I was prepared to like Broken Flowers, a movie starring Bill Murray as a leftover 1990s computer business guy. The portrayal of Don Johnston, retired computer guy, is not very flattering. Johnston sits and/or lies on the same sofa all day watching movies or listening to music. One could admire him for his monk-like patience and stillness but by American Ben Franklin-style self-improvement standards he is reprehensibly incurious. Johnston never reads books or seeks to meet anyone new. Johnston’s only apparent achievement was appealing to women over the years (“I was in computers and girls,” he explains to a young guy).
Johnston receives an anonymous note informing him that he has a 19-year-old son. This spurs him to take a four- or five-stop commercial airline trip around our great nation. Unfortunately the film makers lacked either his budget or his energy and stayed firmly within New York and New Jersey. All parts of the U.S. appear to be right off the New York State Thruway in the fall. One of my literary-minded friends says that a bad movie is better than a bad play because there is more to look at. Why couldn’t one of Johnston’s ex-girlfriends have flaked out to Sedona, Arizona or Santa Fe?
One interesting detail was how Johnston’s world was inhabited by attractive women. If he goes into a store the clerk is an attractive young woman. When he is walking out of the airport the terminal is filled not with paunchy business guys as you might expect, but with young leggy females.
For a movie with no tragic deaths, characters becoming paralyzed, sex, violence, or special effects it holds one’s attention fairly well. My companion, the typical overworked Harvard medical slave (she’s an ob-gyn but sadly has not yet bought her Piper Malibu or Turbo Commander like my more established gynecologist friends), did not fall asleep.
Have you ever considered making a movie, Philip?
Trevis: Too easy to criticize others’ work 🙂 (i.e., I recognize that Broken Flowers is 100X better than what I could make with my Sony HDV camcorder (though it is 3CCD/HDTV so image quality would be reasonable))
Making a movie is so much harder than taking still photos. It is a totally different skill. Telling a story and planning the narrative as opposed to looking for a nice composition and lighting.
I found Broken Flowers to be a lovely movie. If I have to describe it as anything, it may be as: painterly. The movie did not shout, but it had many nuances that kept me interested. Another painterly movie that’s just out on DVD is The Brown Bunny: having a similar Road type theme of a lonely guy that doesn’t really change chasing after the past. And I mean, Bill Murray is the man.
What was the movie filmed on? Maybe we just got a bad copy, but it seemed a little warm and slightly dark – I want to say it’s just 16mm.
Philip: no, you’re right — it is easy to criticize such things. 🙂 I’m constantly disappointed with television programs (I rarely watch it any more), but does that mean that I’m making something better? Well, no. Perhaps someday.
Still, you’re a good writer and photographer. I think it’d be fun to watch a moving-picture project of yours. Perhaps a film version of “Travels with Samantha”.
Hmmm. Sounds like the movie is going nowhere, and going there very slowly. I think I have seen Murray in several movies like that recently. What did you think of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, or (especially) Lost In Translation (or the less competent Life Aquatic)?
I really enjoyed the Royal Tenenbaums except for the fact that the lady friend with whom I saw it took to calling me “Royal Greenspun” for some months afterwards. Apparently the Gene Hackman character reminded her of me. Lost in Translation reminded me of some of my own trips to Japan so I would give it a solid B. I didn’t quite get Rushmore or Life Aquatic.