lost in translation

I didn't even think her husband was that awful. But yeah, if you are going to sit around your hotel all day, you'll probably feel bored and lonely. I'm still not sure if I liked the movie or not and I saw it like 5 days ago. The sexual tension that developed was probably the most interesting part of the film plotwise.

Whatever was this?

i also found the fact that a 50-something actor married 25 years having 2 toddler children is very improbable, but that's just me. plus his wife sounded pretty young on the phone (checking imdb...) no luck, i bet it was sofia or corinne tucker or somebody "acting out" the role of bored rich housewife, haha.

There's a lot to criticize about it, but thankfully it didn't devolve into a hamfisted made-for-Lifetime TV movie.

There are echoes of Jacques Tati's classic "Playtime" in the contrast between the hotel's ultramodern architecture, which isolates human beings, and the exaggerated, almost anthropomorphic quality of devices like loud faxes piercing the silence.

Here's a Coppola interview about making the film.

This is not to say Japanese audiences won't like it. I was watching 'Down With Love' on a plane, sitting behind a Hassidic jewish couple who whooped with laughter at the film's stereotypical portrayal of a jewish dry cleaner.

I guess my problem is that it felt a little too Roman Coppola at times. (I still think the movie is ace though, mostly for the bizarre realization that came to me during it, which is that Bill Murray suddenly reminds me a LOT of Takeshi Kitano..)

The KEEE-RAZY stuff that's in there is real (eg Mathew Minawa, the talk show host - he's not a made-up charicature of Japanese TV hosts, he's a real talk show host doing his usual schtick) & it's the american characters who are being dumb most of the time (the old lady in the hospital is earnestly trying to ask him how long he's been in japan {i think} murray is making nonsense noises - actually that was one of the sweetest and most recognizably true scenes in the flick i thought

i liked "more than this" & "just like honey" a lot too.

making losers loveable doesn't signify depth it signifies EVERY MOVIE EVER - & i think it's kinda unfair of some of the critics of the film to ask it to provide lovability and redemption and then slam it as sentimental and Mentos-esque when it shoots for these things

Deeply shallow? Huh?

you would think (i know, my bad) an ivy league philosophy major doing some soul-searching in japan might find something more culturally enriching than sitting all day in her hotel room, or drugs and karaoke (okay, she arranges a single flower and with glazed eyes witnesses a traditional wedding). i kept thinking during the movie: "in what ways is she more interesting than the ditzy actress that she holds in such contempt?"

wrt: the treatment of the japanese characters/charicatures, i encountered the phrase "unconscious racism" this weekend in a text and thought it applied here. even the "real" japanese characters introduced are either wacky commercial directors, bumbling hospitality agents, drug dealers, nouveau-riche less than zero types, or "surfers"/acid casualties.

any tension between the two characters was completely buzz-killed when he sleeps with the lounge singer... not only is he adulterous, but also willing to stoop to lows that the both of them found earlier so easy to ridicule.

the only complexity of bob or charlotte's characters are the layers of self-deception and insecurities possessing them, which frankly I don't find very fascinating. the only other things they have in common is loneliness and insomnia (or jet-lag issues, take your pick).

As for xenophobia I didn't see it. Amusement at cultural differences doesn't equal fear or hate. Charlotte seemed to have a preponderance of Japanese friends, for one thing. And it never stoops to exoticism (thank god Charlotte was not Japanese, that would have turned the film into something that made me uncomfortable, i think).

Plotlessless: do people level this same criticism at Woman Under the Influence, Mean Streets or Taxi Driver or any of a handful of other non-strictly A -> B -> C(limax) films made in the 70's? There is a story, if not a strict plot which makes these characters more sympathetic once they're released from machinistic devices that move them from event to event. I wish Scorcese had the guts to make a film this loosely structured again.

This film was so much better (visually and content-wise) than Roman Coppola's flick last year; I can't even remember what the name of that movie was!

a japanese person on business in the US refuses to speak anything but japanese, and then mocks and patronizes those who don't understand in a patronizing manner, as if it was their fault... and alienated by the entire experience so much that he cheats on his wife with a cheezy lounge singer and "connects" with a girl half his age.

neato.

You got something entirely different from this film than I did. She's not bored because she doesn't speak japanese (in fact it seemed that there were allusions in there at one point that she did know some japanese, and anyway, she seemed to have a huge number of japanese friends), she's restless and depressed because she's afraid that she is not in love with the person she married (and she may well ultimately be in love with him, we can't know this). This movie could have been set in Tallahassee and had a similar resonance. The cultural divisions are present to underscore and color the frozen communicatory abilities of the characters. The "translation" of the title goes deeper than "hey look these people are in another country," this is about people who are having trouble being honest with themselves. It's not the Beach (ugly american tourists run rampant over Eastern Culture). Or it wasn't to me, anyway.

Speaking of manipulation (cf. jess' comment about the Just Like Honey scene), how about the completely out of place Murray-on-the-stair-stepper wackiness. I tensed up.

To be honest, none of Murray's physical bits worked for me, incl. the rip-my-stockings woman. I probably laughed hardest during his commercial shoots.

also, do you really think that the characters' alienation is "caused" by a lack of trying to speak japanese to the locals?

well yes, for example the way the hospital scene was shot exploited the alienation theme the most. and it's not so much bob's inability to speak japanese, moreso his ugly-american reluctance to even acknowledge it (likewise the omiyage scene that almost opens the film*: all the "sure, sure"s, sarcastic "thank you"s and eye-rolling.) then charlotte walking through the subway station with that pitiful look on her face. her first on-screen breakdown occurs in her hotel room after going to a temple and (paraphrase): "all these monks were chanting, and i didn't feel anything".

*spoiler: if it wasn't for 30 seconds of charlotte's butt in transparent pink underwear taking precedent.

It's a reluctance to acknowledge he's even there. He hates himself for doing the commercials when he "could be doing a play." He's depressed. It's not near as simple as his being an ugly American. Sorry, gygax, but I think you missed every single nuance this movie had to offer.

"Lost In Translation'' also exhibits the self-contained, stylized lonesomeness found in post-punk, like New Order's ''Bizarre Love Triangle.

so that's why I like it so much!

You have to be in the mood for it.

maybe it was a meta-critique of the film itself? "Hey let's throw in 'Just Like Honey' at the end!" and "bring me Kevin Shields, right now!"

Um...
http://www.dga.org/news/v26_5/images/indie_dstsbtnsmnr3_full.jpg

the score (attributed to Air percussionist Brian Reitzell) contains some gorgeous new songs from Kevin Shields, who has abandoned the fatalism of the songs he wrote for the British anti-pop band My Bloody Valentine to embrace the many and mysterious possibilities provided by love

I wondered what you would think of this.

- "Full disclosure: I am not qualified to review this movie. I am not rich. I am not famous. I have never turned on the television and accidentally stumbled upon one of my old movies. I have never brooded about what to do with my philosophy degree from Yale, because I don't have one. I have never stayed in the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Egads, I've never even been to Tokyo. Queen Noor might be qualified to tell you if this movie's sights, sounds and emotions are accurate. I am not."

- " The daughter of filmmaker/vintner Francis Ford Coppola and the wife of filmmaker/Spiegel catalog scion Spike Jonze, this is a young woman who probably hasn't gone wanting for much in life. She might easily have gone the liberal do-gooder route and made a movie about Brazilian orphans. Instead, she's made a movie about rich, white Americans hanging out in Japan, and she isn't the least bit embarrassed that this movie is autobiographical. (According to the press notes, she was in Japan promoting The Virgin Suicides, and started to feel alienated because she thought her Japanese translators weren't properly translating for her. Oh, what I wouldn't do to have this woman's problems.)"

