Broken Flowers

Plot synopsis:
Don Johnston (Bill Murray), a former Don Juan who made a small fortune in the computer industry, wants to live in quiet retirement. He is content to lounge around watching old movies and listening to classical or easy listening music. His current girlfriend, Sherry (Julie Delpy), is ending their relationship and moving out of his house when a letter in a pink envelope arrives. After she walks out, Don reads the letter; it purports to be from an unnamed former girlfriend, informing him that he has a son who is nearly nineteen years old, and who may be looking for him. Initially, Don does not intend to do anything about it, but his busybody neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright), who is a mystery novel enthusiast, urges Don to investigate. Winston researches the current locations of the five women most likely to have written the letter and gives Don the information along with maps and flight reservations, and persuades him to visit them.
Ultimately Don meets with four women, each encounter worse than the last and each woman damaged in some way:
Laura (Sharon Stone) works as a closet and drawer organizer and is the widow of a race car driver. She clearly has issues with men, coming across as grasping and overly eager, which she has passed on to her teenage daughter, Lolita (Alexis Dziena), who is a flirt, parades nude in front of Don on their very first meeting. That night, Laura sleeps with Don.
Dora (Frances Conroy) is a realtor. Once a "flower child" of the 1960s, she has reversed to the opposite extreme and is now apparently resigned to a very uptight existence in her otherwise happy marriage to Ron (Christopher McDonald).
Carmen Markowski (Jessica Lange) works as an "animal communicator." Don recalls how she was formerly so passionate about becoming a lawyer. But "passion is a funny thing," she says. She is cold to Don and has an odd relationship with her secretary (Chloë Sevigny).
Penny (Tilda Swinton) lives in a rural area amongst bikers. She still holds a grudge against Don, and apparent rage overall. When Don asks her whether she has a son, she becomes furious, which results in one of her biker friends punching Don out. The next morning, Don finds himself in his car, in the middle of a field, with a nasty cut near his left eye.
Later, Don stops at a florist to buy flowers from a young woman named Sun Green (Pell James) who treats his cut. Don leaves the flowers at the grave of the fifth woman, Michelle Pepe, whom Don originally thought might be the mother before finding out she had died five years prior. Finally, Don returns home where he finds a pink letter from Sherry, admitting she still likes him. He discusses the trip and second letter with Winston, who theorizes that Sherry might have written the original letter as a hoax. He then goes home to compare the two letters. Don then meets a young man in the street (Mark Webber) who he suspects may be his son. He buys him a meal, but when he remarks that the young man believes that Don is his father, the young man becomes agitated and flees. As Don attempts to chase the man, he notices a Volkswagen Beetle drive past. A young man (Homer Murray) in the passenger seat is listening to the music which Don himself listens to as Don is left standing in the middle of a crossroads.

Tags: comedy, boring, depressing, paranormal, dramatic, atmospheric, psychedelic, humor, philosophical, storytelling

Review:
So, yes, it's wonderful minimalism, but perhaps a bit too slight of a movie to have any lasting resonance.Bill Murray has added another very good performance to his career, and Jim Jarmusch has made another compact little gem (unlike some of his more recent films).
The film, helmed under the more effective title "Dead Flowers", is an unintended journey of self-discovery which is purposely incomplete but not pointless; the screenplay leaves the scenario open for discussion, and writer-director Jim Jarmusch structures each sequence in such a cockeyed way that we don't really know where the movie is headed.
I can't think of an actor better suited to play the expressionless chronic bachelor Don at the heart of Jim Jarmusch's newest movie than Bill Murray.
It's a characterization Murray has so down pat that I'm tempted to think he's not really acting all that much, but he's so perfectly cast that it doesn't much matter whether he's acting or not.If you're not familiar with the movies of Jim Jarmusch, "Broken Flowers" is a nice introduction, as it's the most accessible Jarmusch film I've seen.
I liked how subtle the film was; Don doesn't make any huge ground-breaking discoveries about himself, but nevertheless you sense that he's a slightly different person after his journey than he was before it.You'll have to be patient, as Jarmusch tells his story very slowly, and nearly all of Don's interaction with others is ponderously awkward.
