Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation is one of those films in which you sense the inevitable and are waiting for it and waiting for it and you wait so long it is suddenly too much to have waited for. Not to say that’s a bad thing – it’s just the way it works so well.

Here we follow a brief chapter of Bob Harris’ life. He’s an aging actor (played by Bill Murray) who was much bigger then than he is now. However, he is being paid two million dollars to endorse a whiskey in Japan and is staying in a luxury hotel far away from his wife and children in America. Nearby, in the same hotel, Charlotte (Scarlett Johanson) is staying with her husband (Giovanni Ribisi), a photographer working with a rock band. The pair both suffer insomnia and boredom and soon, through numerous bumpings-into, they become friends and start discovering the fun that has been missing from their lives since they arrived in Japan.

It doesn’t sound like much, but writer/director Sofia Coppola has brought to the screen a simple tale that is fraught with subtle humour, silent tragedy and a yearning belying the years of both protagonists. Bob, married for 25 years, has forgotten how to enjoy life while Charlotte expects much more from her youth. Together the pair rediscover their lives and who they are while simply conversing and hanging out doing nothing. Theirs is a subtle love story, told not in the conventional sense of soulmates finding each other amidst a strange locale, but of two similar bookends on different shelves. They are Americans immersed in a culture so alien they cling to each other to feel some familiarity – but a familiarity on their own terms. Together they find within themselves something they had lost, and find something new too; perhaps this is the Lost of the title then, being adrift in a foreign language, but also being adrift even amidst those you love and care for. The search for meaning and the search for self among a culture so opposingly different would naturally make it easier to find out who we are. What better place to shrug off the lives we are all too familiar with, to strip ourselves back to metal and see what ticks inside?

I’ve heard varying opinions of Lost in Translation and all I can say is this is a film everyone needs to see for themselves. Perhaps some just don’t see anything of themselves in here, but for those amongst us who are willing to look a little deeper within - past the absent Hollywood sugar frosting - there is a true human gem here. The character portrayals are poignant and perfect. Bill Murray uses such a subtlety of expression to capture Bob’s crumbling exterior, it’s enough to make us wonder why someone hasn’t thought to utilise him in similar roles. Scarlett Johanson plays the bored young wife superbly and the pair have a fabulous chemistry that works so auspiciously for the film. Many questions are left unanswered, but that’s okay, for they aren’t all for us to know. What we learn is enough to piece the remains together ourselves and take from this film whatever it is we choose to. Some will take nothing. Some will take more than that. Personally, I took a lot from the film and am looking forward to watching it again to grab yet more.

This is a wholly subtle film that deals with some of the less grim, though no less important, issues of life as we know it. Sofia Coppola has brought to the film her unique style of gentleness and refinement that simply guides the storyline at us for us to make our own assumptions. It is beautifully shot and steers itself away from the horrors of sentimentality; instead carrying itself with grace and dignity for the duration.

Sofia Coppola has an amazing way of making the most mundane look somehow haunting. The long night shots of Tokyo with its myriad red and slow-glowing airplane warnings seems to capture the entire emotion of the film and here this, among numerous other shots, has been captured magnificently. The transfer hasn’t necessarily been so kind to these images though. There are quite a few low-level grainy shots in the night scenes and the shadow detail is often sucked into the black void. However, those blacks are mostly true, with only one or two instances of a deeper blue. Delivered in the cinema aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with anamorphic enhancement the film does look amazing, with the incredible contrast of traditional and modern Japan being executed as if done for the first time, and not clichéd as it usually is. It’s a very pretty picture, much as The Virgin Suicides is and the images lend themselves to the lyrical atmosphere brilliantly.

Given us in the mostly standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround here, the sound is very nicely delivered. Musically, the film has been scored in a haunting manner, but again the contrast of Japanese television is used to remind us of the difference between the two. At times the music is so subtle as to barely be audible, but it is enough to know it is there and this also goes a ways to creating the dreamlike quality that Ms. Coppola seems to favour so.

Dialogue is nice and clear but for that one sentence in the end, but even that came across as almost audibly legible. The majority of lines are spoken very succinctly, but there is stacks of Japanese here that poor old me didn’t understand. This isn’t subtitled either (thankfully) and is used more as a language gag than anything (or perhaps the literal delivery of the film’s title). At any rate, we don’t need to know what is being said. There’s a translator for the bits we need. The rest is as alien to us as it is to the Americans in the story, and that is wholly the point.

Quite a few, but not a lot of any real value. The first is Lost on Location, a 29:56 cast diary of sorts as they progress through the pre-production of the film. This is interesting for the first five minutes and doesn’t really have all that much to offer us, but it is definitely worth a look, if for nothing else than its inclusion.

Matthew’s Best Hit TV is hilarious in the film, and here the full 4:36 bit is given us from various cameras and ends in a most slippery manner in a big surprise we didn’t see in the film. Funny stuff.

Kevin Shields’ City Girl music video is next and this runs for the usual three minutes. Granted us in 1.78:1 without 16:9, this features some obviously unused film footage, so has that value in itself. Plus of course, the song is in the film and it is a very nice piece in its own right.

Five deleted scenes come after and, oddly, these don’t seem to require context. Because there’s barely an easily defined progressive storyline, these random scenes are fine on their own. Worth a look, but those robots scared me a little. They’re just creepy, that’s all.

Finally, A Conversation with Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola is a fairly pleasant interview of sorts in which Bill Murray seems to do most of the actual conversing. Oddly, this is filmed in Rome too, of all places. Mostly this is a boring little discussion of the film, but I’m sure some folks out there will find some depth to it that was sorta lost on me.

So as I say, not a lot there of any real value, but that’s just me. Maybe they all sound like the best extras you’ve ever heard of, in which case go nuts, have a blast and knock yourself out.

Such subtlety in storytelling isn’t so common these days, and here Sofia Coppola has delivered a lilting and delicate exploration of a friendship forged under unique circumstances. The interplay and chemistry between Murray and Johanson is perfect and neither come across as the wrong person for the role. In whole, this is a love story, but it is also a life story and one simply told.

Perhaps you may have trouble finding the answers to your questions here, but if you look a little closer, I feel sure all of them are here and personally, I’m looking forward to finding what I can the next time around.

Well worth a rental with a view to buying, at the very least.