(in fairness he gave the film an overall good review.)

(from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram)

I think that sucking back the Reddi-Whip cans isn't a good way to make money.

Right, because some people's feelings are worth making movies about, and some people's aren't. If you're not poor and shoeless, there's just no place for you in *real* movies.

Gimme a fucking break.

(I should add quickly that I dont feel like I should have to relate, that the director should try and make it easy for me, or to seek to make their characters universal in some way. I didnt relate to anyone in "The Great Gatsby" at all but I still enjoyed it.)

But with them, the review is just petty.

for UK people: the soundtrack is out tomorrow and the film is on the London film festival (28th oct) and opens in the UK in january (!!!).

Bill Murray's character was better than Scarlett Johannson's. He, at least, had some sort of purpose and felt like he was betraying it. She just had the soul-sucking existential angst of being rich and bored, for no apparent reason.

I can't believe this film has gotten so many great reviews. Is it because most reviewers are middle-aged men who like the idea of Scarlett Johannson falling for them?

Writer/director Sofia Coppola has made a movie that very well could have been the most pretentious movie ever made. With great ease I imagine her running to her father (legendary director Francis Ford Coppola) exclaiming in a faux-European accent, “Pa Pa, Pa Pa, I want to make a movie! Let me make a movie, please, Pa Pa?” To which Francis would reply with a simple pat on the head, and a check for several million dollars.
The problem with that scenario, is of course, that Sofia Coppola is a witty and talented director, with a good sense for how humans really feel, talk and emote. She has crafted a film that realistically portrays two people in a foreign land, at a crossroads of their lives; lost both literally and metaphorically.
In a study in subtlety, Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a washed up movie star. He’s doing commercial work in Japan, when, as he puts it, he “could be doing a play.” That’s not the only reason he’s in Japan, though. He desperately needs a break . . . from everything.
Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, a post-collegiate and very confused recently married woman, with her photographer husband on a business trip to Japan. Her husband, (Giovanni Ribisi) is not the man she married. He’s changed, become a little more self-obsessed, and a lot more distant. Charlotte sees her whole life a head of her, and what she sees is nothing at all.
The success of Lost in Translation relies completely on the acting of both the leads. Murray takes a huge risk doing this movie, when he could easily be in dumber, more profitable fair, like perhaps Space Jam 2 or Ghost Busters 3. As Bob Harris, Murray plays a man worn and tattered, but with considerably more depth then the average midlife crises anti-hero. He loves his wife and children, he lives for them; more then anything else, he just needs a break.
Johansson does an amazing job as well. She is charming and likable, intelligent and eerily beautiful, and she has the ability to convey an amazing array of emotions simultaneously. In one scene she calls a friend back home to explain how her marriage is deteriorating. The entire time she’s right on the verge of crying, and it’s compelling, to say the least, watching her hold back the tears.
Lost in Translation is full of nuances, most notably the fact that Murray and Johnsson’s characters never have sex. A lesser film would’ve required them to, but because they don’t, Lost in Translation feels more honest. Because hackneyed plot devices don’t restrict their relationship, they can form the crux of a movie that, besides it’s characters, has little to offer.
And that’s the main criticism I have of the movie, that it lacks any significant conflict. The characters are rich and well developed, but they aren’t offered much to do. Maybe the movie would’ve lost its charm if it forced Charlotte and Bob into some unnatural situation. There is the underlying conflict throughout that their relationship is temporary and that’s one of the movies best features, but still, I would’ve liked something more to happen.
The ending is fantastic, singularly resolving everything and letting us figure it all out ourselves. Lost in Translation is a movie that works on many levels, and for that Coppola has proven herself to be much more then the daughter of a great director, but a great director in her own right.

(i am priveleged and self-obsessed.)

Murray takes a huge risk doing this movie...

i would like to know how a reprise of Murray's role in Rushmore (Harold Blume: wealthy, unfaithful, soul-searching, mid-life/post-mid-life father)... not to mention his most lauded role to date... is a risk.

entertain me here.

I had no reason to care about her, as a character, and that's what the movie revolved around.

Likewise, Coppola wanted us to see the karaoke-night as some great adventure, a "jail-break" from the monotony of the hotel bar. But "Charlie Brown" and his cohorts were no more interesting or any better than the airhead actress, no matter how stacked against her the movie is.

I would like to know how going to Yale means she can afford not to have a job. She can't even afford to buy a scarf!

She said that she'd been married to photo-boy for two years, and had moved to LA when they got hitched. But she also told him she graduated from Yale recently - that year or the previous semester or something.

Did Yale open up a satellite campus, or did I hallucinate all that?

Sorry, that wasn't mean to imply a causal relationship. 1) She can afford to go to Yale; 2) She can afford not to have a job.

entertain me here.

I think you could argue that the movie won't (and I dont think it has thus far) make money. At least not as much as any mainstream comedy he could be making.

when is the mystic river thread starting?

And Lost In Translation is well into a profit. Coppola said the budget was a "couple of million" - figuring that she might have been low-balling to play up its indie status, that's still $5 million give or take.

every movie need not star roboty things blowing things up.

!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

I would have been happier had their relationship stayed completely platonic, though.

you're a cold fish.

Cos the Kill Momus thread is getting too long.

It cost $3m to make and has grossed, so far, $30m. It will gross a lot more when it wins all the prizes.

I did not like it.

The two things that didn't seem quite right were her wearing a cardigan and knickers all the time. Does anyone actually do this? Be fully dressed on the top half but wear nothing on the lower half but knickers? I don't feel right unless I'm a bit more covered. It seemed a little gratuitous. And I didn't find the Japanese haha bits offensive, but I did wonder what Japanese people would think when they saw it. It made me think of National Lampoon's European Vacation, or King Ralph or something.

But on the whole, I liked it.

I was shocked how many people were at the theatre! It just opened wide in Dallas, but it's been playing for a couple of months just 5 miles from where I saw it (today). Do some people avoid art-house theatres?

- This attitude I find extraordinarily patronising to the Japanese, not to mention woefully inaccurate with regard to foreigners in Tokyo.

1. "instead of letting Japan slip into and change them." - so how is that any different from Japanese (or French, Chinese etc) in London ? Foreigners in Tokyo may speak their own language to each other but they buy the same shit in the supermarket as the locals do - just like in London. Most foreigners in London are savvy enough to be changed as much as they want to be, just as Tokyo gaijin are. It's patronising to suggest otherwise. I have a Japanese wife - she's happy in London, but she knows there are times she wants to immerse herself in the cultural equivalent of a comforting hot bath from home. Just like when I lived in Tokyo I loved 'letting japan slip into and change me' - but it didn't stop me from enjoying drunken jaunts on the train with my (gaijin and Japanese) friends, wallowing in being valued for my sheer Englishness, or waking up and craving bacon, egg and chips some mornings. And that's a good thing.

2. "communicating to all and sundry their noisy, terminally gaijin mindset"

And if they insist on speaking English when they chat to locals who are friends, it's quite obviously because a) English is inevitably the reason they are there - just like English is the prime reason most Japanese are in London, and b) it's the mutually accepted lingua franca - Japanese may not be able to speak English fluently but they are bombarded with the language one way or another from the day they are born - you can't say the same in reverse for foreigners.

