A film of quiet, droll simplicity, Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" looks at the complexity of perception. It observes how the people who we touch and who touch us can, to the outside world, define us; and how the things with which they fill their lives define them. Even girded with this knowledge, the outside world may never know the reality of that person or the person they have impacted. Our perception, however, has been born.

The story through which Jarmusch explore this idea follows Don Johnston, played with an easy magnetism by Bill Murray, as he works to track down a woman who claims to have birthed his child 19 years earlier. Setting about the task of finding the unknown…

The last in Murray's renaissance period, Jarmusch slows things down to a melancholic crawl with endless POV driving shots, Murray starring at stuff, pondering with a frown at the stalemate his life is in. This would most likely become a monotonous bore without Murray in the role, but thankfully he is the first person perspective here and there isn't a moment he isn't on screen. He's one of the few actors who can play it deadly straight with the camera locked off on his face and there are many different conclusions to come to on what he is thinking. This is the joy of Broken Flowers, watching Murray think.

This is a great film to throw on after waking up…

“Broken Flowers” is Jim Jarmusch’s absurdist elegy. The film embraces the act of searching; knowing that anything found will be a self-made illusion. 

If Tom Hanks has made an image for himself as the dad that everyone wants, Bill Murray’s brand is the absent father. The pop who took a last look back at you, before heading out on a cigarette run that lasted 20 years. 

Director Jim Jarmusch cranks Murray’s late career ennui up to Maximum Sad in “Flowers,” where the actor plays a childless career man who is left by his wife on the same day that he receives a letter revealing he might be father to a previously unknown 19-year-old son. 

This sets Murray off on an…

Winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury for the first time and nominated for the Palme d´Or for the fifth time in 2005, Broken Flowers follows a very similar tradition of Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) regarding the adventures of an aged man that makes an undesired journey to discover more about his family bonds but ends up discovering more about himself and the importance of the present life.

Dedicated to Jean Eustache, the superior post-Nouvelle Vague independent filmmaker – even if I humbly think that Stranger than Paradise (1984) would have been a much more honorable and appropriate dedication – Broken Flowers opts for common storytelling techniques that circle around a common story that progresses uncommonly. It is…

Slow-burn character drama-slash-travelogue from Jim Jarmusch featuring Bill Murray, and if that doesn't make you want to go out and watch it there's no secret waiting at the end of the journey that will change your mind. It's basically a series of vignettes bookended by Murray's interaction with Jeffrey Wright doing the best work I've ever seen from him.

For me, the story is about a man who searches through his past for a quilting point in his past that will make his present more recognizable to him. But I've read several other reviews which give different interpretations of the story (about a man who visits a series of his old flames), and I think the real strength of the…

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future, isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is, is this. The present. That's it.

Jim Jarmusch has surprised me once again. I liked this film a lot more than I thought I would’ve. The pacing was really good, the story and it’s little characters were fascinating and it happens to be one of Jarmuschs more devastating stories yet still captures that comforting Jarmusch style and feel without being repetitive and tone deaf and keeping a fresh feel. 

Bill Murray’s performance was definitely the highlight of this film, he did a fantastic job of playing a character with such little left in him and to see…

Once this comes together, there a few really unforgettable scenes. You can see the pain in Bill Murray’s eyes when he lays flowers on a tombstone in the pouring rain. It’s a beautiful image.

The road trip he’s on allows him to witness all the lives he could have lived. Are any better? Are they all better? Could he have made any of them work? The ending is such a great note to end on, open to complete interpretation. Very bittersweet.

With that being said, the first half hour of this really lags. It could have been three minutes long, and neither Bill or Jeffrey Wright’s performance is good enough in this stretch to justify the length. Overall, I find Bill…