I’d forgotten how effective this movie is since I fell in love with it when it first came out in theatres. First of all, it is very funny. It takes me a minute to get into Bill Murray’s dead-pan mode that he has recently been typecast into, and the set-up of the plot requires a generous suspension of disbelief. But once Don Johnston hits the road, the movie really seems to glide.
The ending of the film is pretty brutal. I remembered a conversation in a restaurant from a few months ago in which a man sitting behind me said to either his friends or family something along the lines of “a human’s existence is basically worthless unless he reproduces.” Regardless of how silly that is, I do think that it is important to feel like you have left something significant behind before you die, a child is an example, but any number of things apply, too: an influential artwork, a breakthrough in mathematics, a useful gadget, etc. are all babies. Most people, though, don’t invent new things or ideas, and a child really is one of the few things that they can be satisfied in having created. In Broken Flowers, Don Johnston is presented with the possibility of having reproduced. He acts nonchalantly about the prospect, but internally becomes infatuated with the idea. As his likelihood of discovering a definitive truth to this possibility fades throughout the course of the film, Johnston is visibly emotionally devastated. When he is left standing in the road at the end, left looking at every Early-twenties male that crosses his path as if he could be his son, it is a heartbreaking conclusion. When I first saw this film in Brookline, MA at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, the cut to black at the end elicited two “No!’s” from my audience.