Sure, there are insufferably noisy 'look at me, little people !' gaijins around, but what Nick also has to remember is that he is not the first or last of us to have spent time in Tokyo. He has a tremendous amount of fascinating things to relate on a lot of subjects but when it comes to Japan, you have to wade through so much 'you just wouldn't understand - I've been there, you know" material, such as the above.

I didn't think Giovanni Ribisi was that bad; he seemed like a bit of a nervous twat but not in a totally rage-inducing way, and y'know he was worried about his career n'shit. I wasn't sure how much the soppy fax he sent at the end was supposed to redeem him.

The soundtrack was fucking great.

Well, you're speaking for yourself, and I was speaking for myself. I personally cannot get far enough away from bacon, egg and chips, and I make it a political litmus test of films which use foreign locations that they should show some interest in, and good faith towards, the cultural differences on display in their selected location. Chris Marker's 'Sans Soleil' passes that test with flying colours. Sophia Coppola's 'Lost in Translation' doesn't.

But my objection to the film is not, finally, about its attitude towards difference. My objection to it is about its attitude towards diffusion. It's a film which doesn't love its neighbour, which doesn't diffuse its attention across its cast in the way I would like it to. (I mean, it doesn't have to. But neither do I have to like what it does do.) LIT's script makes 80% of its cast banal, irritating or villainous in order to focus positive affect on its two principals. Or, perhaps, to give Sophia Coppola a chance to settle scores with Spike Jonze and Cameron Diaz. Well, don't get even on my cinema time or my multiplex dollar please, Sophia!

Anna Faris = Cameron Diaz
Giovanni Ribisi = Spike Jonze
Scarlett Johansson = Sofia Coppola
Bill Murray = Francis Ford Coppola

Jonze and Coppola are to divorce. Sofia's dad is the movie's producer. Wounded by a marriage in which romance failed, Sofia has fallen back on 'the family romance', the support of her dad.

That's why the romance between Bill and Scarlett is both compelling and disturbing. You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to see that Sofia is flirting with Daddy here.

I enjoy so few modern movies popular with my age group that I probably shouldn't bother seeing this. But Bill Murray's in it, so once this puppy shows up in buck-a-night racks I'll check it out.

Now I admit I like this opening shot a lot but I am still unsure as to it's relevance or whether it could be argued that there is any really. Any takers?

Need I really explain that the image I was representing was that most of us out there in Tokyo are/were no different from the Japanese in London - loving it, gleefully supping on the richness of the differences, but also needing food, magazines, chat, friends, language, cultural experiences, and so on that they can relate to from home AS WELL AS the newer experiences they are/were 'letting into them'.

It reeked of hipster snobbery, this film, which is in remarkably bad faith given that Coppola got her breaks (like Spike Jonze, of course) because of her rich Daddy. That's how she got to be the fashion/promos/whatever queen.

That she casts a 19-year-old as herself is interesting: but it also kind of renders the film implausible. How did this young philosophy major end up with the LA video director, or end up married? And how little does Bob Harris' wife sound like a Hollywood Mom.

I had a weird dream inspired by the film, though. In it, there were problems in the Japanese promotion of a film called 'Crips' (about the LA gang) starring -- oh yes -- the VA rap crew Clipse. Now how heavy is that?

I'm not sure how much I agree with Nick's assessment that SC is somehow selling out the hipster milieu that she has inhabited 'up until now' (annoyed at not being invited to karaoke with the editor of Relax, perhaps?). I mean, this for all intents and purposes is my world too, and amidst all of the posturing about keeping it real, most Americans and British people I know in that 'hipster' scene would sell out for a dollar, just to know someone is buying. They're mostly ultraconformists at the top end, with an assumed liberal bias to cover up the nastier truths of that ('yes we have to have an anti-war story, but get the fucking fat girl out of the shot, that's what the advertisers don't like').

Scarlett J's character is like so many of the girls I went to college with: white private school city girl, bit bland, not a 'real' weirdo, creativity is a teenage phase, job as a publicist at Knopf or wherever awaits once she can be bothered to take it, low salary not a problem when Dad pays the rent, and will never do or say anything of any profundity whatsoever: the Stepford Wives of Williamsburg. And yes they're always somehow with these hyperactive 'artistic' assholes. Having met enough up'n'coming fashion/commercial photographers, they really do think the sun shines out of their dicks and always seem to be with 'quiet' posh-ish girls, so Giovanni Ribisi may have been unsympathetic, but SC was not wrong to draw him that way.

Three ways Charlotte could be married to the photographer:
a) Childhood sweethearts
b) Both philosophy majors. He got a job.
c) Similar kind of whirlwind fling elsewhere - instant connection, then growing to discover nothing in common.
His vapidness is potentially a flaw, but since the film priviliges Bob and Charlotte to a massie degree why would this not be the case. She is fun hating up to a point, being a snob. Equally he is wrapped up in the important things in his life (his work) thinking that she would be happy just mooching about.

I found it equally plausible that the little we hear of Bob's wife could be his wife.

X-post, agreeing with Suzy, esp middle paragraph. Final paragraph a wee bit harsh, could you also be dexcribing yourself there Suzy or what marks you out as different?

this is so fucking snobby suzy

I don't get Momus' sell-out idea either: there is no underground really, it's the same advertisers paying the bills wherever you go.

I think the depiction of the Japanese was an 'architectural' decision, since the attitude of the film towards them becomes less cynical as the two leads get closer. This is not unusual in screenwriting terms, I guess, but still. I've never been to Japan. I'm a bit young for the mid-Nineties fashion-love for the country, so it's all a bit of a mystery to me. Have a friend there, though.

That said the key point about the Sc J character is that she does indeed say or do absolutely nothing profound. The profundity vacumn is I think one of the points of this rather charming film.

Anyway, film would have improved if they'd just fucked and left their spouses and run off somewhere. SJ in particular had no reason not to.

Disagree Enrique, plenty of people are 24 and don't know what they want to do, especially if they don't have to do anything. (The latter wasn't true of me, but the former was - especially as I had tried something that I had wanted to do and realised I had no aptitude/stomach for it).

If the film had ended the way you suggest how would that have been a happy ever after? SJ recognises that it would not have worked if they had run off together.

I think possibly more than most films, the viewers identification with the characters and the choices they make seem more important in said viewers enjoyment of the film.

As a second film, it was so close to Sofia's personal concerns as a privileged film director that it struggled to win my sympathy.

But there are 15 worse films on release and I'd recommend it to anyone in a second.

I think I have some bizarre sense-memory for the kind of girlie SJ plays in the film. I'm very different: I have always known what I 'wanted to do' and had established an aptitude for doing it long before college, which is why I got a fucking scholarship to go there and do fieldwork on bland trusta-girls playing handmaid/cashpoint to hyperactive artboy tossers. It made me have not very much respect for either type of person.

I don't think there's much mystery to the relationship between SJ and GR in the film but my hypothesis is that she's rich and he's lower middle class, she might have paid the bills during his starving-artist phase, and now he's a success she's wondering if she's needed at all.

Now, imagine Truffault 'doing a Coppola', basically saying to the audience: 'In this film I want you to hate on a bunch of secondary characters -- stereotyped commercial creatives who resemble my ex-wife, as a matter of fact -- while loving the two leads -- a vapid pretty boy who resembles me 25 years ago and a charismatic middle-aged lady who resembles my -- I mean his -- mother... who happens to have produced the film.'

Fassbinder actually cast his mother as his mother in some of his films, and himself as himself. I think Coppola should have done that with her and her dad.

It's in Fassbinder's contribution to the brilliant 'Germany in Autumn': his mutter advocates benevolent dictatorship, and Rainer has a cow.

if you knew suzy like i knew suzy...

