Broken Flowers

Nobody has seen?

I saw it this afternoon, good but nothing stuck out, it was just kind of low-key and amusing. I want to see it again, though, I didn't feel totally immersed (in part thanks to assholes who show up late and ask entire rows to rearrange rather than sit near the front).

I thought several things about it seemed contrived and unconvincing, but that somehow didn't bother me too much. What made it work for me was pretty much Murray, plus Jarmusch's overall view of the world, which I appreciate even when I think he's a little out to lunch. He's a very forgiving director, which tends to make me forgive him his lapses too.

The Lolita shocker was about as unexpected as anything I've seen in a movie.

and i'm glad huell howser saved me a seat

Meh, overall. disappointing. I liked the women, actually, they were the best thing about the movie.

that said, it was well acted, cinematography was nice, music was great. just boring as all hell.

Julie Delpy is INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL though.

Maybe I'd feel it more if I were even older than I am. But now it just seems like it was making a statement that isn't very illuminating.

Very meh

1) the way murray kept looking at these good-looking, charismatic young men clearly thinking that they might be his son, convinced of his seed's superiority (we all think this way)

2) his hangdog demeanor was much more than a lost in translation act. murray's character obviously sang for his supper earlier in life -- his casanova past well alluded to -- but that stage is done. he has been left behind by his former paramours, and is old without a real home. he's given up wooing and trying to shine because he's just gotten too old for it. except that he's retreated too far the other way. the only time we ever see him turn on the charm is with jeffrey wright's daughter.

3) JEFFREY WRIGHT. stole the movie.

4) the mulatu astatke tracks. worked so well with the tone of the film. and how did jarmusch ruin it again? by ensuring that people hear it???

I kind of thought the girl who played Lolita stole the movie. And Chloe Sevigny was really good as the uptight, suspicious hot secretary.

any explanation for how some C18 dudes ended up with the names Benmont Tench and Big George Drakoulias?

(there's a Nascar element in the movie, yes? and Jarmusch made a movie about cigarettes?)

And, yeah, I liked this a lot, and I really don't see how this movie could have ended any other way except for Don's whole paradigm getting shifted in one of those "For Better Or For Worse" forlorn stare moments at his less-than-ideal would-be son. (Didn't even think of this until Jams got on it - the tracksuit kid he gawks @ in the car is kinda pudgy and blah, isn't he?) I am all for suburban ennui, as I stick my nose into that shizz every day, and need constant reminders of the artistic pathos inherent with said shizz.

What stuck out for me are the little bits - Chloe putting her hand on the doctor's hip at the car, Lolita & her mom both with a shoulder strap down at the dinner table, that tension between the real estate folk during dinner. And I don't think JJ was mocking the female characters - if you're bringing baggage to the theatre, then that's what gets unpacked - but was simply presenting them as-is. If anything, he was mocking Don Juan de Murray for having what most folks wanted and being so unsatisfied w/ his life that he goes hopping from bed to bed throughout his life, and bops around the country chasing a son that might not even exist. If that wasn't coulda-shoulda-woulda yearning on his face every time he met one of his exes, I don't know what that was.

And the cell phone scene ("Do you have the list?") was sublime.

I'm not sure why I liked the film as much as I did, but I keep thinking about it. the journeys through anonymous suburbia reminded me slightly of Time Out and the use of certain tunes over and over reminded me of Wong Kar-Wai.

one thing that did bug me was the two dream sequences being only things that've just happened to him - who dreams like that?

The girl in the flower shop was amazing. I looked her up on imdb. I HAVE MY EYE ON HER.

I thought all the scenes with his exes were terrific, but outside of that, I was often bored, and didn't feel the film really added up to anything. Less than the sum of its parts, maybe, yes (is that a cliché yet?).

?? She hardly did anything in it.

In which I said that I thought this about the film: If you?re a Jarmusch fan, I s?pose you have to see it. If you?re not, you won?t anyway, so I?m not going to spend too much time worrying about you.

