Lost in Translation
A film like Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is at once both easy and difficult to review. On the easy side, it is uniformly excellent, and nothing much in the way of tangible action actually takes place. These same reasons make Lost in Translation hard to encapsulate. How do you make a film where nothing actually happens sound interesting to those that would scoff at seeing it? And how many different ways can you say something/someone is excellent?
Translation’s plot center on Bob Harris (Bill Murray), a washed up American actor in Tokyo, shooting a series of Japanese whiskey commercials for which he will be outrageously compensated. He doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t know the culture. His only contact with home is through a series of faxes from his wife inquiring about decorating choices. This changes when he happens upon Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson). Charlotte is staying at the same hotel with her husband John (Giovanni Ribisi), a celebrity photographer consumed with his career, but not his marriage. After a few chance meeting around the hotel, Charlotte gets the courage to talk to Bob, and something deeper than friendship is born.
The focus of much of the talk surrounding this film has been about Mr. Murray’s performance and it is not undeserved. In fact, this is one of those rare occurrences when I hear the critics scream “Oscar®-worthy performance,” I can actually agree. Mr. Murray’s performance manages something he has yet to do on-screen: combine his hipster sense of humor with a real emotional honesty. Bob uses his quick comic timing to diffuse some of the discomfort he’s feeling with the fact that he is alone in a strange land, but eventually his adventures with Charlotte open him up. If the look on Murray’s face when he is forced to take pictures with Japanese businessmen while silently watching Charlotte leave the hotel for the last time doesn’t at least get him a nomination, it will be a huge shame. Clearly, this is one of the best performances of the year.
Ms. Johannson’s performance is a perfect fit with Murray’s. Charlotte is just as lost as Bob, even if she is more familiar with the country. Choices about her marriage and her future confuse her, and that confusion is palpable in Johannson’s performance. It is hard to believe that Johannson is only eighteen, based on the maturity she shows in her performance. She’s just as good as Murray in a role that’s just as tricky. A special note to Anna Farris (Cindy of the Scary Movie series) and her hilarious performance as an actress friend of John’s in Toyko to promote her new Keanu Reeves film: Don’t do Scary Movie 4. You’re better than that. The proof is in your performance here. Take more risks.
Ms. Coppola has fashioned a quiet film not unlike her debut, The Virgin Suicides, but one that is ultimately more rewarding. She and her cinematographer Lance Acord have made Toyko both familiar (shots of dizzying neon and busy city streets, teeming with tourists, resemble Times Square) and strange (shots of the bars, parties and alleys where Bob and Charlotte find themselves are filmed in a unfamiliar, dreamlike, sometimes disorientating style). Coppola is not worried about pushing scenes along, but rather letting the action unfold on its own. It’s an approach which may seem boring, but the decision makes the audience become emotionally invested in Bob and Charlotte and makes the film’s conclusion all the more satisfying and bittersweet.
I strongly I recommend this film. Ms. Coppola has taken romance, humor, friendship, and loss and created something truly unique and imaginative. At the risk of being punny, it’s a treat to get Lost in Translation, if only for an hour and forty minutes.
Submitted 23 September 03. Posted 12 November 03.
