Both Jarmusch and post-millenium Murray are proven masters in the art of bare bones expression. But they're saying plenty.

Broken Flowers breaks out at a snail's pace and stays there (try The Island followed by Flowers and you'll need a neck brace from the whiplash).

Don Johnston is still a ladies man at heart. We join him as a pink envelope is delivered to his door, the one his girlfriend is walking out of. She's suspicious of a possible other(s).

If Don is upset though, it's difficult to tell.

In Jarmuschian extendo-time we see him sitting on the couch, lying on the couch...sitting on the couch... He's practically mummified now, but still manages to pay his neighbour Winston (Jeffrey Wright) courtesy visits, and pay his wife due compliments at the right moments.

She's a woman after all, one of many that revolve around Don's stationary head in Flowers. Through her and Winston, we see and hear glimpses of the chick magnet he supposedly used to be.

But when he finally opens the pink envelope he learns that one of his past loves may have had a son by him twenty years past. The only trouble is, he doesn't know who.

Luckily, Winston's out of work interests include detective novels and amateur sleuth work. This gives him the perfect reason to play a dumbed-down Matlock. He puts together a cross country trip down memory lane for Don, prodding him to re-connect with a handful of old flames and solve the mystery. Oh, and don't forget to bring flowers...pink flowers.

This is the real world flip to Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, where a man can see how the world was with him, rather than without. For an ageing ladies man, it's not the sunniest picture. Don is a reluctant hero, but is immediately likeable for the usual reasons emotionally numb characters are: they're sympathetic underdogs we hope mount a comeback.

All he has to do is find a typewriter or some pink stationary, put two and two together and rekindle the family that never was. He never really succeeds though, in the carpe diem sense.

Don has the enthusiasm of a Charlie Brown with too many little red-haired girls, but only the golden haired widow of a race car driver (Sharon Stone), and her rather...let's see... "open" daughter Lolita seem to have any interest in seeing him.

The other women, a real estate dealer, a pet communicator, and a back-woods ruffian's housemate have different reactions, ranging from discomfort to disgust. And shouldn't they?

What's hard to swallow, given that it's Bill Murray, is the fallibility of this character. He's prepared us in a sense through his roles in Lost in Translation and Life Aquatic, both exposing him to relationships under stress, but Don is more than an ex-lover. He's a man whose past has taken more from these women than he's given them.

Another actor might play the role with more edge, with a more dramatic sense of gravity in where life has taken him, but Murray plays it a good notch above full blown depression. Or maybe it comes off so just knowing Murray is Murray, and assuming like Don, that he's unchangeable at heart. You can't help but wait for the punch-line, or Murray's trademark slow burn before the sarcasm slips out.

Many scenes, such as the dinner with the real-estate ex and her oddly happy husband, seem tailored for a typical Murray sting. It's held back for the most part, but still gives the film a low-cal feel where it might ordinarily drag. But hats off to director Jarmusch for stringing us along as long as he does.

Intentionally playing Murray against expectation or not, it's a tool that does punch eventually. When Don finally nears the end of his journey at the grave of another former lover, we see a man finally realising the loss in his life, and there's nothing funny about it.

But the payoff scene is cut abruptly sharp, and paints Don as even more the tragic figure; he's not even allowed the time to feel this moment when it finally does come. Fair enough.

Flowers is less about seeing a man in a cathartic fit of tears, than coming to sober conclusions about his life. By the film's end, his realisation is complete. As he stands in the street looking for the son he's not sure he has, Don becomes the true product of his choices. And time, as they say, is short.

4 out of 5

Broken Flowers
Australian release: Monday the 26th of December, 2005.
Cast: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange.
Director: Jim Jarmusch.
Website: Click here.

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