Sight and Sound this month looks at LIT, 'an offbeat romantic comedy with an unusual moral twist'. Now, I haven't read the article, but is anyone willing to bet that the 'moral twist' is Coppola's vindictive handling of the secondary characters? That what I consider her moral limitation in this film (compared, say, to the moral subtleties of a Jean Eustache) is being touted as a moral virtue? That Sight and Sound too are happy to see the Japanese and the commercial creatives getting stiffed?

Ending a relationship or betraying that relationship are big, big steps. In their different ways, the two main characters are contemplating it, wanting it, but fundamentally are constricted by the big picture, and most importantly they make the decision to be so constricted. They recognise that the connection they have made, in its newness, transience and excitement, is the opposite of what they have in their lives, but that doesn't make it worth sacrificing the deeper, older, more essential relationships that they have created and have become their default states.

Aha, the real bile in this film is NOT reserved for the Japanese (although it is a bit off-colour) BUT for Los Angeles as represented by Anna Diaz and Spike Ribisi.

The moral twist is them not shagging, yeah (tell it to David Lean).

xpost

The moral twist is them not shagging

Heaven help us if puritanism and disdain are what pass for 'morality'.

That all depends on the kind of trust we expect in our relationships. Bob after all has a one-night stand, which the film does not seem to overly chastize him for (its a body thing). Instead consumation of this desire seems wrong because it is not actually what they want. Does morality come into it? Perhaps in the sense of the societal norms, but also because it would be an acceptance of their failure in their other 'official' situations.

xpost

Coppola slags off Jonze in this film. This is not a controversial view, Matos.

This film is rather impolite to its secondary characters, and to some of the Japanese. They are short! They come to your hotel room and propose kinky sex (which you, as an American, are not interested in) etc. This has also been rather widely remarked.

(Why on earth you think Bob reps FFC I don't know, unless there is some proven incest thing going on. There are plenty of other old actor men who could happily fill this role that SC would have spent hotel time with merely filming Godfather III).

The supposed rudeness to the Japanese has been widely remarked, though not by many Japanese commentators I note.

xpost

If I may say so, this is a tremendously American thing to say, right down to the idea of a 'moral cop'. In American terms 'Momus' is a pantomime villain, and on the side of 'evil' and hence immorality. Momus as a stage act is 'consigned' to some sort of Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson role. If you're not Christ, you're Satan. It is not considered that Momus songs are morally ambivalent rather than demonic, and that moral ambivalence is in fact a highly moral position (see Jean Eustache or any number of European directors), because it is virtuous in itself not to consign in this way.

I saw the hand-holding and head-on-shoulder stuff as more about solidarity and friendship than sex or betrayal.

Markelby OTM.

i'm thinking about t he kind of self-denying morality that eventually wins out most famously in brief encounter but can also be glimpsed in many films from before the 50s including those of ozu. the sense that denying one's desire can have a kind of transcendent moral value.

there IS something icky about this, and yet, it all depends on context. what would giving in to desire bring about? if it would bring about a genuine rupture in other things that are held dear, and provide sustenance, then isn't denial a credible option at least?

i dunno i think momus might be hooked a little too strongly to this post-60s morality (the morality of the few i might add) without seeing the shades of gray.

but then i havent seen the film in question

please stop calling out people as "american" as though we should be ashamed

It was really dishonestly handled. We're shown nothing of Murray's seduction of the singer, his capitulation to her advances, his love making, all that is erased and occluded in an alcoholic fog in case the fact that we witness him as a sexual animal makes us dislike him. Well, why would it? Why patronise us in that way? Can't we see someone in love with one person and having sex with another, without consigning him somewhere?

the issues are complex

The movie lives or dies on your attitude toward SJ and BM. I couldn't stand either of them, and was annoyed at how obviously Coppola pushed you toward them, and how much she stacked the deck against the photographer and actress for not being 'deep' and hating Tokyo, and against all the plebes in the hotel bar.

and:

I think possibly more than most films, the viewers identification with the characters and the choices they make seem more important in said viewers enjoyment of the film.

I think this way of viewing the film is spectacularly wrong. I think the reverse, in fact: that where most films feature characters either unusually likeable (heroes) or unusually unlikeable (villians), the dull lifelessness of the couple in Lost in Translation is the point. This is why the comment upthread about it appealing to the self-obsessed is spot-on. The self-obsessed, mostly, tend to be failures & mediocrities. In this way they resemble the rest of society, but they differ in the sense that the self-obsessed, by definition, spend a good part of the time engrossed by their own shittiness. The film's sadness comes from the sense that the consequent knowledge of life being wasted is of no help whatsoever in fighting the shit.

I admire the way the film never compromises on the mundanity of these characters. Their jokes are mildly-racist cliches, their big night out is bored karaoke. They have no insight into anything. Bill Murray's character has a tremendous speech, whose main point (having children changes your life), is stunningly banal. (In fact, the only example of a useful observation anywhere in the film is when the photographer kid says the band would look better in their own clothes.) They suffer from abject boredom, and attempt to alleviate it by watching television programmes, any programmes, whatever's on. In these ways, I fear, they resemble me and my friends, we who mock life with our refusal to give it a go. Some of us, mind you, might find a way to deny that we see anything that we recognise in the film & it would probably be in our interests to do so.

Don't worry, I'm ambivalent about your lack of ambivalence. But you're unambivalent about my ambivalence. So I guess I should worry.

(needless to say, this is why I write about music and not movies.)

(xpost)

SEE HOW MUCH I WANT TO BE LOVED.

I enjoyed the movie, but it's no masterpiece.

i frankly have no idea what you're referencing here momus.

ambivalence and unambivalence regarding what?

i'd appreciate it if you could reply in a clear fashion without resort to punning.

Where Kicks is wrong however, is in the suggestion that only the mediocre are self-obsessed. It’s a nice enough notion for somebody creative to believe, but wide of the mark. Any fucker can be self-obsessed, and I’m really not convinced that SJ’s character in particular is so narcissistic (in the film, the TV watching is either the last refuge of desperate escapism, or used a numbing influence when the characters cannot sleep). Where is the evidence? What both characters are is trapped, in their lives, in their relationships, in their roles and routines. Self-obsession does not preclude interaction and interest in the lives of others. maybe they are looking for ways out, looking for changes, Coppola could be alluding to this in the clumsy and needless sequence when she sends SJ around the temple one afternoon. In fact, thinking about it, SJ is much more prepared to engage with her surroundings in the search for escapism that BM, who is horrified by the culture shock, but perhaps the scenery is not enough for SJ – she seems to define her life through her attachment to other people – hence the teary phonecall to the clearly useless friend (why would you ever call up a friend like that at such a time) and the flash boyf. Maybe she’s forced to confront, coming face to face the unfamiliar territory, that her definition of self that she has become so achingly familiar with is derived from people who are themselves not interested in knowing who she is or might be.

I’m winging it all over the place here but turning to BM, the guy is ripe with the kind of assurance that a battering of experiences delivers. He’s a malcontent though, struggling to find satisfaction, which, on the face of it, he has every reason to feel, and yet cannot. He feels trapped too, by his wife, his money-driven work and his kids, but his responsibilities are very much a part of what he is – he loves his kids, and yet he feels detached from them. While SJ is perhaps chasing definition, substance, BM might be chasing feeling, experience. And for a brief moment, while she is dragging him around the city at night, both is able to supply the other with something they previously lacked. BM is too I think, more paternal in his feelings for SJ than lascivious. The drunken fuck with the singer is not the act of a man who is seriously falling for the young SJ (but Momus is OTM with much of what he says pertaining to this moment btw).

