Review of Lost in Translation (2003) by Michael R — 08 Aug 2012

Lost in Translation is a human comedy about two people who are, in effect, living in a fishbowl. Stuck in a luxury hotel in Tokyo, unable to speak the language, trapped in marriages that make them unhappy, they meet one night and begin to talk. They find something in one another that doesn't move in the direction one might expect. They don't find romance, but a tender bond of two human beings who are far from home but on the same wave length.

He is Bob Harris (Bill Murray) a movie star who is now past 50 and off the hot list who has taken a 2 million dollar offer to star in a Japanese scotch commercial. Back home he is stuck in a state of marital stalemate. His wife - whom we never meet - sends him urgent faxes about furniture and carpet samples. When he is on the phone with her he can hardly get a word in edgewise as she babbles endlessly about trivial nonsense. Something in his sad eyes tells us that being here in Tokyo isn't much different from being back home. The globe is his fish bowl.

She is Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson) a young and beautiful married woman who is already growing into the uncomfortable realization that she has married the wrong man. He isn't mean to her but habitually inattentive while basking in the lifestyle of his job as a celebrity photographer. He leaves Charlotte alone in the hotel room while he cavorts with a blond, vacuous tinpot Hollywood starlet (Anna Faris) who knows him by name.

Stuck in their respective ruts, Bob and Charlotte run into each other in lounges and hallways. Finally, lonely and bored, they quietly begin to connect. This isn't a sexual connection or even a romantic one but a meeting of two souls who understand one another. They sleep in the same bed of misery and when they talk, it is almost as if they already know what the other is going to say. The screenplay keeps their relationship all as a meeting of the minds. It would be easier to throw them into an unwise affair or high dramatic situations but this movie finds a massive dose of reality for their respective emotional rut.

The performances in this movie are perfect, especially from Bill Murray who can be funny just by doing nothing. Here he leaves his usual mugging behind and simply focuses on occupying a man who constantly feels 10 miles away from everyone else. He has a deeply lined face that suggests a lifetime unfulfilled emotions. There's something scratching away inside and it is only when he meets Charlotte does he find anyone who will help him understand it.

Lost in Translation was directed by Sophia Coppola who is a focused and brilliant filmmaker. She has a knack for focusing on characters who are stuck in their own private traps. In her debut, The Virgin Suicides, she focused on five sisters living under the harsh commandments of a domineering mother. In Marie Antoinette, she focused on a sweet girl who was stuck in the bored, social cruelty inside the court of King Louis XVI. Here she focuses squarely on a man and woman who have discovered a mental and emotional link to one another on the far shores of another continent.

The world she thrusts her characters into is alien to anyone who hasn't been to The Far East. The city vibrates with visual stimulation, conversations we can't understand. Bob finds himself in cutural oddities, such as a prostitute who desperately wants to play a game that Bob is clearly unfamiliar with (what does "lip my stocking" mean anyway". Later he is invited to be on a talk show that is described as "The Japanese Johnny Carson" but looks like a feral version of The Price is Right. Then there's the commercial that he is filming in which the hipster director babbles endlessly his instructions which through the translator seem to have been edited. "Are you sure that's all he said?" Bob asks.

Charlotte's world is even more confined. She gets so bored stiff sitting in her hotel room waiting for her husband to be a husband so she started to decorate the room. There is a deep sadness and regret in her eyes as she, at only 26, discovers that she's already made the biggest mistake of her life. She hasn't found her own identity and confesses to Bob "I just don't know what I'm supposed to be." He understands and assures her "You'll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.".

Lost in Translation is one of those movies that seems to be at its best in quiet moments when people simply talk. It isn't a movie of dramatic highs and lows. It is about two people, far from home, who find solace in their mutual solitude. We come to love these two people and we appreciate that they don't fall into the tired platitudes of a thousand May-December romances. When Bob whispers into Charlotte's ear, we aren't allowed to hear what he tells her. It is a moment left to them, a beautiful private moment that between two souls who have, for a very short time, found one another.