But the movie slowly begins to fascinate, and you find yourself watching the faces of the women he visits (and examining the visible details of their lives) much in the same way that Don is himself, looking for the slightest hint that she might be the one who sent that fateful letter.A very fine film, poignant and sad in a rather obscure way, and one that stays in your mind for a while after seeing it.Grade: A-.
"Broken Flowers" is a travelogue and like most Jarmusch films, the story is more concerned with the journey but not so much about the destination.
One of the ex's we meet works in real estate and decides it would be a good idea for her to get into the water business because "one day in the near future it will be more valuable then oil." The atmosphere is awkward and rather then care whether this woman is responsible for the anonymous letter, we just feel like getting out of there.
In Broken Flowers, Bill Murray as Don Johnston is also on a trip, but more certain of his goal than anyone in Stranger, for he seeks out his alleged son by visiting former lovers, one of whom anonymously wrote that she had borne him a child 19 years ago.The formidable women, including a randy Sharon Stone happily lampooning her film persona and Tilda Swinton, tougher and more dangerous than all the others in her biker mom role, never really sway him from seeking his son or finding himself.
In fact he outstrips all of his former loves in kindness and caring in calm response to often explosive situations, for instance when Stone's daughter, Lolita, comes on to him only to find he is not available.I complain American films are not sophisticated like Euro flicks, but Jarmusch has come close with this slow, laconic, and demanding indie.
Hats off to Bill Murray for mixing minimalist with passionate this time aroundhis purpose and his change of character make his aging Hollywood star Bob from Lost in Translation just a dress rehearsal for this Oscar-worthy performance and film.Perhaps Don's discovery is twofold: his potential to love others and himself.
Between this film, Lost in Translation and the Life Aquatic he presents us with a very real sense of what it means to be in your mid fifties and contemplating all that has been missed while pursuing something else.The movie moves slowly, at a measured pace, but it has to, because that is how the story unfolds, with the protagonist moving down the road of his past reluctantly, and with trepidation and rightly so, because he has left skeletons behind.
We watch the fateful letter at the beginning when it's being dropped in the mail box right up to its delivery through Don's mail slot.Jim Jarmusch, and his amazing cast have done wonders with this film.
The style of the film is paced slow allowing you time to wonder at Murray's dead dead dead pan delivery, it's the stuff that made watching him so enjoyable in 'The life aquatic' and 'lost in translation' but turned up a notch.
One of my favourite things about this film is how it addresses wanting children from a mans point of view, Don constantly says to his neighbour that he's not interested in finding out or even going and then he does the opposite, it is the male equivalent of being broody and it ends up with Don clutching at straws and almost saying 'someone, anyone please be my son?' With a well-chosen eclectic soundtrack from Jarmusch complimenting scene after scene the film flows from comedic highs to tender lows.
There is almost no character development, no story development that engages the viewer in any significant way, and a cast of characters that are cartoonish in their broadly drawn quirkiness: the aging Don Juan, the out-of-control Lolita, the warm family-man, the biker chic, the lost young man searching for meaning...this is a stable of old characters that take up time and space in this movie, but add nothing of substance.We are reminded in every possible way that this man is a "Don Juan" and yet NOTHING in the story or character development suggests how someone so broken, so numb, so completely uninterested in life or people, could be that sort of man.
The parallel between the film's pace and Don's life seems like an amateurish parlor trick to fool the audience into thinking that the mundane is meaningful - not in this movie!
All the symbolism is lurid in its obviousness (ex: Don watching the old/original "Don Juan" movie on TV as his life unravels) while the character/story development is so subtle as to be non-existent.I could not imagine a more uninteresting use of major acting talent (not just Bill Murray, but the whole cast).
Oddly, it doesn't seem to be Bill Murray's Don himself who is interested in these women, making the display of skin even more gratuitous.I'm guessing the lack of resolution at the end was supposed to be indicative of Don's ambivalence about life's direction, but it just looked/felt like the scriptwriter had run out of ideas and so ended the movie.
$9 and 2 hours of my time spent with characters I didn't get to know or like, and a story that went nowhere in the worst way - UGH!If this had in fact been a student film, any good professor would have suggested that Jarmusch trim the self-conscious "subtlety" and develop a story worth watching..
