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Meet Jim Jarmusch Broken Flowers is the most recent of several Jarmusch flicks, but was only the second I'd seen. Several years ago I rented Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), a bizarre blend of gangsta and dark comedy as viewed through Jarmusch's radically unique camera. The stylized filter and pace and content of Ghost Dog doesn't suit everyone, inspiring Wesley Morris to say "it's too cryptic and unfulfilled to serve as a tool for anything beyond its own obfuscation," and Stephen Hunter to say "it's too bloody to be funny and too silly to be dramatic and too self-indulgent to be anything other than what it is, one more bad movie." So much for enlightened criticism. Broken Flowers is just as stylized, but perhaps our nation's whitebread reviewers felt an obligation to the big names who acted in this film. Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy, and Julie Delpy play a few of the women from Don Johnston's (Bill Murray) past, and Jeffrey Wright plays the hilarious arm-chair-detective neighbor. My guess is that the great performance given by Forest Whitaker didn't satisfy the nation's celebrity fetish in Ghost Dog--nor did the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA cameo appearance. Broken Flowers is about the drift, the slide, the loss of belief that happens to people. We call this midlife crisis, or loneliness, or fear of death. In the film, our arm-chair detective, Winston (Jeffrey Wright) decides that the author of a mysterious letter Don Johnston receives must be identified. The letter declares that Don has a teenage son, and that the son has run away from his mother's home--in search of Don. Winston believes that discovering the mother's identity (among the vast collection of Don's ex-lovers) will add a necessary fulfillment to the molasses of Don's life. Don's initial reaction to the letter is an even mix of one-part disbelief (the letter is probably spam) to one-part indifference. But Don's most recent lover has just left him, and his current life is a slow, endless repetition of naps and television--and most significantly, inaction. Because of this, Winston is able to direct Don on a long, convoluted investigation of his past lovers. I'll leave the summary at this point to avoid spoiling what I believe to be one of the best films made in recent years. But I have been considering the reasons this movie affected me and, finally, I think I see a glimmer. Don Johnston is trying to draw a line connecting each of his past relationships to his current condition. Learning the reality about his "son" means less than identifying the mother--at least initially. Eventually, this line becomes an obsession that allows for only success or failure. But what if--from the narrow, isolated context of the moment--what if neither success nor failure is possible? 1. Broken Flowers, DVD Source Link ; Crazy Bill Murray 2 for 1 Deal;
2. Broken Flowers, Soundtrack Source Link;
3. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, DVD Source Link;
4. Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Soundtrack Source Link.
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