Anyway, la la la, I don’t know, I just saw it the other night. I liked it. Not a great movie, but a good one, and a great performance I think from an underrated actor, Bill.

That's not what I said! I said most people are mediocre, and so most self-obsessed people are mediocre. Some people, in both categories, are not mediocre.

the only example of a useful observation anywhere in the film is when the photographer kid says the band would look better in their own clothes.

That may be useful out of context, but in context it establishes two things:

* The Japanese are being bossy and anal on his shoot, just like the commercial director is on Murray's.
* When even fashion people think they're not improving on nature, their job is a pretty futile and fatuous one.

Now, in my experience the Japanese can be fussy and anal on shoots. But there is also a strong tradition of under-styling in Japan. As explained to me by the editor of Relax magazine, Hitoshi Okamoto: 'I try not to use stylists too much. You know, in Japan we have the religion of shinto. It says that everything has its own god inside it, its own spirit. You should respect that.'

I'd also like to take issue with those who call the film 'visually stunning' or well art directed. There are some shots of Tokyo from high up in the Hyatt and some shots of Shinjukyu neons. There is a telephoto shot of Mount Fuji across an expensive golf course and a scene at a temple in Kyoto. These are appallingly obvious things to show. No effort was made, as far as I can see, to look at Tokyo. I can only assume we are supposed to be seeing it through jet lag.

Well, once when they were young and frisky and difficult to get to, we 'romanced' those exotic locations, certainly patronising them in the process, but basically wowed by their beauty. But now we're 'married' to them (they even boss us around, pay us millions of dollars to be in their ads, patronise us) we're just... 'Meh, Tokyo. But, as I was saying, I've been worried about myself recently...'

x-post

Also, in that S&S, check out Sofia's photo! Most directors go for the 'on set doing light-readings' bit, but not she! Rowr, basically.

Nick, smack your inner casting director for giving Peter Fonda that sort of work in '67. Would this be a What's New Pussycat/How To Steal A Million fillum, or more
like Summertime (1955) another David Lean riff on the Brief Encounter thingy? (ladeez and gemmun, Nick's sentimental fave film *is* Brief Encounter). This sort of film was incredibly popular in the late 1960s possibly as an escape from Vietnam etc; one could say this film is escapist in a similar way.

Koji Mizutani (famoose art director) once told me that 1968 was the beginning of hipster culture in Japan, because of the student riots. Also, all the cliched views of ancient permanence that LiT gives us belie a Japan made of paper that comes crashing down whenever there is an earthquake.

They will probably give Bill Murray an Oscar for this but hey, Oscar logic dictates you aren't gonged for your best film, but instead a pretty good film made a few years after you woz robbed of awards in what is now considered a GREAT film.

I have probably blown my chance of a nice conversation with her (or even becoming her next husband, ha!) by writing this stuff. She's friends with Kahimi Karie.

I wonder if men will now be a bit scared to date / marry her, in case they get portrayed as assholes (with daddy's money) in her next project if it doesn't work out?

Damn, now my chance is really blown.

Yeah, I hear SC is a real lurker, Momus, you best check yo'self. JLG hasn't been returning my calls since I hated on 'Eloge de l'amour'.

Perhaps Brief Encounter is what you cite as favourite when you're trying to pull. Also I'm sure KK and SC are just 'fashion friends' in that way that I'm friends with some artists, not good friends who are closer than that.

Also I think you're getting REALLY carried away with this family romance bullshit; it was a funny one-time observation but that's about it. Also the incredible gynophobia of 'scared to date/marry' also suggests you are scared of women with power, regardless of how they've come by it (and saying the power only belongs to Daddy anyway is one way of divesting her of that and it is frankly a cop-out). If Spike Jonze despite having *even more* cash than SC is somehow a victim in this or in any capacity, I'm hard-pressed to see how. I shed no tears for billionaires.

I'd be just as scared of having a gay fling with Quentin Tarantino if I thought a character resembling me was going to be riddled with bullets in 'the fifth film from Quentin Tarantino'. I'm scared of revenge in general. And how are my comments about her dad being the producer (which he is) worse than yours about Sofia's brother Roman being the secret author of LIT (mere speculation)?

I think she won't need dad to produce the next one, anyway: this was a commercial success and made a profit.

Anyone seen Frank's segment from 'New York Stories' though? Ouch.

Considering the slagging you gave Tarantino, I don't think any bumfuckery would have to take place for QT to riddle you with bullets later; that is, if he notices the internet witterings of borderline celebrities. I do stand by gynophobia, because your example given was - and that's just part of a general paranoid narcissist fantasy of yours.

(Oh shit, now I am dead. Riddled with real bullets by Don Coppola.)

i dont mean to pick on you today, suzy, but what is the purpose of such a statement? i know you're hooked up with the hoi polloi and whatnot, but why bother spreading the insinuation if it's just that? what purpose does it serve?

I too felt that the movie was forced and nasty in certain respects toward the Japanese

Isn't that everybody out here?

I don't disagree with your view of the self-obsessed or what the characters might have been feeling. But I don't know how how it clashes with what I said about the film turning on your identification with and sympathy for the characters.

Coppola isn't taking a negative view of the situation, or the sadness and banality of SJ &. If she had, why draw everyone else, to quote Momus, so "vindictively"? If she didn't want to push your sympathies toward them, shouldn't the photographer and the actress and the lounge singer have been given some dignity?

I don't mind manipulation, normally. But I found this manipulation particularly clumsy and frustrating, given that I saw no reason SJ & BM's characters were better (or less annoying) than the photographer and the actress.

There was also the implication on Coppola's part that to experience the soul-crushing boredom of privilege, you had to be 'deep' - a Yale philosophy major v. the photographer (who was having a lot of fun), Bill the quiet, reserved actor v. the hyper, bubbly actress (who was daring to enjoy her press junket). And the push in contrasts between the wild 'adventures' with crazy Japanese hipsters v. hotel bar. I didn't get any of that - the bar seemed infintely preferable to a night out with hipsters, and the actress/photographer were no worse than the main characters (despite their depiction, and it's not like I would choose to spend any amount of time with any of them).

If I had cared for even one second about SJ/BM, the film probably would have worked.

The repusion with LiT comes from trendy 20-somethings refusing to believe they're just as boring, aimless and self-interested as Charlotte.
Close. I'm beyond aimless, probably boring and horribly self-interested. But I'm not making a movie of my life, and if I did, I wouldn't try to play it for sympathy. (Well, I - unlike SJ in LiT - have a job and bills to pay.)

haha, this is all artists have ever done anyway. don't sell yourself short!

That isn't necessarily negative?

oh. nevermind.

LiT did an awful job of explaining SJ's motives. I still do not understand why in the world she would give BM the time of day. I can understand why they found comfort in loneliness, but the initial attraction was creepy.

On the other hand, the movie perfectly captured many elements of business travel for me. I really identified with BM in a lot of ways from my own experience, and while I'm glad he didn't pork SJ it still seemed like to much of a fantasy come true.

Despite my concession to Pete above, I don't feel that I identified with the characters, unless the facts that they need a slap and that I need a slap constitute identification. (We need different slaps.)

Coppola isn't taking a negative view of the situation, or the sadness and banality of SJ &. If she had, why draw everyone else, to quote Momus, so "vindictively"? If she didn't want to push your sympathies toward them, shouldn't the photographer and the actress and the lounge singer have been given some dignity?

