 |
|
BROKEN FLOWERS -- DVD
BROKEN FLOWERS -- DVD , USA , 2005, MPAA Rating : R for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use
Click here for the full review of BROKEN FLOWERS.
Jim Jarmuch’s BROKEN FLOWERS has been accused of being his most accessible film. Perhaps it’s because the narrative is more linear than his last film, the equally brilliant COFFEE AND CIGARETTES. Perhaps it’s because its star, Bill Murray, plays a character that is facing his mid-life crisis in a way that is more identifiable than the protagonist of, say, GHOST DOG. But make no mistake. Though Don, the character in question is trying to discover with which of his former girlfriends he may or may not have left a souvenir that is shortly to attain legal adulthood, the film deals equally with questions of a far more esoteric nature. Murray delivers a perfect performance being at once intelligent, buffoonish, sad, angry, and wildly funny, in short, every shade of the human condition all percolating at once as he deals, using unvarnished self-awareness, with where he’s been so that he can finally arrive at his future.
Jim Jarmusch doesn’t make cookie-cutter films, and so it comes as no surprise that the DVD of BROKEN FLOWERS doesn’t quite fit the standard mold either. While there is the obligatory deleted scene selection among the bonus feature, there is also, under the heading “Farmhouse” an all-too brief meditation by Jarmusch on his philosophy of filmmaking that is also, not surprisingly, his philosophy of life. The narrative, in keeping with the quirkiness of the filmmaker and his obsession with sound, has the fuzziness of a cheap transistor radio or a middling phone line. The visual is Jarmusch directing Murray in the farmhouse sequence of the film, but using the idiom of home movies, creating the effect of memories made manifest as he revisits that day in particular and the process as a whole. The real innovation is the feature “Broken Flowers Start to Finish”. Rather than the standard-style commentary track while the film plays, it’s a quick trip through the entire film starting with the color check by Murray and co-star Jeffrey Wright, and then proceeding through the entire film by way of the opening clapboard shot, with the hi-jinks, such as Sharon Stone threatening the integrity of Murray’s ear, that accompany the moments just before and just after the “clack” that signals the official start of filming. It’s edited into a collage that has the same jazzy sort of riffs as the music that accompanies it and tells as much about what it was like to film BROKEN FLOWERS, or DEAD FLOWERS, as we learn that it was called during production.
To be honest, being able to see BROKEN FLOWERS anytime the mood strikes is reason enough to own the DVD. Re-watching the way Murray reacts never gets old, in fact, the choices he makes become all the more astonishing, and, if possible, even funnier than on first viewing. The rest is gravy.
Click here to listen to Jim Jarmusch on COFFEE AND CIGARETTES.
My rating:
Would you like to comment on this review ?
Click Here
|
 |
|
 |
