Broken Flowers (2005)

Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers arrives from 2005, a year in which a man could still drive across the country visiting former lovers without anyone demanding he account for his politics. Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, a retired computer millionaire who receives an anonymous pink letter claiming he fathered a son. His neighbor Winston, a mystery-novel enthusiast played with calm precision by Jeffrey Wright, assembles maps and flight reservations, and off Don goes.

The film's engagement with contemporary social consciousness is minimal and mostly accidental. Jeffrey Wright's Winston is a Black neighbor rendered without comment or theme, which is to say the casting is natural and unremarkable, and the film draws nothing from it. Four actresses of considerable stature occupy the ex-lover roles, and each is given a distinct damage to carry, but they exist to reflect Don's regret back at him. This is a male midlife reckoning, and the women are its furniture. A protective secretary hovers near Carmen in a way that could suggest something, though the film declines to pursue it. Dora's prefabricated suburban existence invites a light poke at consumer comfort, and the poke lands softly. Lolita's nudity is staged for awkward comedy, nothing more.

What remains is a film with no sermon in it. Jarmusch leaves the central question unresolved, the son unconfirmed, the letter possibly a hoax, and Don standing at a crossroads watching a Volkswagen pass. There is no lesson, no reckoning demanded of the audience, no moral appended to the final frame. For a viewer trained to detect messaging, this is a curiously empty vessel, beautifully photographed and scored to Ethiopian jazz. One could search it for a thesis and find only a man, a cut above his eye, and the sound of a car driving away. The film is dedicated to Jean Eustache. It is not dedicated to anything else.