Lost in Translation

Lost In Translation

Rating (from metacritic.com): 89/100

Storyline (from IMDB.com):
A movie star with a sense of emptiness and a neglected newlywed meet up as strangers in Tokyo and form an unlikely bond.

Source: My personal collection

Review:

This movie is one of my favorites. I saw in theaters with my mother when it came out, then bought it on DVD. I also own the soundtrack ,which I’m listening to while writing this review.
Unlike with most movies, trying to write a plot summary for this one is difficult. It's not something you can easily put into words, but I'll give it a try.
The basic plot is the meeting of the two major characters, an actor named Bob (played by Bill Murray) and young and lovely Charlotte (played by Scarlett Johansson), who are both staying in a hotel in Tokyo. Bob is doing a series of profitable commercials and ads for Suntory Whiskey, while Charlotte is with her photographer husband. They meet in the hotel bar and start a deep friendship. Bob is having a mid-life crisis. He hasn’t made a film in a while and is in Japan for the profit involved in making foreign commercials. From what we can glean from his long-distance phone calls home, there's trouble with his wife and home life.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, a recent graduate of Yale with the ever-useful degree in philosophy, is trying to find her role in life. Her husband, consumed by his work, expects his wife to explore the city by herself. She wanders around Tokyo, taking a brief trip by bullet train to Kyoto to see the sights. Her journeys reflect her life: in motion but directionless. (Moving forward but going nowhere.)
After meeting her in the hotel bar, Bob starts to accompany Charlotte on her meandering trips, and we see a relationship form. She shows him the youthful side of Tokyo, visiting trendy bars, friends' homes, and even a strip club. They talk and laugh, discuss their lives, and learn from each other.
Then, after a depressing talk with his wife, Bob ends up sleeping with the lounge singer from the bar and is discovered by Charlotte. This upsets her and she ends their companionship. Just before the end of the film, they reconcile. In the last scene, they hug as they are about to go their separate ways, and Bob whispers in her ear. As for what Bob says to Charlotte at the end of the film, your guess is as good as mine. I think he either tells her to stick it out with her husband, or to call him when they get back to the States, but I don't think we were meant to know.

I’m sorry that my words can’t express this film properly. It’s a work of art. In fact, it was this film that really showed me that film can be art, without a purpose besides simply being art. It uses visuals and the soundtrack to full effect, where the goal isn’t to listen to the characters talk, but to let you enjoy the experience. This also means you need to pay close attention to what is and isn’t said. The actors don’t explain everything, they just show it.
One of the things that makes doing this review hard is the way the movie laid out. We have a bunch of disjointed scenes, without dialogue and where one character (mostly Charlotte) is alone, not interacting with anyone. It’s up to you, the viewer, to add or find the context of the scene. If I tell you about how Charlotte looks out her window at the sun rising over Tokyo, it doesn’t seem that important in words, but when you see it, you know what she’s thinking. I also feel that it's important to leave my impressions out when talking about this film. It's up to you to use your experience to find out what's going on.

The actors seem to have been born for their roles. In fact, there are a few scenes that you feel like you aren’t watching their characters, but the actors themselves. For example, there’s a brief scene where Bob goes golfing (with a perfectly framed Mt. Fuji in the background). When I was watching this for the review, I felt like I was just watching Bill Murray golfing, not the character. There are plenty of scenes like this, where character and actor cease to have meaning and you’re just watching people be people.
Another example is the scene in the Karaoke club when they start singing. You can’t tell me that Bill Murray wasn’t enjoying singing those songs and channeling the lounge lizard from SNL.
There’s a great moment where Bob is sitting in a hospital waiting room and starts talking with an older Japanese man sitting next to him. From what I can figure out, the man is trying to explain that’s he’s from the Northern part of Japan, using hand gestures and sound effects. Bob doesn’t seem to speak a word of the language, and is just mimicking the sound effect. If you look in the background, there are two middle age Japanese women listening and trying not to laugh too hard. It’s a classic moment in this film.

There are also hints about the relationship troubles in both Bob’s and Charlotte’s marriages. If you notice, neither one of them say ‘I love you’ or ‘I love you, too,' when talking to their respective spouses. In a poignant moment, Bob says it after his wife has hung up. Charlotte’s husband says it once, before he leaves for the week, and she doesn’t say it back. This should be sending up red flags, ringing warning bells and firing off flares about the status of the relationships. I know from experience that it’s always the little things that matter.

As a personal aside, I love how the film shows the Japanese culture, especially the contrast in the amount of space each country utilizes. When Bill Murray is in the hotel, the showerhead only comes up to his chest; he's the tallest person in the crowd by at least a foot; and there's a complaint from Charlotte about him being ‘too big.’ If you’re not over six feet tall, you might not think about it, but, if you are a big person, you know how you stand out. I was waiting for him to hit his head on something, or stoop through doors, but I guess that would have been overdoing it.

There are a few things that don’t go so well. One is the scene where the hooker shows up at Bob’s hotel room and wants him to rip her stockings. It just didn’t seem to fit well with the rest of the film and was excruciatingly awkward to sit through. Then again, that might have been because I was sitting next to my mother the first time I saw it. (It also made the strip club scene very hard to watch as well.) I also wasn’t sure if the character really was a hooker, as implied, or if she was looking to get some cash from him by filing rape or sexual harassment charges.

Then there's the American bimbo who seems to know Charlotte’s husband and seems to exist just to bug the hell out of everyone, including the audience. She detracts from the movie as a whole. However, she does provide a counterpoint to Charlotte's reticence and gives us the idea that her husband doesn't know what might be slipping through his fingers.

When I was looking up the stuff for this movie, I saw a review that simply said “I didn’t get this movie. Is there something wrong with me?” Yes, yes there is. This movie isn’t that hard to ‘get.’ It’s completely open to interpretation and requires close attention, an eye for detail, and some life experience. I’ve seen this movie a few times since I first saw it, and I always find another angle I missed when I saw it the last time. If you’ve only seen this movie once, watch it again. If you haven’t seen it before, watch it and keep your eyes and heart open.

I have to admit, I had a big crush on Scarlett Johansson after watching this movie. She seems so real in this and is also a very attractive lady. Besides, how can you not like this movie, or her, when she spends a fair amount of time in her underwear?

(Did I mention I was sitting next to my mother when I saw this movie for the first time? Hard to enjoy some of it, I have to say, but thanks for taking me to see it, Mom.)

Final Thoughts: How can you not like this movie? It starts with a view of Scarlett Johansson in her underwear.

It is a GOOD movie.

Coming Soon: X-Men