Compared to the vile new Casanova which treats of the same subject, Broken Flowers is a veritable work of genius.

I would generally agree with this, but I could look at Murray's face forever. You can constantly discover out new craggs and peaks - it's a bit like the grand canyon.

Great little film, by the way.

Pell James. I went to see The King, not knowing she was in it. Terrific again. She's 29, playing a 16-year-old!

i finally got around to watching this tonight, after repeatedly bypassing it at the vid store. every one i know totally bagged it when it came out and the last JJ film i saw was 'gerry' which i utterly hated. but i really enjoyed 'broken flowers' - it was slow, but absorbing rather than boring, and i liked how everything was so open-ended and ambiguous; carmin and penny seemed like they had interesting stories that we would never get to hear, and the same with the two young guys at the end.

and this:

i'm surprised that i've read little about the fact that Carmen is a lesbian and Chloe is her jealous lover.

-- gear (gear)

i thought this too - it was chloe's hand on carmin's hip when she's standing at the car that immediately signalled this subtext to me.

Gerry was a Van Sant film, right?

oh shit - you're right, i always get those two confused for some reason. 'gerry' still sucked big time.

this movie gets better upon repeated viewings.

I must watch this again, I haven't seen it since it came out. Can't remember much about it except I thought it was good.

Love this film.

yeah i'm kinda happy everyone was so down on it - i went into with zero expectations and really enjoyed it. i tried watching 'coffee and cigarettes' awhile back, dunno if i was in the wrong mood but i just couldnt' get into it at all and switched off after about 15mins.

I really liked COOGAN in C&C.

Watched recently. I'm surprised no one mentioned (noticed?) the Homer Murray cameo. Catching his name in the credits and realizing he was the guy in the car at the end was like the zen anti-punchline of the whole film.

i watched this a while ago because i thought it was shopgirl (?). kinda liked it. kinda didn't.

this movie sucked dick

Not one of the better Jarmusch films. Had its moments but kind of stiff and uncomfortable to watch.

decent soundtrack?

Yeah, but I had already kind of played out that Ethiopiques disc by the time I watched it.

tru. i'm trying to kip for march ok?

Well, the thing with Homer Murray definitely put a good punctuation mark on the end of the film, to kip.

the film is loaded - practically constructed around - little things like the homer murray thing. with bill murray going into the flower shop, it's an homage to jean eustache's role in the american friend with dialogue and characters based around sun green from the last neil young film. not that this is a bad thing, but it's just super intertextual, maybe stiflingly so.

bill murray eating forkful of carrots in this film is amazing.

I also really enjoyed the creepy, somewhat red-herring dream sequences.

I'm not sure what to do with Jarmusch when he overdoes things like the Don Juan references -- it's pretty clear that it's deliberately overdone, but is meta-meta-film stuff like that really all that interesting?

i felt the same way about some of the deliberately overdone gangster stuff in ghost dog. he's speaking a language and signaling that he recognizes that you'll recognize that he's speaking a language and there isn't anything new to say with these particular words but there's something in the invocation of them that blah blah blah etc. -- it isn't interesting, no, and it comes off as awkward but my half-formed idea about it is that somehow those things let him into the story, give him room to work in that lets other things happen.

I also really enjoyed the creepy, somewhat red-herring dream sequences.

i was a little disappointed by these. there was a lot of press that suggested it was jarmusch-goes-mainstream, because it didn't have overtly arty title card sequences etc, or an identifiable 'independent film' aesthetic, which i don't agree with; i think it did mark him embracing some of the languages and techniques of film that he'd previously rejected though. like he'd use close ups, kinda, at least by his standards, or worse those jumps where you'd zoom slightly further in an instant to bill. and the dream sequences - i'm not making a case for him being this totally original filmmaker, but i think he's always been distinct and deliberate, and it seemed very standard for him to dip into feathered-edge, vivid-colour hazy dream esquences.

there are some shots from the limits of control on that new/tripod/blog site thing if anyone's interested in what that's looking like.