I really don't think they were were depicted negatively. Maybe the actress, but the hint of anorexia and her obvious mania place her in the depressive camp anyway. The lounge singer didn't do anything: she sang on stage and in the bathroom after fucking Bill Murray. That's it. Maybe lounge singers are only brought into stories for vindictive reasons. Maybe they're inherently pathetic. If you think so, Coppola didn't cause you to.

The photographer for me was the most sympathetic character, almost the hero of the tale. He offers the most useful way through life. If his photography is mediocre (it probably is), he's bloody well going to prove it. Contrast this with the depressed girl's attempts at writing. (But when she says she's awful, I believe her.)

I don't mind manipulation, normally. But I found this manipulation particularly clumsy and frustrating, given that I saw no reason SJ & BM's characters were better (or less annoying) than the photographer and the actress.

I saw things as being slyer than that (see above).

There was also the implication on Coppola's part that to experience the soul-crushing boredom of privilege, you had to be 'deep' - a Yale philosophy major v. the photographer (who was having a lot of fun),

This 'depth' was so preposterous (e.g. the self-help tapes) that I cannot believe this was the intention. And if it was, Coppola transcended her own daftness quite by accident.

The lounge singer is lecherous, her singing is one thing they're 'escaping' from, she's the conduit for him to cheat on his wife. The actress didn't seem manic-depressive to me, she was a stereotype of a empty-headed blonde actress, the photographer's "way through life" is presented as unacceptable to SJ (where the film's sympathies lie).

And yeah, the depth was laughable, but the movie/Coppola believed in it whole-heartedly (SJ denies that the cheesy self-help tapes are hers) - unless the night with the hipsters was supposed to look awful, and the actress/photographer were supposed to be nice, worthy people, etc. - but I don't see any signs pointing that way.

I'm certainly not seeing the film through her. I'm seeing the film through me, i.e. the me that is sat in the cinema chair, with not much assistance from the other versions.

My point has always been ("I admire the way the film never compromises on the mundanity of these characters") that I adored the film for its authentic dullness. Authenticity isn't one of my fetishes (and nor is dullness), but Lost in Translation appealed to me because it was almost unique in offering this combination. 'Authenticity' tends to deal with the lower classes, typically involving social realism coupled with the ideology of the vibrancy of low culture, i.e. characters, often despite themselves, are funny and poignant as fuck. Middle to upper class communities, when forced into realism, are shafted by satire, and their sophistication is seen as a facade. But here there was a gentle herding of these vaguely advantaged people into a territory beyond satire (and beyond sophistication). They were as naked as Big Brother contestants, and as moronic, and self-satisfied. I found this, the whole effect, very appealing.

But you in the theater has to have an inroad into the film, and you recognized/appreciated/understood within SJ (or BM to a lesser extent) something that was familiar (re: your friends watching TV statement in the first post). I'd call that identification.

Maybe I'm reading you wrong, though.

As I see it, the problem with your view is that authentic dullness (photographer husband, bar) is contrasted with 'authentic excitement' (new friend/etc. BM, hipsters, adventures), but they're really the same emptiness/dullness. I don't see that as what Coppola intended, given the supposed emotional depth of SJ/BM's flirtation/relationship and the happy ending.

The 'exitement' is authentic only in the sense that it is not exciting. The problem with 'your view' (i.e. mine), as you call it, is that I don't adhere to it. The "new friend" is not a friend (but neither is his new friend; the "hipsters" are not hip; the "adventures" are not adventurous. I insist that every moment in the film is undiluted banality. That's the fucking authenticity. That's the movement & the beauty & there is no contrast anywhere.

i really, really hope no one actually believes this

If this movie, which stereotypes most of its cast in a spirit of petty vengeance (take that, inaccurate translator! Take that, flirtatious spouse! Take that, bossy commercial director! Take that, ditzy famous actress!) and thinks racial and cultural differences are fair game for a few post-PC guffaws (the shower head is so low because they're so small, aha ha ha! The prostitute says 'Lip my stockings!' instead of 'Rip my stockings!' Oho ho ho! The chef is so humourless he doesn't laugh at our funny joke about how Japanese people eat rotten black toes! Hiss!)... if this movie is 'a universal tale of human condition' from which I should 'get simple joy' then I'm Ian Fucking Paisley.

Freud pointed out that we reserve the most bile for people who resemble us in all but a few minor ways. Now, Coppola spends much of the film selling out the very people who surround her in real life: media yuppies, fashion and film people, commercial creatives, even her director husband. These privileged people are also hated by the general public. So by distancing herself from them, Coppola is able to approach the general public. Bill Murray is her vehicle for that, her intermediary. He stands in the film for loveable middle aged, middle class mediocrity -- vide the touching little speech about how children change your life, yet are 'the most delightful people you will ever meet'.

Now, if we look at things a little more closely, the way Sofia has mapped her toxic small differences with 'her' people onto the public's big differences with yuppie hipsters is sleight of hand. Her distinction from those people is based on her being, essentially, more privileged than them, not less. She looks down on the way they have to grub around directing whiskey commercials, shooting and styling bands, slurping up to famous actresses. They have to do these things because they were not born into the family of Francis Ford Coppola. They are further down the food chain. For the public, though, they are enviable jet-setters, hipsters, people who think they're cool and superior. Looking-down hate and looking-up hate merge into... just plain ole hipster hate. (And we've been here before on these boards.)

There's a certain genius in the way Coppola's snobbism about these hipsters is mapped to the general public's resentment at being left out of an in-joke and refusing to look up to these 'trend setters'. It's also remarkably clever how Coppola gives the public little glimpses of a rarely-seen and 'exotic' city while simultaneously conveying the message 'Meh, you're not missing much by not being here, it's not really all that great, we're all longing to get back home anyway'.

That's why I keep coming back to this figure of 'betrayal' when I talk about this film, and the trope of 'playing to the gallery'. The over-riding impression you get, from Sofia and her principals, is the message: 'We're not really here in this exotic location, with these rarefied people. We just seem to be with them. In fact they're -- as you suspected -- vapid bores. In fact we're back home with you ordinary joes. You people just struggling to bring up kids and get on with life.'

Have you ever thought that the attitudes of the main characters demonstrated how exactly 'lost' they were? And if you noticed in the background - many of the japanese extras, are, in fact, laughing at the Billy Murray character. Not with him. But at him. I think you are missing the beautiful simplicity of the movie.

As for the inaccurate translator - when Murray repeats - 'Is there not more to that': think - 'lost in translation'. It's a clever motif which is repeated throughout the film.

The hipsterism is neglible. It could have been anyone.

And the sense of wonderment through the cinematography - enhanced the feeling that the main characters lives are tepid bores compared to the beauty of the city.

Again, missing something very simple. Ack. I'm not going to concern myself with this.

But she doesn't know this about him when she meets him. What is the initial attraction to an unattractive old man who is drunk at the bar? Especially when she is so hot?

every moment in the film is undiluted banality. That's the fucking authenticity.

This to me is how the loneliness of extensive travel is captured, at least from BM's perspective. It was perfect, nearly exactly what I've experienced on many many occasions. And there is a profound amount of loneliness to be experienced no matter the number of stars in the hotel--the more glamorous the locale or accomodations, in fact, the more lonely and detached you can feel.

I think Coppola wasn't as much selling out her peers as much as she was showing how lonely they are, and how that loneliness lends itself to banality. The element of celebrity only complicates matters--she could have made this film without including the celebrity element of it and it would have been just as relevant to me. But I'm not really sure that the the celebrity element added up to betrayal or a play to the gallery at all.