After reading an outstanding review of this film, and enjoying Bill Murray's recent films, I somewhat hurriedly went out to view Jim Jarmusch's 'Broken Flowers'.
Despite not liking much of Jarmusch films, I held out hope that the presence of Murray, Stone, Lange et al would be enough to make a difference.
The story was boring, Bill Murray's acting, which I normally love, was basically non-existent, and most of the scenes dragged on way too long and became so repetitive as to render them pointless.
I understand Murray's character was emotionally numbed and basically incapable of feeling anything that even faintly resembles human emotion, but to watch his expressionless face in scene after scene of awkward encounters and countless miles of driving his rental cars is enough to force even the most devout fan of movies into a comatose state.
And I think that director Jim Jarmusch didn't really fully rise to the occasion.What makes "Broken Flowers" watchable and actually worth watching is the impressive performance by Bill Murray, along with some great supporting acting from Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton.
Bill Murray was really in his ace in the role of Don Johnston, just a shame that the storyline was a ball and chain around his ankle.Having seen "Broken Flowers" once, I can honestly say that I am not going to Watch it a second time, because it just doesn't have that much weight to sustain multiple viewings..
At first I thought at the end of the movie he was thinking about how he had been so wrong about assuming that the young man was his son and how looking back, he might have been wrong about other assumptions in the past.
Much the same goes for this Jim Jarmusch film, written expressly for actor Bill Murray.
Don. But accepting Murray (if we must) as a Lothario, the film contrives to send him on a 'road trip' to find out if he has a son, despite a pink letter saying that the son would likely be coming to find HIM.
"Broken Flowers" was a waste of movie time; the plot was boring; the music horrible and although Bill Murray is a favorite of mine, especially in "Lost in Translation; I got really tired of seeing the deadpan close-ups he is so famous for.
This movie seemed like a good candidate for 2 hours of my time: a 7+ rating on IMDb, a powerful cast (Bill Murray, whose Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters I loved; Sharon Stone; Julie Delpy from Before Sunrise/Sunet); a cool opening with the path of a letter though the United States Postal System...
It added nothing to the story whatsoever.Melancholy and thoughtful was probably what the director was trying to achieve, but instead we have Bill Murray looking like he's spaced out on drugs for most of the time.IMDb has this scoring in the mid sevens as I write this.
It seems like the actors are sleep walking through the film (which is just as well because most of the audience will be doing the same thing out the doors of the cinema).I could have forgiven these faults if the ending had been worth bothering going to the cinema and waiting for.
I won't spoil it for those of you that still want to see this (mainly because i'm not sure how i possibly could) but don't expect any kind of closure at all.However, the film does create a nice atmosphere on the few rare occasions when they decide to actually follow the story rather than watching Don Johnston drive his car through mountain roads whilst listening to terrible music for minutes at a time.
The film is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who has brought us such offbeat delights as Down By Law, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai and Coffee And Cigarettes, and all of those I liked a lot.
I didn't really find any of the characters that interesting and at times it was hard to relate to characters in the film and wonder at the end what the point of the movie was.
It was still mildly entertaining and I liked their performances and some of the creative scenes so for that I'am slightly recommending this but it doesn't work on a whole as well as past Jarmusch movies that were virtually ignored while this one is getting a lot of buzz..
"Lost in Translation" is a much better example of a film that takes its time to tell a story and uses silence and Bill Murray properly..
I thought I was a Bill Murray fan, I mean, I really enjoyed Groundhog Day. In this movie, though, he never, never, never changes his bored expression.
Broken flowers, written expressly for actor Bill Murray, is a good film with great acting but it suffers from what I think is an independent film theme of being too slow while trying to be thought provoking.
I am a big fan of slow-moving and thoughtful films but Broken Flowers crawled along and I found it very difficult to care in the slightest about Bill Murray's character.
GET ME OUT OF THIS MOVIE!" Which was just what I was about to do - but then mercifully the whole thing ended - by NOT ending, as is the way with films like this I suppose.Want to see a quirky movie with complex characters - see Junebug.
Like Lost in Translation, his character moves from scene to scene, place to place, apparently only because his friend Winston tells him to, and then he comes home, gets back in his jogging suit and goes back to his apparently pointless life.
