I've decided: Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation would probably be the great film its been made out to be if it didn't inadvertently remind me so strongly of other, better films. More than anything else, it seems to me that Coppola has seen and probably really liked In the Mood for Love, Rushmore, and Ghost World and thus figured, 'Hey, why not combine the three?' I have to give it to her: As a big admirer of those films, it does seem like a pretty damn good idea.
What she essentially does is takes Bill Murray's Rushmore character, twists him around a little (rather than a miserable, filthy rich tycoon, his character here is a miserable, filthy rich actor); supposes that Johansson's Ghost World character ended up going to college after all and then met the sort of guy that she might've found initially appealing enough to marry, perhaps just for normalcy's sake (i.e., the type of guy that Thora Birch's Enid would've no doubt labeled an "extroverted, pseudo-bohemian loser") but later quickly grows bored with; and tosses them together by chance into an ephemeral, romantic-but-not-(necessarily)-sexual affair, ala In the Mood for Love. To boot, as shot by cinematographer Lance Accord, Coppola's contemporary Tokyo setting is nearly as visually intoxicating as Christopher Doyle and Mark Li Ping-bin's gorgeous vision of 1960's Hong Kong in the Wong film.
The only real problem is that Lost in Translation simply isn't as good as these three films nor does it ever quite manage to shake their shadow, thus minimizing the effect of even the finest moments of Coppola's film. While Bill Murray's Bob Harris isn't as charmingly eccentric and, ironically, doesn't seem as hopelessly 'lost' as his Herman Bloom in Rushmore, both his character and performance here seem sort of borrowed and embellished from the earlier film, with evidently not much 'translation' on Coppola's part entering into the picture. Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte is to a 'T' Ghost World's Rebecca after having learned a little more about life and consequently having both lightened up some and grown a bit more cynical. Which isn't to say that either actor is bad here, by any means; naturally, they're both roughly as superb as they were in their earlier roles because they give roughly the same performance.
Now, don't get me wrong: There are some genuinely lovely moments here. But the ultimate heartbreaker, Bob and Charlotte's teary farewell, while undeniably quite poignant in its own right, suggests Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung's lachrymose final night together so clearly that it is glaringly obvious that Coppola's scene really doesn't hold a candle to Wong's in terms of profound emotional impact--nor, for that matter, is it as quietly affecting as Enid's visit to Seymour in the hospital or her conversation with Rebecca outside afterward. Coppola's dubious attempts at the sort of bitingly humorous misanthropy that Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes' Ghost World script employed so effectively are undoubtedly Lost in Translation's weakest element. Charlotte, at one point, says to Bob, "But I'm so mean," to which he replies, "Mean's okay." I agree, but taking tactless, redundantly repetitive cheap shots at another culture, presumably just for the sake of lightening the mood enough to pacify audiences paying to see a Bill Murray Comedy is not. Even when I couldn't help but laugh due to Murray's always-impeccable comic timing, the laughs felt guilty and very tongue-in-cheek.
This sort of convenient cultural condescension also plays in weird, uncomplimentary contrast with the touching, sweetly realized relationship at the film's core. Coppola might've borrowed Murray's character from a Wes Anderson movie, but she completely lacks Anderson's wonderful ability to truly embrace all of his characters, despite their flaws and idiosyncracies; even Zwigoff and Clowes made a considerably better effort at doing so than Coppola makes here. Besides basically poking fun at those wacky Japs, Coppola apparently has no use for Charlotte's Stroke-ish photographer husband nor for a ditzy blonde actress acquaintance of his also staying at their hotel in Tokyo. It's almost as if she consciously painted the characters of Charlotte and Bob as vibrantly and complexly as possible and then ran out of paint, leaving the rest of the canvas relatively blank and the other characters to exist purely as further evidence of how terribly Deep and Interesting the two primaries are in comparison. While I almost certainly enjoyed Lost in Translation more than this review might seem to indicate, it ultimately left me with both a tear in my eye and a bad taste in my mouth.
― Josh Timmermann (Josh Timmermann), Sunday, 5 October 2003 00:55 (twenty-one years ago)
Josh, are you me?
My feelings echo much of the above, and if anything, I have an even more harsh judgement of this film. I wasn't really touched by their farewell, nor did I feel that any of the pivotal moments of the feel (the karaoke scene for example) carried any dramatic weight at all. I like a film that doesn't ram its characters emotions down the audience's throat, but I though that too much is left to the imagination. Both performances rely on prior knowledge of what are essentially stock characters (mid-life crisis man, twentysomething girl looking for her place in the world), and ask us to fill in the gaps. That would be fine, only staring vacuously at buddhist monks and out of hotel windows does not add much to a sense of character. I felt the same about the humor-it seemed to be asking you to remember similar scenes from much, much funnier films.
― adaml (adaml), Sunday, 5 October 2003 04:20 (twenty-one years ago)
Well, I liked it. Some of the humor, in my opinion, relied a little too heavily on racial stereotypes (especially the shot where Bill Murray is standing in the elevator, and we're supposed to laugh because of how short all the Japanese are). But this is a simple story, and it does not pretend to be anything deeper or more important than that. I believed the characters and their situation, and that's really all that mattered for me. It's certainly not the masterpiece most critics would like you to think, but I think it's a good film (better than The Virgin Suicides).
As for it having so many shades of other films, well, I attribute that to its genre. The romantic comedy has been beaten to death over the past 15 years, it's almost becoming impossible to compare one to all the others.
― Anthony (Anthony F), Sunday, 5 October 2003 14:45 (twenty-one years ago)
four weeks pass...
I liked it alot.
I do, however, think touting the film as a rip roaring comedy is a mistake and a lie. One ad talked of Bill Murray's knee slapping performance. Again, did they see the same movie I did?
For me, the views of Japan balance the idiosyncratic nature of the cultural stereotypes. When I first went to Asia, I felt both, for sure. I was dazzled by the beauty, perplexed by the cultural ambiguities and entertained AND sometimes bored by behavior that was "foreign" to me (it reminded me that I didn't really know what was going on....Americans, especially, don't like to feel "not in charge".
The story was slow moving, for sure and understated (excepting the cultural stuff). I thought it was filmed beautifully, also.
My wife and I then went home and watched "Horse Whisperers" to recall a much younger Johansson in action.
― ed dill (eddill), Monday, 3 November 2003 06:58 (twenty-one years ago)