“Broken Flowers,” the new film from writer/director Jim Jarmusch, stars Bill Murray and includes an assortment of wildly eclectic music.
The film features an assortment of music and has garnered a number of important awards including being named the winner of the Grand Prix award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
In the film an over-the-hill “Don Juan-type” character played by Bill Murray has just been dumped by his latest lover. One day he receives a mysterious pink letter in the mail from an anonymous former lover that informs him of his 19-year-old son who may be on a road trip looking for his father. Murray’s character, Don, is urged by a neighbor, played by Jeffrey Wright, to find the source of this letter by making a list of the women he was with 20 years ago – which includes characters played by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy and Jessica Lange – and visiting them.
Like Quentin Tarantino, Jarmusch personally chooses the music for his films, blending cinema and sounds in order to aid in the storytelling. In a September 2003 interview with indieWire, Jarmusch said music is his greatest inspiration.
“I love literature, cinema, painting and design,” he said. “But all cultures have music. Music is, to me, the most immediate form of expression. I think film is a musical form. I treat it that way. When I’m editing, film rhythmically becomes a piece of music and aids in the cutting of the work. Obviously, I like kinda slow music.”
Some of his other films, such as “Stranger than Paradise” and “Coffee and Cigarettes,” have been praised because of how eclectic, yet cohesive, the soundtracks are.
The indelible music in “Broken Flowers” is used to illustrate the complex emotions Murray’s character feels during his journey through the past, but it is also a good listen outside of the theatre.
The first song on the film’s soundtrack, “There Is an End,” sets the tone for the rest of the compilation. Not that it sounds like every other song on the collection, but the overall vibe of the album is undeniably cool. Performed by the British Invasion/garage rock band, The Greenhornes (guest vocals by Holly Golightly), “There Is an End” sounds as if it were stripped right out of a James Bond movie.
Ethiopian musician and composer Mulatu Astatke contributes several hypnotic instrumental pieces to the soundtrack. “Yegelle Tezeta” and “Yekermo Sew” are perfect examples of what makes Astatke a major figure of the Ethiopian music scene with jazzy horns and percussion, strong bass grooves, lively organs and electric and wah-wah guitars.
Astatke was musically trained in London during the 1950s, moving to Boston and New York in the mid-1960s where he was exposed to Latin and jazz styles. His sound is said to be influenced by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, organist Jimmy Smith and even the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Not a total stranger to Western audiences, thanks to a compilation of instrumentals called “Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969-1974,” Astatke is known by some as the “innovator of the Ethiopian groove”. His original music alone makes this album worth owning.
Other highlights include a classic Marvin Gaye cut, “I Want You,” Requiem, Op. 48 (Pie Jesu) by Gabriel Faure, performed by Oxford Camerata and a rocked-out four minute excerpt of Sleep’s “Dopesmoker” (the original track is said to be over an hour long).
The compilation is short, with a running time a little over 40 minutes, but this is more of an observation than a complaint. Those who enjoy music that is not likely to be played on commercial radio – at least in Central Ohio – will most likely enjoy this eclectic mix of classic coolness.
