Lost in Translation (Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson)
If you check the Rotten Tomatoes website, of nearly 200 online reviews, almost all of the write-ups are unanimously favourable to Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Sure, there is the odd pan by the Palo Alto Weekly and the Newark Star-Ledger, but these come across more like one-off jobbies by writers looking to be contrary than legitimate evaluations. By and large, this small feature has garnered universal critical praise. The question then becomes, Does jumping on the bandwagon and liking this film too make me just another a mindless critics follower? Well, with this particular film, I am coming from a different vantage point than most of the rest of North America. All of the praise, word-of-mouth hype, and awards buzz had come and gone before the movie even came to our backwards little city. In fact, the same week that I was finally able to see it locally in a theatre was the same week that it came to home video. Rather than expound on the inanity of such a ridiculous situation and how decent movies never seem to come here, I will just say that I agree with all the hoopla. Plain and simple, this is a marvellously crafted work, an experience I won't soon forget.
Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a movie star who agrees to do some commercials in Tokyo for a cool couple of million bucks. Bob is a husband, a father, and wealthy, but primarily he is lonely. It is not the kind of lonely that comes from knowing too many people or no people at all. Nor is it the kind of lonely that comes from being an introvert or an extrovert. It is that loneliness that comes from not having really connected with another kindred spirit. It is the unspoken fear that you will never meet a person who will understand precisely what you mean without even needing to use words.
Stuck for the right words in a city where the English language is in rare supply, Bob shoots the whiskey commercials surrounded by attentive crewpeople and whiplashed by an aggressive Japanese director. He stays at a hotel, drinking whenever he can't sleep; he doesn't sleep very often. Soon he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young Yale graduate who, only 2 years into her marriage to a photographer (Giovanni Ribisi), already feels just as lost and alone as he does. Together, they explore the Tokyo nightlife, tackle some ironic karaoke, and watch old black and white movies. Their conversations are frank, honest, and, most importantly, devoid of judgment. Of course, there is also much levity too; we watch an entire culture unfold through the eyes of two unsuspecting Americans, stuck in the biggest city on the planet. But this is not a comedy, as it has so often been unfairly labelled. It is first and foremost a brilliant, glittering character study of the highest caliber.
Much has been made of Murray's performance. I can find no fault in those who applaud it, but for me Scarlett Johansson was a complete revelation. What a fantastic, intensely empathetic approach she brings to the role of Charlotte. With astonishing and natural ease, she is mesmerizing in every one of her scenes. We even find ourselves thinking about her when she isn't onscreen. Johansson's omission on this year's list of Oscar nominees is unfortunate and inexplicable. As the sleepy husband, Ribisi is lackluster and mismatched for the actor's playing field that is established. On the other hand, Anna Faris is charming as a cheerleader-esque Hollywood actress brought in to promote her latest action flick.
My biggest complaint came at a point late in the game when the stakes are high. Early on in the picture, one of the characters is put in a position where they might potentially succumb to a less-than-favourable act. When that character is faced with a similar scenario again, they contrarily act on it the second time around. It completely betrays the character and threatens to destroy the innocence of a strong relationship. Clearly, the device was wedged into the screenplay for no other reason than to introduce some conflict, which was never needed to begin with. The real tension or conflict comes from the obligations and baggage the characters bring with them to Tokyo and they must return to again when they leave.
I wanted to reach out and hug Lost in Translation for all it is and all it does. One of the deepest of human hopes is to connect with someone -- often, anyone at all -- and the film dares to depict this universal inner longing in simple terms. We don't want Bob and Charlotte to engage in physical contact or sexual baseness, we want them to develop emotional growth and intellectual understanding. The ending threatens to railroad itself by potentially taking a Crocodile Dundee route, but Coppola's screenplay is far too beautiful to allow phony deus ex machinas to rain on this dialectic parade. We are instead treated to a sweetly arresting goodbye sequence that, for some ignorant reason, has spawned an outlandish amount of cyber-discussion as to its content. This is a shame, considering it should be fairly evident that we as an audience are never intended to know all of the details of their parting. That these characters have shared some special moments together and must now return to their regular lives is all we need to know. But, oh! how we hope their paths will one day cross again!
