As the extremely withdrawn Don Johnston is dumped by his latest woman, he receives an anonymous letter from a former lover informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him. A freelance sleuth neighbor moves Don to embark on a cross-country search for his old flames in search of answers. (IMDb)
On one level, a thoughtful camera with an eye for capturing the beauty in every detail of the mundane mixed with the script’s scattered quirkiness makes accompanying Murray’s melancholy Don on his cyclical journey across America and back to visit various ex-lovers a uniquely cozy experience. On the other hand, the story’s refusal to dig deep, wrap up, or at least piece together even slightly any of the otherwise interesting parallels and “clues” from each visit make it frustrating in the end.
7/10Â (Good)
joel watches movies 
Awesome movie. I think it leaves a lot of space for the viewer, so you can actually decide how deep to go… and Jarmusch has always been good at doing movies where silence means more than words.
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yeah, it’s kinda hit or miss with me and these type of movies.. sometimes they connect, other times they don’t. broken flowers ultimately didn’t really do so in the end, but i still really enjoyed the journey.
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Did you see some other movies by Jarmusch?
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not yet! but his latest, Paterson, really intrigued me. And I’ve been a big fan of some stuff from Noah Baumbach, who seems to have a similar-ish style to Jarmusch, so I’d love to see some more of his!
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Cool! 🙂 I’ve been quite a long-time admirer of him before. He did very different movies, although all are clearly unified by his style. I could highly recommend you “Coffee and Cigarettes” (a dozen of dialogue based novellas with a whole bunch of actors or musicians mostly playing themselves in a weird way like Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits, Alfred Molina, Iggy Pop, Steve Buscemi, Bill Murray…). It’s a lot of fun and shows all these wonderful actors from an unusual side 😅 and then “Down By Law” in the 80s, which is much faster than a typical Jarmusch’s film, but still odd and funny.
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