In fact, the entire tedious quest that takes up most of the movie -- Murray showing up at the various past girlfriends' houses unannounced, standing stiffly at the doorbells with flowers in his hand -- seems completely pointless and ridiculous, something no intelligent character would ever waste time doing.
As a huge fan of Bill Murray I loved "Lost in Translation" and "Life Aquatic", and so was looking forward to this film, especially with the good reviews, but it was a huge disappointment.
I was at first excited to see Broken Flowers as the idea for the story seemed quietly funny and interesting, but as usual Jarmish stomps on any vaguely appealing laughter by bringing out some of the dullest performances from such a group of wildly diverse interesting actors I have seen in years, Whilst Coffee and Cigerets should have won the razzie for the worst most pretentious film in history Broken Flowers is just dull, Dull to the point where I was more aware of the people sitting behind me than the pointless un - verbose un - funny dialog on screen, My main concern is how Jarmish could have possibly managed to achieve such performances from these actors..even the usually fabulous Ms Lang was a let down (and I loath to say it) Bill Murray was just moronic, and Jefferey write couldn't decide if he was from Ethiopia, India or Wales, all in all it was a painful hour and a half, Jarmish recently said he is happy that the massive do not like his films as he doesn't make films for us to like - Well at least that is one thing he got right..
His latest squeeze, played by Julie Delpy, has left him (gee what a cameo), and so did countless others before her.But the pace picks up slightly (it moves terribly slow throughout the movie) when he receives a pink envelope, and inside a typewritten note, telling him that he has a son from an affair twenty years ago, and that son is now on a road trip looking for his father.
"POTENTIAL SPOILERS"Bill Murray stars as an aging Don Juan prompted by his amateur detective neighbor (Jeffrey Wright) to travel across country visiting old girlfriends after a mysterious letter arrives indicating he may have fathered a son nearly twenty years ago.
Those expecting something even vaguely similar in theme or style to the ultimate Murray acting showcase "Lost in Translation" will be even more disappointed.Somehow Jim Jarmusch has managed to craft a film of almost nothing but awkward silences and a with complete lack of any forward momentum.
"Broken flowers" is highly pornographic in that regard.If you want a well-acted movie with complex characters and realistic situations, go see something by Ingmar Bergman instead of wasting your time and money on this bore..
I'm more of fan of Jim Jarmusch than Bill Murray, but I think his performance in Broken Flowers is the highlight of the movie.
"Broken Flowers" by Jim Jarmush tells the story of a boring, lifeless older man, Don Johnstone (Murray), who gets a letter one day, telling him he's got a son looking for him.
Excellent story, though the philosophical punch line was so mangled by Bill Murray just walking woodenly through the scenes that it takes some imagination to think of how it would have been if done properly.I would also say that although I like Jarmusch generally, the philosophy in the ending scene was supposed to suddenly stand out as a thread through the movie, but this thread was so murdered the reaction I had was, gosh, this was supposed to have stood out as a message of the film.
Perhaps that sums up my entire response to the film  it never fully engaged me.Bill Murray is an interesting guy, I enjoyed Ground Hog Day and I thought Lost in Translation very good.
I adore the way Jim Jarmusch tells stories like this, his using details to describe a character, his making you laugh and leaving you quite moved...But reading through the comments, I couldn't help noticing the large number of bad opinions about the film.
but maybe I don't like how the plot is narrated or how characters are portrayed...) Broken Flowers is surely a good, really good movie.
Murray plays an over-aged bachelor named Don Johnston who gets a mysterious pink letter in the mail from a girlfriend twenty years past that claims she bore him a son.
I really liked this movie- Broken flowers.I am fascinated by the character Rita.
Jim Jarmusch is loved by the female audience and this movies shows why: he understands them well and his female characters are interesting.
Having read the description of this movie, only a minute or two ago, I now know why things ended as they did - sounds logical, although I would have given Mr. Johnston a different reason to go searching, which has been done, but I feel Bill Murray could have carried it away with flowers.One scene truly surprised me, and it was well done.
I would have to say, even though I was wrong in my idea of why Mr. Johnston was searching, I did enjoy the movie, and as I have said, a good job was done by all.Always looking forward to Bill Murray's work..
It reminded me so much of the way French films are (which I love).The mysterious ending was disappointing to me, but I still liked the movie.