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Lost in Translation review
2004.02.29 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
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Bill Murray is lost in Japan. [official site] |
Once, when I had briefly locked myself out of my suburban apartment in Chicago, I thought of writing a story about a man who accidentally locks himself out of his apartment after the apartment office has closed and who spends the night wandering the city, discovering people and places he never knew existed. Lost in Translation is Sophia Coppola's version of that story.
Bill Murray is Bob Harris, a comic movie actor who has traveled to Japan to make a commercial and pose for print ads (a common practice, even for actors who would never do them in America). He is alone and lonely in the strange culture, cut off even from his wife, who nevertheless insists on faxing him questions about the home remodeling and niggling him resentfully about how much fun he must be having. It's clear that their marriage is in trouble, even tho they probably do still love each other.
Scarlett Johansson is Charlotte, the young wife of an American photographer (the always-interesting Giovanni Ribisi) who has come to Japan to do some photo shoots of his own. Scarlett stays in the hotel during the day, wary of the alien culture, and only ventures to the hotel bar with her husband out of boredom. This is a low-point in their young marriage; Ribisi's character is clearly focused on the work and on hanging out with a vapid American actress acquaintance they run into.
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...two people who recognize that they are the only ones in the room who realize how lame the party is. |
So Charlotte and Bob find each other, connecting in the easygoing manner of two people who recognize that they are the only ones in the room who realize how lame the party is. Together they gamely explore the foreign city, but this is not a fish-out-of-water story, exactly, but the altogether rarer stranger-in-a-strange-land story. We marvel and snicker at Japanese culture along with our disaffected guides as they enjoy being lonely together. Bob even goes out of his way to extend his stay.
Some have suggested that Lost in Translation is prejudiced against Japanese, or Asians, or non-Americans, or whatever, because the characters sometimes have fun at Tokyo's expense. But the film could easily have been set in the United States in any big city. The language barrier and foreign customs just underscore the alienation that the characters feel and let us, the audience—who might actually live in Los Angeles or Chicago or New York and not think it strange at all—identify better.
The film is aimless, but not pointless. There is a moment when, in traditional romantic fashion, there is a betrayal of their relationship that creates tension. But this is not a romance story, either. They both know that there can be nothing more between them than friendship. And because of that, we honestly don't know where the story will go from there. Writer/director Coppola has not promised us anything—not even that we will end up liking the main characters.
But we do.
f e e d b a c k
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