- Title: Lost in Translation
- IMDb: link
Anyone who has spent time alone in a hotel room isolated and far from home, dealt with the uncertainties of your early 20s or a emotional barrage of a mid-life crisis, or spent time with a stranger who has somehow changed your life, can appreciate at least some of the various themes writer/director Sofia Coppola explores by putting Bill Murray in Japan. Bill Murray in Japan, that’s the premise that Coppola started with. And to it she blended in the talents of a young up-and-coming actress named Scarlett Johansson. The rest, as they say, is history.
Lost in Translation is a perfect film. It is unquestionably the best film of 2003, the best performance of Bill Murray’s carrer, and the launching pad for Scarlett Johansson as one of the most sought after leading women in Hollywood for the next two decades. The film is littered with great moments, terrific performances, possibly the best karaoke sequence ever recorded on film, and punctuated with a wistful ending that doesn’t attempt to sum up its meaning.
Johansson stars as Charlotte, a recent college graduate floundering in a high-scale Tokyo hotel having chosen to accompany her celebrity photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) on his latest assignment. We see enough of the pair to know this marriage isn’t going to last, such as his friendship with an insipid actress (Anna Faris) in Tokyo to promote her new film, and soon he is off outside the city on a photo shoot leaving her alone where she makes the acquaintance of Bob Harris (Murray), a once-talented actor well past his prime in Japan doing commercials for Japanese whiskey and avoiding returning home to his family.
We see a couple of quick scenes between the pair before they ever have their first real conversation. Bonding on being lost in Tokyo together, a friendship forms which is cemented with Bob accompanying Charlotte and some locals on a night out that culminates in a karaoke bar. There are so many great scenes between Johansson and Murray, but one of my favorites is the silent scene in the hallway of the karaoke club, each feeling untethered to their lives, simply being there for each other when no one else can.
Lost in Translation is a love story, and one with romantic tinges, but Sofia Coppola does shy away from putting the pair together sexually, although Charlotte does get jealous when Bob sleeps with the hotel’s lounge singer (Catherine Lambert). The pair have much in common, including insomnia which leads them to seek each other out late an night including one evening where the pair, quite chastefully, sleep together in the same bed. We also get Charlotte’s tourism around Japan and emotional breakdown a friend from home obliviously ignores. We also get Bob’s calls to his wife about the mundane life back home for him, and his struggle with the state of his life, and his honest response to his wife that she could worry about him, if she wants to.
One of the curiosities I’ve found over the years is that those who I’ve talked to who first saw the film in theaters, surrounded by strangers, seem to have a greater appreciation for the film, and the disassociated themes of its characters, than those who may have first seen in on home video or streaming. Murray adds some fun improvisational moments, but its the core relationship between these two characters which ends in mumbled words of wisdom that aren’t meant or the audience which provide such a moving and unexpected ending. Having viewed the film countless times on home video, it still works equally well for me today as it did that first time in a theater as it holds up beautifully more than two decades after its release.
Watch the trailerWatch the Karaoke scene
