FILM CHALLENGE: 163) Lost In Translation

163) Lost In Translation

Director: Sofia Coppola

Year: 2003

Plot Summary: He's doing a commercial, parlaying his fifteen minutes of movie stardom. She's just graduated from college, recently married, and tagged along with her husband, a photographer on assignment. He's married with children, but he's never home. She's supporting her husband, but has no idea what she wants to do with her own life. Both are searching for the meaning of their lives and begin to find it when they meet each other at the bar of the hotel they're staying in.

Sofia Coppola has created one of cinema's most soulful stories with her underrated masterpiece Lost In Translation.

Loosely plotted and set over a few days, Lost In Translation is the story of Bob Harris, an American film actor far past his prime who visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting rock photographer. Bob is tolerating a mediocre stateside marriage while Charlotte is looking for her place in life. When they meet in the hotel bar and spend their free time together, their friendship becomes a life-changing experience. Bob teaches Charlotte about life and she teaches him to reconnect with his.

The movie is essentially just a compilation of moments from both of these individual's experiences in Tokyo. However, what makes these moments so strikingly beautiful is how they explore both Bob and Charlotte's emotions and desires and how, when they eventually meet just over a third of the way through, learning about each other helps them overcome their problems.

Moreover, Coppola's style of storytelling in Lost In Translation has a subtle and quiet atmosphere that makes it honest and realistic. You won't find any grand gestures or Hollywood dialogue here as she, instead, challenges the viewer to find the subtext hidden with seemingly ordinary and average sequences much like you would if you were studying two people in real life.

We see in these aforementioned scenes, for example, that Charlotte is a character looking for a direction or path for her life. She wanders around the neon lit streets and the religious temples searching for it in this new place but is only feeling more lost with each day. How she personalises her by room by hanging origami decorations from the ceiling symbolises her desire to make this foreign place into a 'home'. Furthermore, her conversations with friends at the hotel bar help to also enforce this displacement; Charlotte is more interesting in philosophy and, therefore, feels unable to discuss power cleansing and action movies the way everyone around her seems able to.

Similarly, we see Bob's unhappiness and discontent with his life in these moments. A famous actor who longs for an escape from his celebrity, he unenthusiastically poses for a two-million dollar photo shoot or politely ignores the conversations of adoring fans in a bar. But he's also looking an escape from the commitment of his home-life as he forgets his son's birthday and is bored of the unromantic pleas of his wife to choose a carpet and shelves for his study. His inability to find happiness can be found in the subtle moments when, even cocooned underwater in the swimming pool or flirted with by a masseuse, he still seems lost. Isolation nor an affair can cure this sadness.

Neither of these characters are particularly likeable which adds an extra dose of honesty to Lost In Translation. Bob, after all, treats his son and wife terribly by neglecting them while Charlotte is moody and constantly discontent. Nevertheless, the fact that they are so well drawn and well observed helps you connect with them.

The Japanese setting of Lost In Translation also not only allows for Coppola to indulge in her ability to capture extraordinary visuals, but it also helps to intensify the above characters' alienation and displacement.

The performances from the two leads, Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, who are given the difficult task of capturing these complex individuals, are outstanding in Lost In Translation. Fitting into Sofia Coppola's subtle and quiet style of filmmaking, much of what they achieve is done internally. There's few tears and no declarations of sorrow or love here, instead it's all played in the mannerisms and the eyes. The way Johansson almost unattainably inches away from her husband or shrugs herself out of a cuddle shows and one look Murray's emotionless eyes and tired face say more than any dialogue could.

As touching a story you are likely to find in a modern American indie movie, but one that is equally intelligent, creative, deep in meaning and extraordinarily well-made from a woman who is destined to become one of this generation's most promising auteurs.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 2 comments