I think I might feel more comfortable with that analysis if there had been a scene where, for instance, the whacky chat show host got a moment alone with Scarlett, opened his wallet, and showed her a photo of his kids. That way we could have seen him as a valid human being. But what am I talking about, he's a homosexual! He doesn't have kids! Okay, a simple, heart-winning moment when he sits down and explains to Scarlett the joys of cottaging in Yoyogi Park...

I hate to think what might happen if Kim Jong-Il got hold of a script like that.

Nah. I doubt I would want to hook up with a singer-songwriter whom I've had a brief disagreement with on an internet board in Tokyo. That would be freaky.

Berlin, eh? Is it still the bohemian capital of the world?

I seem to remember similar rumours about the cinematographer being largely responsible for the direction of 'The Virgin Suicides'.

I liked both films as one-note mood pieces. That seems to be what she and her collection of helpers seem to be good at. I don't understand all the moral disgust spat above. I have a feeling it's variously caused by the film being set in Japan but not about Japan, resentment of Sofia Coppola, and self-hatred.

What are you talking about? She is once again a genius!

My coworker Tom saw it over the weekend and liked it and without having read much about it made what I thought was a good observation, doubtless already echoed here somewhere: namely, that having gauzy and sometimes murky music (Kevin Shields/MBV, the Jesus and Mary Chain, etc.) on the soundtrack helped to suggest and mirror the similar murky/gauzy way the characters might be interpreting their surroundings. Tom also thought that the point wasn't Japan at all, that it could just be feeling strange in any location, whether Tokyo or Orange County (and hell, there are MANY Japanese expatriates and tourists around OC so it's actually a nicely cogent parallel).

Also, coworker Tom (this is the former ILE poster, right?) has the same take on the movie as I do; Japan is incidental to the point of the film.

Yeah but really only incidentally here and there -- that is him at the very start of the legendary Boston love/hate thread, though.

I think my argument has been pretty consistent. I think Japan and the Japanese are a red herring in LIT. What I object to is the mismatch between the principals and everyone else, the 'consignment' of all the secondary characters (who happen, in this instance, to be visual professionals and Japanese).

But it's a story that works because it's seen through the principals' eyes.

This is not sexism; nobody says this kind of stuff about Lynn Ramsay, do they? Nor do they say it about other women directors whose fathers do same, eg. Sadie Benning, Samira Makhmalbaf. In fact, the only women who get this stuff said about them generally follow the Jade Jagger model: spend 10 years hanging out with hipsters, before walking into job created just for you by some slut of a marketing director, because your parent's name makes you a BRAND.

Toughy!

Momus wants equality. He is the liberator of all the little yellow people of the world. We should all kow tow bottoms up to him.

you can judge the movies for themselves

after all jean renoir entered the cinema in a similar fashion

i laughed a lot--i thought it was good

the problems that momus sees as central, i saw as less central--but they were still problems

the scenes where whatsherface visits the temples and the traditional wedding were really static and awful, like they obviously were intended to serve a structural purpose in the film but no imagination or inspiration was brought to them whatsoever. and the character of whatsherface's husband was kind of schematic--he changes qualities depending on the needs of the screenplay in each scene.

the no-sex thing didn't bother me

i don't appreciate momus's being bothered by it; does he always get to have sex with people when it's expedient?

i don't think the film really placed that huge of a value on nothavingsex, like brief encounter or whatever. after all they kiss and bill murray whispers some kind of romantic promise (???) to her at the end, and anyways he sleeps with the singer so he's no stranger to betrayal. the nothavingsex aspect was just a function of the limited time they had together and the awkwardness with which their relationship was shot through--an awkwardness which was really beautifully captured in a couple of moments.

i still think the ending though was too dramatic, a bit unearned even....

they could have been shot better

I have no idea whether my colleague's response would be a common one among the Japanese, but if for argument's sake it is, can one still complain about the stereotyping/ignoring/objectifying of a nationality if the nationals themselves don't see it that way or don't mind?

By the way, the first Japanese reviews are beginning to come in for 'Lost In Translation'. And if this one in Japan Today is anything to go by, they do think the film is offensive. What's more, the film is getting an extremely low profile release in Tokyo:

'It will open at one Tokyo theater with seating for about 300. Depending on ticket sales in the first two weeks, other theaters may show it for about a month.' Yosuke Watanabe, a spokesman for "Lost in Translation" distributor Tohokushinsha.

These reactions, while not the whole story, send a strong signal that the film is not taken well in Japan so far. To the question 'Has it caused offense?' the answer would seem to be 'Yes'. The first person to say 'They should learn to laugh at themselves' gets an atom bomb dropped on them and has to watch a funny short film about it.

"The first shot of any film always speaks volumes to me. What was the first shot of "Lost in Translation?" It was a woman's ass. Through this body part, the director, Sofia Coppola, sees and shows Japan and her characters."

Sofia: Hiromix, I've ended the film with a shot of you waving at the camera.
Hiromix: That was nice, Sofia, what a public token of our friendship!
Sofia: Yes, a token of our friendship, that's all. And... and... well, to be honest I was a bit worried, when I made the final edit, that some people might think I was being racist against the Japanese with some of the jokes. So I put you in there getting the last word -- well, not a word, a wave -- to show that some of my best friends are Japanese.
Hiromix: That's so nice, Sofia. Thank you.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000JD0V.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/001278.html

jesus christ momus

I think the essence of LIT is the pact Bill and Scarlett make at the beginning:

Bill: First we're going to bust out of this bar, then this hotel, then this city, then this country. Are you with me?
Scarlett: I'm in!

In a sense, the audience has to identify with this goal. They have to feel claustrophobic in Tokyo. And I think a certain percentage of Japanese (let's say 14.7%) do want to bust out of Japan. If someone made a movie proposing busting out of Britain, I would sit there thinking 'I'm in!' I would love it. I would want it to be extremely scathing about how crappy Britain is. But -- and this is key -- I would want it to be by a British director, someone like Lindsay Anderson. I think a foreign film about foreigners busting out of Britain would make me feel... uneasy, no matter how much I identified with the theme.

You must admit I'm right about breasts voting Democrat, though.

I'd like to see the 'let's leave Britain!' film too. But if it starred Japanese people I wouldn't mind a Japanese director doing it. If it had British protags, then yeah, on a practical level a Brit director would probably be better; but on the other hand these classics of Brit film were all by foreigners: Blow Up, Accident (some of which is shot not 200m from my flat), Repulsion, Picadilly (1929), oh you know that Jules Dassin one, um, etc.

Catherine Deneuve: First we're going to bust out of this bedroom, then South Kenseengton, then London, then the 'ole of Eengland. Are you in?
Psychotic delusional latex hands coming through wall (also foreign): We're een!

Your perspective on Japan is just as horribly skewed as the Bill Murray character anyway, except in a different direction. You have admitted that you neither speak nor read Japanese, and furthermore you have deliberately avoided doing so. Now let's see what kind of perspective a Japanese Momus would have on Britain. Let's call him Momus-san. Momus-san spends a few months every now and then in Britain. He largely hangs out in Hoxton, going to art gallery openings with an international crowd. He mixes it up with the locals - but only those who speak Japanese. He gets his news about Britain from Japanese newspapers, or maybe a local Japanese-language rag run by and for Japanese people. He also reads the occasional bilingual art mag that is also at least partially geared towards Japanese people. He mixes within a locale and subculture which is perhaps the least representative of the UK, although is very representative of a certain international lifestyle. Seeing various exhibitions by YBAs and suchlike gives him ideas about what "Britain" is all about. Maybe it's about the celebration of an individualist iconoclastic masculinity that the Japanese have repressed, I don't know. He goes on Japanese forums extolling these great British virtues.

