Jarmusch and Murray stop to smell the
Flowers
.
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Reportedly on the opening night of
The Cherry Orchard
, Chekhov came backstage, appalled by the audience's tearful reaction.
Why aren't they laughing?
he demanded of his director Stanislavsky, infuriated-
it's a comedy
! Jim Jarmusch (
Night on Earth, Down by Law
) may be inversely recapitulating Chekhov with
Broken Flowers
, already variously lauded and/or criticized for being his most "commercial" film to date. Yet it's as cryptic, pointless and ultimately tragic as anything Jarmusch has ever done.
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In a darkened room Bill Murray sits sagging on a sofa, watching television; as washed-up ladies' man Don Johnston, whose adventures now seem restricted to holding down the furniture, it's hard to imagine he was ever the irresistible Don Juan his name suggests. But apparently he did get around, because a pale pink typed letter slides anonymously through the mail slot to inform him that somewhere out there he has a 19-year-old son. World-weary and indifferent, he'd dismiss the matter entirely were it not for nosy neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright, in the Roberto Benigni role), who arranges a cross-country junket for Don to visit all his old flames and solve the mystery of which one sent the letter.
Anyone else would be sickeningly grateful to have Don's ex-girlfriends, since they are played by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy (Ruth from
Six Feet Under
), Jessica Lange and (an unrecognizable) Tilda Swinton. Jarmusch has said he wrote the screenplay in part as a vehicle for talented actresses who often can't find work once past their 35th birthdays. Yet it's Murray who steals scenes out from under them, merely by standing blankly by as they all swirl around his vacancy-bemused in his stasis, like an antihero from Camus.
Murray and Jarmusch together create Don's character out of almost no dialogue-for instance, a bit of physical business from Murray (after an almost interminable beat, placing his fingertips on the coffee table, then lifting them) somehow immediately conveys that he's reached some kind of decision. When Jarmusch does give Don dialogue, it's fiendishly tricky to sell; at one point, he must offer the following sentiment: "Well, the past is gone-I know that. And the future isn't here yet. So all there is, is...this." It's a line that would turn to margarine in the mouths of so many actors, but Murray hesitates over every word, delivering them haltingly, like it's the first time he's ever thought such insane thoughts.
Broken Flowers
teems with small technical beauties, such as a road-trip CD whose music picks up exactly where it left off every time Don reinserts it into the slot of a new but unvaryingly bland rental car-or the film's oddly muted tint (we seem to see everything through the dim charcoal filter of Don's ever-present sunglasses). But those who loved
Lost in Translation
aren't necessarily going to like the long slow stretches and alien gaps between cuts-and if you're the kind of person who's driven crazy by not knowing what Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johanssen at the end of Sofia Coppola's film, you probably won't like the ending of
Broken Flowers
. If on the other hand you revel in ambiguity, ambivalence and chronicles of disillusionment-not the hand-to-brow, hyper-romantic,
Sorrows of Young Werther
variety but the plain, inevitable, decaying kind-then has Jarmusch got a film for you.
