Are there movies whose sole purpose, sole reason to exist, is to be taken up by students pursuing degrees in film?I watched Broken Flowers not too long ago. What little I had heard about it left me not expecting too much. On one level, the movie met my expectations as it was slow moving and strange. But it also left me feeling like it had been made solely to provide fodder for film classes. I finished watching it thinking that it was artificially enigmatic, that it was purposefully dense so as to make it ideal for analysis. It seemed ripe with images not quite accidental. Was there some underlying symbolism to the guy hanging out of the car at the end of the movie?
Was my reaction dissatisfaction with the refusal of the movie to wrap things up in a nice little package? I want to think not. I don't mind movies that leave things up to the viewer's interpretation, leaves questions unanswered. But this movie seemed too self-conscious, too aware of its own strangeness.
And yet, all that being said, I would recommend it. My husband and I watched it separately and we came away with very different answers to the unanswered questions. That alone makes for a movie which stimulates conversation. The questions begged to be discussed. Which brings me right back around to the feeling that this movie wasn't made as entertainment but as an intellectual exercise . . .
Was my reaction dissatisfaction with the refusal of the movie to wrap things up in a nice little package? I want to think not. I don't mind movies that leave things up to the viewer's interpretation, leaves questions unanswered. But this movie seemed too self-conscious, too aware of its own strangeness.
And yet, all that being said, I would recommend it. My husband and I watched it separately and we came away with very different answers to the unanswered questions. That alone makes for a movie which stimulates conversation. The questions begged to be discussed. Which brings me right back around to the feeling that this movie wasn't made as entertainment but as an intellectual exercise . . .
1 comment:
I saw this when it came out. It was really hard to get in. (Amazingly enough.) I was in L.A. and the first time my friend Michele and I went it was sold out. The next night we tried going to see it at a screening at Universal. It was completely full. We wound up seeing it sitting in the front row of a full theater.
Now it was interesting, but not worth all this trouble.
Yet once the film started I did enjoy certain characters like the neighbor, but I did feel that I was being directed (or manipulated) into considering this movie in a specific way. Like a film student should. So I would say that the director was not just aiming to tell a story, nor did he create a story that naturally contained elements that one had to mull over, but rather he constructed a story for analysis.
I did find the ending abrupt, but I don't think it was abrupt in an artful or worthwhile way.
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