...

what is the expiration date on st. augustine momus? bosch?

i think the whole "10 years too late" thing, if you mean it in earnest, is more an indictment of the worth of the photographer you seem to admire and not of coppola's film

Momus, is this true?

--zen koan

Honto, maji-desu!

Okay, now we're getting closer to 'Japanese people think everything is about Japan. They're crazy to take offense at this film, which is merely set in Japan, concerns two sympathetic foreigner characters trying to 'bust out', and makes jokes about how badly Japanese pronounce English, how short they are, etc. Why can't they lighten up?'

Wow, Jesus played BY Samuel L Jackson. Love thy neighbours, motherfucker.

The old 'guilty-by-association' tactic, eh? I can sense you're about 3 posts away from mentioning Hitler.

(a) the film could be more aware of and sensitive to japan

(b) certain japanese have taken mild offense at the way their country is portrayed

his other points, about outmoded references and 'plundering' subcultures, i just discount as being hipster horseshit

so let's concede those two points--what's the big deal? why does he make out like the offense was so great?

the film still has a lot going for it it think, even though my reaction was decidedly mixed

'Don't look back' is a doc*mentary about a moody, shade-wearing troubadour's visit to the England of 1964.

'Don't look now' is a fiction film about an over-excitable director's dirty weekend in Venice with his knife-crazed editor.

Not just 'certain Japanese'. The distributor -- ie the Japanese company with the exclusive rights to make or break the film in Japan -- has said that its April release will be 'at one Tokyo theater with seating for about 300. Depending on ticket sales in the first two weeks, other theaters may show it for about a month.' This is a film up for all the Oscars in the US. The reviewer says 'Rave reviews, Golden Globe awards and Oscar nominations for "best actor," "best film," "best director" and "best original screenplay" have made me feel even more offended. I do not want my people to serve as a cheap subject for mockery for someone's career advantage.'

Is that mild offense?

(trife and Momus are the two most obvious culture parasites on this board, to the extent that they claim to represent said culture to a ridiculous level. Seems a fair cmment, which makes a change)

This thread looks, or is, interesting.

I was surprised to find that JtN was nowhere on it.

I was interested in Momus's ideas about 'morality'.

What is an Apple Mac snipe and why / how does one make one?

Why are you two talking in a... private language?

It's queer.

triflin' ho: A female who is need of a good bitch slappin'.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=triflin'+ho

I thought, golly, they're all such street-jivin' hipsters on ILX! And so macho!

HAHAHAHA Dude, you really have to get out of this habit of making pronouncements that fly in the face of all manner of practical experience!

In full:

Japanese distributor Tohokushinsha Co. said ``Lost In Translation'' is opening so late because it's not typical Hollywood fare. Big-budget films tend to debut in Japan within weeks of their U.S. premiere at major cineplexes, while smaller ones stay at obscure theaters.

Even with all the publicity, Tohokushinsha is playing it safe. The movie will open at one Tokyo theater with seating for about 300, and so far the only advertisement is a Web site with a trailer and a brief plot introduction, company spokesman Yosuke Watanabe said.

Depending on ticket sales in the first two weeks, other theaters may show it for about a month, Watanabe said.

``We expect it to go to other theaters, in Osaka and other cities nationwide,'' he said. ``But if it doesn't do well in Tokyo, its run could end there.''

``There are stereotypical portrayals of Japan and discriminatory jokes,'' wrote Mirai Konishi, a movie columnist for eiga.com. ``But I wasn't that offended. For an American movie about Japan, it's a frank, if somewhat exaggerated, snapshot.''

Some reviews laud Coppola's deft directing and Murray's tragicomic confusion. Others complain the director too often shows Murray puzzled by Japanese people speaking broken English.

That's hardly OMG JAPANESE PPL HATE IT!!!

i mean, with regard to the scarlett johansson character it was certainly at his expense, and i'd like to think that the chef probably started picking up on it too

i guess one way to look at the problem is right there: does copolla think the chef is sensitive enough to figure out that murray is cracking jokes at him? or is she party to murray's condescension in depicting a truly uncomprehending japanese?

The question is, can he get the funds to make it?

He wasn't exactly part of the plot of the film. The story wasn't about how the Japanese service industry. In fact, if it is, that was probably one of the easier days, the next day he'd have some dude complaining that there's seaweed in their soup, or does a runner, or the triads turn up demanding protection money. He'd probably wish everyday will be just people walking in and making a fool out of themselves talking in a foreign language and laughing at themselves.

There is a certain symmetry to the 'translation losses': while filming the commercial Murray is 'humiliated', as he is on the TV show. He gets 'even' by insulting the chef and the lady in the hospital. The thing is, foreigners in Japan, and the Japanese themselves, are extremely sensitive to this kind of gaffe. People go out of their way to avoid exactly the kind of tensions shown here. I found the film excruciating and ethnocentric for this reason. That might have been a source of nervous laughter, but it wasn't.

And in the end, the 'attitude' of the film is evident. We're supposed to have grown very attached to these people. Their clumsiness and diffidence and cocooned privilege and middle aged weariness is supposed to have really endeared them to us. Even their ethnocentricity is meant to be rather cute.

that scene made me feel like coppola was taking murray's side and i felt like a voyeur w/r/t to the old woman. the scene at the sushi shop was a little more open, in my mind, to different interpretations.

i can imagine bill murray doing something like this on set and coppola not wanting (or daring) to take it out--to me it recalls the sort of awe in which these young directors hold murray, not quite unaccountably, but it does go a little overboard perhaps, and the sort of underdog privilege that murrary embodies does have its problems when dropped into this context.

i still think the offenses are, in the long run, rather slight, appropriate to a rather slight movie.

i guess i'm a bit ashamed to admit that these incidents didn't intrude on my attempts to sympathize with the characters (which didn't get very far for other reasons) as much as they did for momus.

I'm sorry but this is just wrong. Instead of just giving a shrug and letting it go, he actually accepts the absurdity of the situation and makes at least a humorous connection with the person, thereby brightening the day a bit for both of them and making the world a better place. I'm pretty cynical, but these readings are just too much. I don't remember the chef exchange, maybe it's worse.

perhaps it's just that i have a different sensibility, a different sense of decorum which murray's activity violated

there really are different ways of being a tourist, and sometimes i do see prvileged young americans whooping it up with french waiters and so on on account of some kind of cultural or linguistic misunderstandng, but often there simply seems to be an uncomfortable sort of imbalance there, where it's the waiter's duty to laugh and the kids' privilege to do so. but that's all in my impressions, i've never really had a good handle on the precise dynamic of these things.

i suppose i should see it again but i'm not going to bother

It's a great game, but as I frantically emptied my M1911 .45-caliber pistol into the chest of yet another Japanese solider, I began to wonder what the hell Electronic Arts is smoking. They released this game in Tokyo? What do the Japanese think?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2096112/

i was just imagining people i think to be all about 'hey it's just fun' or whatever

maybe you're not like that

Which, when I think about it, probably could be boiled down to "Hey, it's just fun!"

i think sopia coppola is guilty of a lack of vision and artistic intelligence, so she deserves this kind of stuff, but still, it's a little bit much

I can see how this could definitely upset senses of decorum, haha!

also Asian Media Watch is a generally hysterical organization.

*possibly not true