Broken Flowers

Methodical yet abrupt, Broken Flowers attempts to scrutinize a man’s life decisions in one episodic event. Perhaps this event is the first time in his life where he developed contemplation, and more telling, self-doubt.

Don Johnston is wealthy yet lonely. He clearly, despite his ease with women, has never considered the value of his life. We do not really see a man but instead an idler in life. The decision to determine if he has anything to love outside of his home was not even initiated by himself, but by his hilariously gum-shoe neighbor, who enjoys passing his existence as a crime sleuth.

His journey is divided into 4 vignettes. Fortunately none are seen exasperatingly bizarre, aside from a peculiar Lolita reminiscence. Though not much is made of his inanimateness, Don reveals his emotions through what he sees. And these are women. They appear within dreams accompanying his quest to find out if he fathered a son.

Loneliness best conveys what he is attempting to resolve. This is not made patently clear until desperately he provides food to a hitch-hiker and begs for him to be his son. When the young man flees, the realization hits Don: I have nothing.

Thus, the concentration on two pairs of attractive ladies legs by Don. They centrally indicate to us a schism in his outlook on life. Whereas before they may have prompted him to flirt, he now questions the accumulation of his time on earth, and henceforth what the old “him” would do.

The greatest challenge with a metamorphosis is the uncertainty about the life-change. Not only in the possibility of a worse-off condition, but also the uncertainty of how to act as this new “self”. Do I act oppositely to how I normally would? Am I being genuine if I am simply a polar opposite of before? What was so wrong with me?

There is an eclectic reaction with the women who he believes is the mother of his potential son. We have a typical womanizer response from one, embrace from another, and apprehension from the other two. All four have completely moved on with their lives from the decades old flames they carried with Don. We do not get a sense with any of them, however, their own struggle or battle with metamorphosis. At best, the scenes with each woman are merely random jests at meaning in Don’s life. And Don does not find any.

His success in his computer business aside, Don is left with a persistent empty void that he only realizes with this agitation. Thus, this film is a part of the common theme of nihilism in contemporary society. We are not here to judge Don, nor do we develop a sense of empathy with his procedure. We end the film as he does: what next?

Grade: B