Showbits

Remember Father's Day? I didn't think so. It was a 1997 comedy with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in which the perfect strangers hit the road to find the son one of them never knew they had — and to find out which one is the father.

Cross this film's plot with Mamma Mia!, subtract the comedy and soundtrack, and you get Broken Flowers, a 2005 film starring Bill Murray. I never heard of this movie when it hit theaters, but as with The Squid and the Whale, it was on my list of "20 Essential Break Up Movies", and I've been a fan of Bill Murray's serious side ever since Lost in Translation and The Razor's Edge. A friend recently criticized this actor's inability to be serious, a sentiment I found appalling — until I saw this film.

It's boring. 2001 boring. There are prolongated sequences of absolutely nothing happening. Murray spends the film's first half-hour mopingly contemplating an anonymous letter he's received that suggests a lover of two decades past has born him a vagabond son he's never known. Begrudgingly curious, he sets out to find the mother of his child. After that slow setup, we're then presented with a series of vignettes as Murray awkwardly encounters his past loves, with all parties exhibiting the symptoms of deipnophobia. Throughout it all, he expresses almost no emotion, which makes his character's reputation as a Don Juan unbelievable. The ending brings the audience no closure — a sort of romantic Rashômon, where we can choose which of four stories to believe, if any, but with none of them offering any satisfaction.

This is the second movie I've rented that fit this description: "Going through a breakup? Whether you're looking for escapism or self-assessment, laughs or bitter revenge, these are some of the best movies ever to deal directly with the end of a relationship and the world that awaits." Neither film was what I expected. When I'm fresh out of a break-up, I don't want to see other people in bad relationships, or even in any kind of relationship. A good breakup movie should celebrate the joys of bachelorhood and focus on the opportunities brought by this newfound freedom. In my case, and now that I know better, I'd exercise the freedom to not watch this movie.

Inspiration can come from the most unlikely of sources, as demonstrated by the film The Razor's Edge, based on W. Somerset Maugham's book of the same name. I had never heard of this 1984 movie starring Bill Murray (or the 1946 original with Tyrone Power) until a random conversation with my chiropractor brought it to my attention. It's now proven to be one of the most memorable and substantial films I've seen in some time.

And time is something this film uses creatively. Though it flows (chrono)logically, it is not bound to detailing every day or month of the protagonist's life. In just the first half-hour, Murray is shipped off to World War I, the war ends, and he returns home. In this way, the movie wastes no time establishing the privileged life he abandoned to fight the war, or how his brush with death left him a changed man. Post-war, he eschews both the women who love him, instead seeking out the answer to life on a trek that takes him physically to the slums of Paris and the mountains of Tibet, and spiritually to places he'd never dreamed of — and which the people he left behind cannot fathom.

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… IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY!

In a message on the online service GEnie, my friend Gary Utter once posted:

Category 3, Topic 23
Message 17 Wed Jul 24, 1996
GARY.UTTER at 05:42 EDT

GROUNDHOG DAY is more than a comedy, more than a love story. It is, among other things, a deep look at society, the way we view others, the way we view ourselves. It is also quite a metaphysical examination of the very reason for being, if you care to look at it that deeply.

This is, actually, an amazing film, and if it survives long enough, will be as overanalyzed as Shakespeare. There is meaning in there that I do not believe the producers intended. It just happened.

I think it will still be available for rental in 20 years…..

Fourteen years so far, so good. It took 12 of them for Roger Ebert to recant his original, mediocre review. It's never too late for a great film to grow on you, Roger. And "sublime" is indeed a great description of male lead Bill Murray, be it here or in another one of my favorite films, Lost in Translation.

So what are you waiting for? It's Friday night — there's no school tomorrow. Bust out this classic romantic comedy and watch it over and over and over.