message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

             
Broken Flowers  Rated R
Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Starring Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright.

 Photo © Copyright Focus Features
Don Johnston (Murray) is an independently wealthy and lonely man in his mid-50s whose life has been filled with relationships with women that never quite worked out.  As the film begins, his latest lover is walking out the door, calling him “an over-the-hill Don Juan”.  Soon an unsigned letter appears in his mailbox from a woman who claims that he is the father of their 19-year-old son, who may be on his way to make contact.  Don shares this news with Winston (Wright), his happily married next-door neighbor, who decides to map out a plan to help Don find the writer of the note.  Winston arranges an itinerary with airplane tickets and rented cars and a schedule for Don to visit all of his lovers from 20 years’ past.  “The letter is on pink stationary.  Give them pink flowers and watch their reaction.”  Since Don has lived his life in bemused passivity, he is easily sent on his way on a road trip in which he will reconnect with four different women.  Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton play the women, and each reunion has its own kind of quiet humor.  This is a slow-paced film (and quiet in a way that is similar to Murray’s Oscar-nominated Lost in Translation), but it is also beautiful and touching.  Broken Flowers evokes the kind of reflection that follows the reading of a good short story.  This film will likely slip through the cracks, shoved aside by big noisy Hollywood blockbusters.  Take time to see it with someone who likes to discuss film and you may be delighted at how your mind and heart will stretch in the process.

Pitchfork Rating: Four halos. (A meditation on midlife that is also unpredictable, funny, and touching.)  Three pitchforks  (Brief strong language, implied sexual activity, a brief scene of full-frontal nudity.)

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