It can be depressing to witness a stranger’s life from a distance, especially if you believe that life to be patterned by defeat and hopelessness. It can be even more depressing to witness a past love’s life, as change and the ever-widening gap between promises of the past and realities of the present become the icing on a cake no one wants to eat. In Broken Flowers, viewers get to watch Bill Murray’s crappy life unfold as he gets to witness how several of his ex-girlfriends lives turned out (here’s a hint: not well).
While most directors presumably start off with a vague feeling or a tonal concept about where they’d like to take an idea before taking it there, Jarmusch is content keeping the scenes in his films vague, almost like sketches that capture very definite feelings, but feelings that neither the characters nor the audience can ever quite pull from the ether around them.
Throughout the film, I kept thinking that five women does not make a slutty past, especially for a middle-aged bachelor. Just think, if this were the Gene Simmons story, it would have to be the length of 1900: The Director’s Cut.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Focus Features 35mm print
15 Sep 2005 9:38 PM | Submit Comment