A ROAD TRIP THROUGH TIME AND SPACE : "BROKEN FLOWERS"

You may have figured out at this point that I have a major soft spot, not to say a lot of respect, for Jim Jarmusch. I think he has a particular talent for capturing the small yet important things in life and putting them onto the screen, making films that truly resonate with the important things, the things that really matter in our lives. That’s what I find anyway. I mean, his minimalist style isn’t easy on everyone’s eyes, but I honestly feel that it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize oneself with it, even if it did jar at first. There are massive emotional depths out there you’re missing out on.
But anyway, back to one of the masters’ latest works. Don Johnston (Bill Murray) is what you might call an aging Don Juan. He has done very well for himself from the IT business, lives in a luxury house with his beautiful girlfriend and yet he is at a crisis point in his life. As Don cannot seem to quite let go of his Don Juan-ish instincts and give Sherry, his girlfriend, the attention she deserves, she has walked out on him. Not only that, but days later a mysterious and anonymous letter claiming to be from one of his old flames arrives, telling him that he has a 19 year-old son who he never knew about, that his son is on a road trip and possibly looking for him and that although she is not willing to say who she is, she thought it only fair to let him know. Don is devastated, not least because he has no interest whatsoever in finding long-lost progeny, but then intrigued. With the help of his over-enthusiastic neighbor, he makes a list of all the possible candidates gathers as much info about them as possible and sets off… Thus begins a very bizarre trip down memory lane…
Anyone even remotely interested with the works of Jim Jarmusch will know well that he is quite the master of the road movie. But his brilliance comes from the fact that he can take the road movie as a genre and do something different with it every time. I mean, Permanent Vacation is a road- movie of sorts – all we do is follow Ally drifting around town. In Mystery Train and Night On Earth travel is the main theme, Down By Law and Stranger than Paradise are road movies albeit unconventional ones. It is true that the road movie genre is open to a lot of different experiments and conventions as we can see from this week’s humble update alone, but I think Jarmusch’s brilliance lies in the fact that he can go over and over the same genre and do something different with it every time. Broken Flowers is a unconventional film, a road movie and a “coming of age” film all into one. Graying Don Juan Don Johnston looks back on his past, his mistakes and more importantly where his former lovers (and the cast alone here is quite impressive; Sharon Stone, Tilda Swindon and Jessica Lange to name but a few) are in their lives, and the differences between his life and theirs… The film is funny, touching and thought-provoking all at once. In short, as always with Mr. Jarmusch, a success.