Broken Flowers

I blind-bought Broken Flowers because I didn't feel like waiting forever for the new release. I watched the film once. That was four years ago.

The trouble with 500 DVDs is gems like this one disappear into the stacks, even though they're right here. I could've put this on at any time.

Since buying this film, I've moved three times, meaning I've packed this film and the rest of my DVD collection into boxes or totes and carted them across Indiana on three occasions. As much as I'm attached to my physical media and enamored of these shiny discs, maybe Tyler Durden had it right: "The things you own end up owning you."

That doesn't mean I'm going through some crisis that will only end with me purging worldly possessions. This isn't a Buddhist awakening. Actually there's a sense of security in having a physical, digital copy within reach. They'll wait.

Thing is, Broken Flowers isn't the kind of film you reach for to re-watch, like a Caddyshack or Ghostbusters, but it's exactly the kind of film you need to re-watch for the nuances. There aren't that many laugh-out-loud moments, if any. This is a Jim Jarmusch film; he doesn't do comedy. He makes these little, existential films that don't tell a story so much as meditate. A Jim Jarmusch film takes time, and the time must be right.

I'm not fussed that I took four years to see Broken Flowers again. Jarmusch films look simple, sound simple, and they're not. They take effort. They explore characters. They're imbued with this fine taste in music — jazz, rockabilly, grunge, punk, whatever Tom Waits is, etc. They make you earn your understanding. Maybe I needed a project like this to come along, so I'd force myself to process Broken Flowers again. I'd almost forgotten about this film.

Seeing Bill Murray as the aging Don Juan, I defy most men of a certain ilk to watch this and not see an alternate version of themselves in the far-flung future, wearing track suits, living alone, in sort of an empty life, and maybe being okay with that, or maybe just settling for being okay with that because...well what else is there?

Until something jars us loose, forces us to contemplate, takes us out of our comfy little self-involved existences, we just have our habits to keep us company. I've lived alone before and been alone before; I didn't like that. I filled my life with stuff, and that made the days interesting (albeit shallow), but when the house got dark at night, the stuff didn't matter. The walls seemed to talk, and I never liked what I heard.

Murray's character takes a road trip across the country to revisit old flames because he receives an anonymous letter telling him about a 19-year-old son he has never known. With no idea who sent the letter, he seeks out a series of former lovers, all of whom receive him differently. So this is sort of like High Fidelity but with different motivations and results, and like Elizabethtown, but with fewer fake, precious moments and less Bono.

I have a weakness for these little, quiet films. I want to write stuff like this. I'm drawn to films with long, meditative shots, slow dissolves, hard cuts, good music, and simple, human stories...and no pyrotechnics.

I just want to walk away from a film better than when I started. I want to have my own arc, but...maybe not a resolution just yet. Not a clean one, anyway. Leave something raw, unresolved, cracked, and let the audience handle the rest.

...

p.s. When Don visits the "Animal Communicator," he passes a man with a rabbit. The man is soothing the rabbit, saying, "It takes a lot of courage to say what you said." In 2006, when I bought this film, we didn't have Rufus (see profile pic), but now I can't see a house without him. He has crap for courage though.